Gender, Sexuality & Faith panel illuminates attendees

Living life as a faithful Christian and fighting for LGBTQ rights, all while struggling to find out the truth about oneself through gender recognition: That was the focus of a panel discussion held at noon Wednesday in the Student Union.

Mt. Hood’s Associated Student Government (ASG) Director of Diversity, Kelsy Smith, humanities instructor Andy Gurevich, and Melinda Bullen, MHCC Diversity Resource Center coordinator, organized the session to explore gender, sexuality, and faith.

“It’s about the implications of gender in the context of faith, the realities of gender and sexual identity when it comes to spirituality,” said Smith.

The panel consisted of LGBTQ rights advocate and activist Kera Ramsey, a former Mt. Hood student, Gnostic Christian, and transgender woman. Ramsey is a priestess of the Church of Biblical Freedom. Samantha Brown, who is now retired from politics, is a former lobbyist for the LGBTQ community, was present at the Stonewall riots in the 1960s, considers herself a Christian, and is also a transgender woman.

Smith gave introductions and moderated the discussion. She said that faith and spirituality are almost an afterthought in public education. “We leave it to our world religions classes to give a brief intro that spans the entire world in just a few weeks,” she said.

According to Smith, the LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, asexual) culture is both positively and negatively presented in the media. “This includes non-binary, transgender, fluid, as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, asexual, aromantic people, and they’ve been around longer than we’ve had names for them,” she said.

Gurevich started the discussion with a slideshow and some historical examples of gender fluidity and transgender deities.

“We live in a narrative now where we’ve been culturally conditioned to believe that in the spiritual context, the gender binary is all that is open to us, and all that is enforced, and anything that questions that is a threat to the system,” Gurevich said.

He described the role of gender in spirituality as an exploration of a universal human longing. “Individuals have the right and the access and the security and the liberty to explore transcendence in their full selves,” he said. To do so “on their own terms is a fundamental civil rights and human issue of our time.,” he said.

The spiritual focus narrowed to the Judeo-Christian traditions, with Ramsey introducing her journey. She discovered Gnostic Christianity through a Bible study she organized with her girlfriend. “She opened my mind for the first time to question the canonical scripture that 66 books is not all that there is,” said Ramsey about her girlfriend.

Ramsey emphasized the fact that she believes Jesus Christ is the “son of God” and that the point of her spiritual pursuit is to have a personal relationship with Christ. “They (Gnostic Texts) actually very much communicate that Jesus is still the savior, the son of God, but from a very, very spiritual perspective as opposed to the legalistic perspective that we have conveyed to us in the
Bible that was composed by the organized church,” she said.

“I still believe in God as revealed through Jesus, but I don’t believe that the one true god is the only god, like all the other deities that Andy Gurevich was showing on the slides,” she said. “I believe that they are real.”

Samantha Brown said her parents figured out she was transgender when she was 5. Since then, different Christian groups antagonized her. “I’ve been told by the Southern Baptist church my whole life I’m going to hell, I don’t belong there, that I’m an abomination, and that I’m damned,” she said.

Brown was put through conversion therapy at the age of 7. She was subjected to injections, electroshock therapy, and experimental drugs in order to “cure” her. Her religious community constantly dehumanized her.

“You’re no good. You’re not a real person. You’re not human – I’ve heard all these,” said Brown. “I remember, I’ve always struggled internally with being raised knowing that I’m damned, ‘cause really, since the age of 5 up, I was damned.”

It was her late husband that helped her realize that even damned beings are still creatures of God. “He said that the devil is a creature of God, even though he is damned. All creatures of God, damned or otherwise, are supposed to be respected – not damned, fought, or killed – but respected. These are creatures of God,” she said.

“For a while that was enough for me until I did find that… I’ve known all along that God has always loved me. It’s people who fear me,” said Brown.