This is the text of a talk I gave as part of a panel on “Transgender in the Church” at the Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, CA on February 27, 2016. You can order the audio here (#5-12).

Thank you all for being here and showing interest in this topic. Really, truly, thank you.

All of a sudden everyone is talking about “trans” issues… and I’m like wait, that’s me. I mean… my story’s kinda weird and everything, but whaaat!? And the thing is for 21 years no one cared about that story. It was a “phase,” or I was “experimenting.”

There’s the activist side of me, the philosophy major that kinda wants to give you the ABCs of trans issues. After all, we’re at an educator’s conference. But the thing is what we’re dealing with here isn’t primarily a movement or phenomenon; what we’re dealing with here are the…