I've never felt welcome in church. Even when I was growing up and hadn't figured out certain aspects of my identity there was something about it that never felt right; and since becoming a queer trans person engaged in a relationship that involves three people instead of the 'traditional' two I've believed that I'd become the kind of person who would never be welcome in a church. I'd half expect to be so unwanted there that I'd set on fire like some glorious queer vampire.
But over the weekend I saw someone on Twitter share the news that church in Leicester, St. Nicholas Church, would be having a service to mark the Trans Day of Remembrance, and to honour those members of the trans community lost. Not only that, but that they'd be doing things over the weekend, such as allowing people to light candles for those who had died, tie prayer cards up for them, and even make their own trans coloured rosaries.
I'd spent the majority of the Saturday, the actual Trans Day of Remembrance, making an extensive tweet thread on my account, one where I shared each and every life lost that we knew about. I spent close to twelve hours, even going into the early hours of the morning, listing the names (where they were known), sharing their photos (where we had them), and reading about the awful, frightening ways in which they were killed.
Whilst I'd always marked this day in my own way each year this year it hit hardest. This was the year that we'd had the highest reported deaths on record. And now I knew their stories. I'd read all the names. I'd seen the faces. I'd cried more than once upon learning what happened to them. I wanted to do something a little more. My wife was the one who suggested we attend the church service, even though none of us are religious.
Upon arriving at the church we found a room full of people. Not jam packed, but struggling to fit everyone in with social distancing for sure. We were greeted openly and warmly, were given a programme of service, though not one each as they were having to ration them because they didn't expect so many people to attend the event.
I sat in the very back row, tucked up against the radiator to try and lessen the pain I was in, and I watched the service take place. Whilst I've never been religious I did attend a religious school for a few years, and been to events in church, so recognised a lot of the things that were happening, but it was the things I didn't recognise that astonished me. Because the church were doing things to not only include the trans community, but to centre it. The altar had a trans flag across it. The choir was from the local LGBT Centre, and sand songs about being yourself and love, and the passages they chose from the Bible could easily relate to the trans experience.
It felt so odd to be able to sit in a church and hear people speak about people like myself with love and care. It was something that I never expected to experience. As wonderful as it was, I don't think it would ever encourage me to adopt faith, or at least this kind of faith. Jay Hulme, the young man who gave the sermon, who I learned about the event through, spoke about how he'd collected the names of those who had been lost. He spoke about the hours he spent learning about them, and about the awful things they went through. It was something I understood extremely well. But whist seeing those awful things had filled me with pain, and reinforced the idea in my mind that a god couldn't exist whilst such things happen in the world, he said that it still gave him faith in the love of god.
I honestly didn't understand this. I don't know how that kind of thing works. I don't think I'm the kind of person who can have religious faith. But I can see how that kind of faith helps others, how it comforted Jay in that moment. And I could see the church supporting him, the community around him putting trans and queer voices first and showing them love. And that gave me a little hope that perhaps things could get better.
One of the things they'd done at St. Nicholas was a candle lighting station. They'd laid out 375 matches, one for each of the lives lost that we know about. Each match had the name of a person, their age, and their location listed. My family and I light a candle for three of them there. We also took three of the matches home with us, to light candles later and remember them, and all those lost. I'm saddened to say that I recognised the names of the three women we light our candles for. As soon as I saw those names I could tell you that two of them were shot to death, and that the third was dismembered. I brought up their photos on my phone, we looked at their faces, and we light candles in their memory.
This year has been one of the bloodiest on record for the losses of trans lives. Of those lost so many were trans women of colour. And so many of them ended in violent ways. More needs to be done to protect the trans community. With transphobia becoming more and more pervasive, with trans rights in more danger now than ever before, trans people and their allies need to keep on fighting; otherwise that list of the lost will continue to grow each year.
Thankfully, there are people who are doing things to help. And whilst the voices of our haters and oppressors might be the loudest they are without a doubt not the most numerous. I have to hope that things will get better, and things like the St. Nicholas Church taking the time to honour and acknowledge our dead helps me to have that hope. Thank you to everyone there who held that service.
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