Southern Baptists Considering Officially Hating On Trans People

When I lived in Louisville, my house was across the street from the odious Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.   I woke every morning in my upstairs bedroom with a view of the married student quarters of the seminary and its administration building.

To the Louisville activist and TBLG community, they were the 'Bad Seminary' because of the Southern Baptist denomination's ultra conservative views, loud and wrong opposition to LGBT rights, support of slavery and Jim Crow segregation and their more than a century old penchant for being on the wrong side of human rights fights.

The 'Good Seminary', the nearby Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary by comparison has been the lead sponsor and host of Louisville TDOR events since the inaugural one was held there in 2002.

In an interview Dawn Wilson and I had the pleasure of doing with Angie Fenton in the Louisville Courier-Journal back in 2006, Albert Mohler. the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was quoted as saying  "Only God has the right to determine gender."  He then added "any attempt to alter that creation is an act of rebellion against God."

So yeah, they've been hatin' on transpeople for a long time, and now they are taking it to another level. 

A proposal by Denny Burk, an influential SBC member and an associate professor of Biblical studies at the Southern Baptist Seminary's Boyce College, would commit the SBC to openly lobby against all laws protecting trans people and commit them to fighting the trans human rights movement.  .

Guess the SBC didn't learn a thing about being loud and wrong in their support of slavery, segregation,  fighting the African-American civil rights movement in the 50's and 60's and the LGB one.

The Southern Baptist Church obviously isn't aware of intersex people, the increasing mountains of evidence that transsexuality is a medical issue, the fact there have been some interesting mutations pop up at times, there are more human chromosome combinations beyond XX and XY, and gender identity is more complex than the simplistic binary way they wish to believe it is. 

And transphobic bigotry wrapped in selected scriptures is still transphobic bigotry.
 

This SBC trans hate resolution would potentially be voted on at their upcoming convention in Baltimore on June 10-11.  It is ironically the same week that just a short drive up I-95 the trans community will be gathering in Philadelphia June 12-14 for the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference, the largest transgender convention in the United States.     

If the Southern Baptists do vote to continue their denomination's legacy of hate and being on the wrong side of human rights struggles, we in the trans community would have no choice but to strike back in the culture war we didn't start for our humanity and human rights.

'Rebellion against God' my azz.  It's more like we transpeople are standing up against white privilege laden conservafools and bigots who wish to continue twisting scripture for their own political purposes and agenda.  

And far from attracting new people to attend your SBC affiliated churches, which have had a sustained two decade long fall in membership, you'd drive even more people away with this anti-trans stance.