I'm currently studying computer science and English in college. When I tell people people my majors, it tends to confuse them. They give me a look that clearly says "These two things do not belong in the same sentence." They usually ask me why I'm doing this to myself (and I can't blame them). The truth is, both subjects are too important and too interesting to me for me to pick just one, each in their own way fulfilling an interest of mine, and opening doors to possible futures.
I get much the same reaction when I tell people I am both transgender and Catholic. I understand why; historically, these two groups have not been amicable towards each other. But, in this day and age, where all the rules are broken and the lines crossed, I am left with one foot in each community, Romeo-and-Juliet style, wondering if there is, genuinely, a place for me in both these communities.
Being Catholic in the LGBTQ+ community can be lonely. Religion is often divorced from LGBTQ+ spaces, seen as something separate and insoluble with the ideals this community and this movement are trying to create. Historically this has been accurate, and while, today, there are a growing number of Christians and members of other faiths inside this community, and growing support from religious organizations, Catholics still remain scarce. Not being able to share my faith with other people inside the LGBTQ+ community - be it out of a desire to avoid awkwardness or offense or (let's be honest) ridicule - is an isolating experience. My faith plays as important a role in my life as being transgender, and not being able to share that with the people who are important to me, or having to alter it in some way, hurts it.
So I turn somewhere else to fill my faith life, and happily. But when I do "return to the flock" (on campus, this for me is going to the Catholic Student Center), I can talk about and embrace my faith with a group of people who will welcome and encourage it, while knowing that my gender identity is the elephant in the room no one wants to address. I have made some of my best friends through the church, and I have met incredibly kind people, and I have discovered wondrous things. But the official teaching in the Catholic Church is, currently, that I am welcome, but I am not recognized.
So I belong in no easy box. But that's an idea we as a community should all be intimately familiar with. For me, being transgender is all about living in the grey. There is so much more than male and female, black and white, right and wrong - that is the glorious thing about life. What God would not embrace that, in all its multifaceted chaos and glory and wonder?
