Respecting Trans Lives
– A Pollicino (they/them)
A Pollicino, a member of the LGBTQ+ Initiative Team, shares their perspective on how the call to respect life applies to trans persons.
---This month we contemplate the Church’s designation of
---October as Respect Life Month. In a time when many of
---us are rethinking our attitudes around how people’s lives
---matter, a group that is often forgotten or left out are trans people. Being
---raised Catholic and very pro-life (on picket lines before I was out of a
---stroller, attending pro-life marches as a teen, and regularly praying the
---rosary for the unborn as a family), the idea of respecting life from
---conception to natural death is something I’ve grown up with and thought
---about quite a bit… Now as a trans adult, I continue to challenge myself to
---expand and deepen the ways we can conceptualize what it means to be
---pro-life in this moment.
---Within the church, and our broader society, the most detrimental attitude
---affecting trans lives today is skepticism. If we think about the attitude of
---people in the church along a spectrum, we currently have
- a small group of well-meaning allies,
- a middle majority who are not well informed and unsure about gender identity,
- and a small yet vocal opposition that deny our right to even describe our existence without condemnation.
---In each of these groups, there is a level of skepticism about trans people
---actually being who they say they are. If we are to give trans people the
---quality of life and dignity we afford others, we must unequivocally combat
---misguided perceptions that often come in the form of rhetoric describing
---trans identity as a phase, trend, theory, ideology, agenda, or form of
---indoctrination. We cannot, as pro-life people, afford to continue using that
---language or allowing others to do so. (Read more…)