Comfort and strength: How four transgender adults held onto their faith

The world has come to know Caitlyn Jenner through a cover photograph in Vanity Fair magazine. The former world class athlete and reality star. known to all of us for years, was the talk of the nation this week. But no one knew the name Leelah Alcorn until the Warren County teenager killed herself Dec. 28 and told the rest of us of her pain in a social media suicide note. Since Leelah's death, The Cincinnati Enquirer has sought to show how transgender people, without fame and resources, live their lives.

On a bright spring afternoon, FE Harris connected his smartphone to a small speaker, and the church kitchen in College Hill filled with the glory-bound sound of modern gospel. In the middle of preparing a meal, the activist of the TransSaints ministry put down a chef's knife and lifted his hands to the sky.

"See how much fun we're having?" Harris said, cackling with laughter. "We do this so that we can fill the food with love. And people know it. They can taste it."

A Cincinnati native, Harris is a retired prison officer. He is a Bible-believing Christian who speaks of the "radical inclusion of Jesus Christ." He also describes himself as a trans masculine man, and he is on a spiritual journey of practicing a creed and inhabiting an authentic self.

For millennia, that path has been full of conflict. But a turning point for transgender people has clearly arrived. A 2013 poll found that one out of 11 Americans has a transgender relative or close friend. Mainline churches are widening their public embrace of the faithful who are transgender. The Episcopal Church, for example, approved the ordination of transgender people in 2012.

Still, the Judeo-Christian testaments contain teachings that condemn gender identities beyond the biological male and female. Many adherents believe those passages are God's eternal word on the subject. In 2014, the Southern Baptist Convention of nearly 16 million members passed a resolution to "oppose all cultural efforts to validate claims to transgender identity."

Many transgender people who have endured the heartbreak of rejection from their churches do some rejecting right back, calling religious practitioners judgmental and guilty of hypocrisy, even cruelty.

Five months ago, the ground on this global fault line shifted when transgender teenager Leelah Alcorn of Kings Mills walked in front of a truck on Interstate 71 in Warren County. The 17-year-old left an anguished note on her Tumblr social media account about evangelical parents proclaiming that "God doesn't make mistakes" and insisting on "Christian therapy" that left the teen bereft of hope.

Alcorn's suicide left FE Harris and other transgender people of faith with special pain. They understood Alcorn's sense of abandonment because they had known it, too. Yet as they grew into who they knew themselves to be, they turned to their faiths for comfort and strength when they needed it most.

The Cincinnati Enquirer asked a dozen transgender people of faith to speak about their religious lives. Some declined because they did not want to come out to their faith communities. Some wanted to be public, but their clergy cautioned against it. Agreeing to talk about their faith are four transgender people and one Jewish mother.

Babies burbled and children fidgeted as the faithful came to the regular Sunday service at the Cincinnati ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One little boy kept turning around in his pew and looking at Paula Ison, who smiled and waved.

Ison, 66, is a well-known transgender leader in Cincinnati. Last year, she helped to push the city to extend health-insurance benefits to transgender employees. She consulted with Kroger and Macy's on corporate policies. The local Human Rights Campaign honored her this year for her advocacy work.

"It's all about people skills," said Ison, who retired in May from a 29-year career at Great American Insurance Group as a senior casualty claim adjuster handling serious bodily injury litigation. She also holds a master's degree in social work.

Ison was baptized a Mormon at 8. The faith provided security as her father, a career Marine, moved the family around the country, and while Ison wrestled with a secret, that she was not male but female. Ison said she never felt the level of despair that drove Leelah Alcorn to suicide. But she did stop going to church as an adult, through marriage, divorce and, finally, into her transition as a woman. By the early 1990s, though, she could no longer ignore her spiritual hunger.

"I needed to get back to it," she said. "My life by that point would not have earned me a gold star on my resume. So one day, I picked up a copy of the local alternative paper and saw an ad for the Metropolitan Community Church. I called the pastor. I asked, 'Are trans people welcome?' And she said, 'Everybody's welcome.' "

For years, Ison appreciated the MCC's warm reception. Yet she found herself listening to sermons and thinking: That's not right. That's not true. You're wrong there. "I realized that I know where the truth is." She returned to the church of her youth.

Mormonism might appear a chilly place for transgender people. While the faith opposes gay marriage, Ison said Mormons keep politics out of church and, more important, avoid judgment of others. "You work on your own salvation," she said. Ison also belongs to a group of gay and transgender Mormons that marches in LGBT Pride parades, to cheers.

"When people in the church talk about these issues," Ison said, "I make the business case to them. You don't throw away good people. There are 15 million people in the LDS church. If one percent is LGBT, that's 150,000 people. So what would Jesus do?"

At the Jan. 10 memorial vigil for Alcorn at the Woodward Theater, Pastor Terry Hocker, 55, took to the stage, and the crowd of 500 people fell quiet. Hocker warned that some of them might not like to hear it, "but I'm going to say 'God' anyway, and I'm not going to apologize for it."

As a "pew baby," Hocker was in the family church every time the doors opened. But growing up, Hocker knew he was "a tomboy, for lack of a better word." The disconnection between that reality and a conservative faith seemed impossible to reconcile. The pain pushed the teenaged Hocker one day to pick out a busy intersection of Reading Road, to step step out into heavy traffic.

"I understood Leelah and what she wanted to do," Hocker said. "I wanted to send a message, too. Make a statement."

But Hocker couldn't do it. "Does God love me? I thought so. I decided I was going to learn how to live with being trans, even though I didn't know that word then. I was going to live in the world."

For years, Hocker was a Cincinnati social worker for young people. Then job burnout coincided with a longing for church, and not just to attend but to pastor, to preach. "My people, grandparents, great-grandparents, were ministers. I am rooted in the church. All my life, I knew it would fall on me."

Hocker sought a church in which to preach and found the Bound by Truth and Love Ministries, which like the MCC is a sect that celebrates transgender and gay people as creations of God. Transgender people of faith, Hocker said, can serve as examples not only to those who do not approve of them, but to transgender people who feel hostile toward religion.

"We need to stand up and be people of faith," Hocker said. "This is what we can teach: tolerance. We have to tolerate, accept and affirm those who do not tolerate, accept and affirm us."

On Sundays, Hocker leads a small but shoutin' congregation in a service of charismatic praise at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pleasant Ridge. On Pentecost Sunday, a significant holiday on the Christian calendar, Hocker was ill. But two dozen people had come for a sermon, and Hocker delivered.

Clutching his stomach at times, Hocker preached for nearly 40 minutes on the New Testament passage describing the apostles receiving the divine spirit. But they were not the only recipients, Hocker said.

"Pentecost was not a one-time event! Pentecost is still happening!" Hocker said, as the congregants chorused yes, pastor, preach it, pastor.

"It is the pouring out of the spirit on all people!" Hocker said. "On all flesh. On white flesh and black flesh. On male flesh and female flesh. On straight flesh and on gay flesh! It is the pouring out of the power of the spirit on all of us. Every day."

They were running late to temple one Friday night in May. Sharlene Stempler and her son Danyel kept talking over each other as they bundled into the car. Danyel teased his mother as she drove, "You can't parallel park very well."

"Dany, you're a real blessing," Sharlene replied. "A pain in the butt sometimes, but a blessing."

Danyel, 22, is a transgender man. Before transitioning, Dany went through the coming-of-age ceremony for a Jewish girl, a bat mitzvah. On the mantle of the Stempler home stands a framed photograph of that day. Danyel said, "I made the prayer shawls that my dad and granddad wore."

He has endured lifelong physical and mental health problems and today, he requires leg braces and a cane to walk. Once, he got out of the hospital determined to kill himself and jumped out in front of a speeding car. Somehow the driver stopped. Dany said, "God saved me."

Through the health crises, Sharlene cared for her child and lit Shabbat candles on Friday nights.

Three years ago, Danyel came out, telling his mother that he was not the bat mitzvah girl, but a boy. "The minute I said it, I knew it was the right thing," Danyel said. "And I couldn't have done it without my Jewish faith. The people in our temple have been just amazing."

At first, Sharlene rebelled at the idea that Dany was transgender. "I didn't want to lose my girl. I always wanted a girl, and I had one, and I couldn't bring myself to get to the idea that I would have a son instead. The best gift Dany gave me was time. It took a long time."

The Stemplers started attending The Valley Temple, a congregation of Reform Judaism in Wyoming that Sharlene said has warmly accepted her and Dany. They also joined the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, where support groups guided Sharlene to a place of peace about Dany.

Compared to his health problems, "Dany being transgender was a walk in the park," Sharlene said.

Dany said the physical disabilities will be lifelong but, "The mental issues are just about gone. Figuring out who I am made all the difference."

Arriving at The Valley Temple for the Friday night service, Sharlene easily parked the car and pointed that out to Dany, who said, "Good for you." Inside, the Stemplers sat together as members of the congregation approached and embraced them.

In the fall, Dany is planning a naming ceremony to commemorate his manhood. His new Hebrew name will be Yadown, which Dany said means "only God can judge me."

Every Wednesday, Grace Episcopal Church in College Hill hosts a free community meal, prepared by area groups. Local bakeries donate unsold pastries and loaves of bread to be given away. On the third Wednesday of every month, the dinner is prepared by the TransSaints ministry. FE Harris leads the way.

Harris, 48, knew from childhood that he was a boy, not a girl, although his family resisted the concept, and he sensed disapproval in his beloved church. In his family's kitchens, though, Harris watched his mother, grandmother, aunts and cousins laugh and sing and lift their hands to the sky to put love into their food.

For years, he took solace in the simple practice of having faith. His song was "Thank You," by Bishop Yvette Flunder. But he wanted to put his life in service to others, in some way. He learned of TransSaints of Oakland, California, an online ministry for African-American transgender people. He helped to build the Cincinnati chapter with outreaches such as the Grace Episcopal community meal.

For the April meal, Harris sat at a table in the Grace Episcopal kitchen chopping iceberg lettuce for salad. Two more TransSaints volunteers worked around the kitchen. Two more set tables with vinyl covers and little vases with silk flowers.

What people of faith often miss in the discussion about gender identity, Harris said, "is that if you really believe that God doesn't make mistakes, than you miss out on the fact that we're all human first. No, God doesn't make mistakes. That's the point. That's what we're talking about when we talk about the radical inclusive love of Jesus. No one is a mistake."

With Harris' smartphone-and-speaker connection, the gospel music moved the cooks to dance as they seared ground beef for sloppy joes. Then a man stepped into the kitchen and announced that he had a bread delivery.

Harris invited him to bring it in. When the man returned, the speaker was playing "Heaven" by Bebe and CeCe Winans. The delivery man stopped in the door, then he suddenly bent at the waist, stricken.

"Are you all right, brother?" Harris asked.

"This is my song," the man said, trembling. "I lost two children, and this is my song."

Harris leapt from his seat to reach the man, who straightened, his face contorted with pain. Harris said, "Let's have a word of prayer." The man nodded. Harris threw an arm around his shoulders and spoke softly. The two were silent a moment. They embraced. Then together, they gave thanks for good music.