Tess Cruz Foley
A Love is Love Story
When we see members of the trans community in the news, it’s often about them being attacked, murdered, or attempting to read books to children in libraries, which seems to be as controversial.
This piece is not about the trans right to exist. It’s not about the danger they face every day. It’s not even about the legislation that perpetuates and protects the hate and violence against them.
This is a thank you letter.
I grew up in the Evangelical “Born Again” Christian Church. I was imbued with the belief that having premarital sex was the surest way to ruin your life and that being gay was the surest way to lose your salvation. Identifying as a gender you weren’t assigned at birth could not even be considered. These were a people to be feared.
As a teenager in the 1980s, I attended a multi-media event with my church’s youth group. The purpose of the event was to describe how deplorable it was to be homosexual. We learned that golden showers (peeing on each other) was a common practice among the lgbtq+ community to emphasize how depraved the lifestyle was. I later learned this wasn’t necessarily true or exclusive to the LGBTQ+ community. I don’t remember where I first learned the idea that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality. I believed all of it, though. A dutiful Christian girl, I accepted the teachings to condemn all who identified as anything other than monogamous heterosexual. We didn’t call it hate, but I felt hatred and disgust in my heart for an entire community of people who had the courage to come out.
Years later, at our weekly group at their house, our college church leader very carefully, very strategically invited us to question the teaching that the LGBTQ+ community didn’t belong in the kingdom of heaven. I remember the absolute venomous pushback he received. People stopped coming, others continued coming to heckle his every word, no matter the topic. Eventually, the group stopped meeting. I am so grateful for this man’s courage to speak on the topic. He gave me permission to expand the beliefs I’d been given.
I attended the very conservative and academic Wheaton College in Illinois in the 90’s. It was known as the Harvard of Christian Schools. We were often reminded that we were the cream of the crop. I remember having lunch in the cafe with a new friend from English class. She confided in me that she and her roommate were attracted to each other. She told me that they were trying to resist their urges, because at least partly, they believed it was wrong, and because they would have been kicked out of school if the administration found out. I remember her telling me they were trying to stop at “grandma kisses.” I’m very relieved to tell you that my overwhelming feeling when she confided in me, was honored. She felt safe to share her story with me.
Little by little, I began to question more and more of the church’s indoctrination so deeply planted in my early conditioning. I began to notice those teachings of the church that were in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus. I slowly began to extricate these teachings from my worldview. I still struggle with some of those old beliefs and how they play out in my view of myself and my role on this planet. Eventually, I left the church because it began to feel more like a patriarchal institution than a safe spiritual community. Among other specific reasons, I did not want to be where the LGBTQ+ community were not welcomed.
A decade later, in a multi-cultural psychology course for grad school, I chose LGBTQ+ youth as the population to learn about for my cornerstone project. I attended the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth (BAGLY) meetings, where teens squeezed together on a couch and shared their stories with me. Most of them had come out to their parents by age 15. These kids had done so much introspection, so much tuning in and aligning with themselves. They bravely chose authenticity over fitting in. It was a profound lesson for me. I was in love with them, in awe of them—maybe a little envious. I wanted to know what it felt like to be aligned like that. I wondered what thoughts I would have about myself if my brain hadn’t developed inside the configns of the Christianity I was taught. I wonder how differently our world would look if more people chose authenticity and alignment like these kids. These masters of a practice I knew little about. they influenced me to find my way to align with myself more deeply.
To the LGBTQ+ community: You are still my soul’s teacher. I appreciate you for existing. I think about Nex Benedict, the nonbinary 16-year-old who died early this year after a beating by classmates in their school bathroom in Oklahoma. Nex should be alive. Their death was a senseless, avoidable tragedy.
My precious trans friends and family, you are heroes to me. I’m so grateful for your courage and I am blessed by your existence. I appreciate you for getting up every day. You are a gift to me and to this planet.
Trans people, in my opinion, represent the highest form of alignment with true self. To me, this makes them the best humanity has to offer. Their existence inspires me and encourages me to be my most unapologetic self. Their influence frees me to be the fullest expression of myself.
There is so much value in the perspective of someone with lived experience as both genders. These souls have something precious to offer our culture. I want to hear about your experiences and perspective. I have so much to learn from you.
A few years ago, I started an LGBTQ+ Pride group in my town on the South Shore. As a cisgender (someone who identifies as the same gender they were assigned at birth; someone who is not transgender) and a woman who has only had cishet (both cisgender and heterosexual) partners, I’m sure people wondered why I started the group. For one reason, I started it because our town needed it. In a community listening session, I heard from LGBTQ+ youth in our town about their treatment in school. The unrelenting harassment, the threats that were carried out, and the school administrators who turned a blind eye. LGBTQ+ kids are not safe anywhere in our country.
I was an activist before organizing Bridgewater Pride. That work is important and necessary. My hope for Bridgewater Pride is to build a community for myself as much as for others. I want a community that affirms each other’s unique identities. I want a community of people who’ve done the heroic work of aligning with themselves, come what may. I want a community that supports, protects, and celebrates all expressions of gender and love. One of my favorite friends in the group often says, “I got your back.” Those words bring a comfort to me that’s hard to describe.
And as far as my own identity goes, as someone who’s only experienced cishet partnerships, and been disappointed every time, I would like to try something else. I claim the freedom to explore attraction wherever it lands for me. Maybe in what I think of as more evolved generations, pansexuality (attraction to people of all gender expressions) will be the norm. It makes more sense to me than compulsory heterosexuality.
I have so much to learn from people who dare to be their truest selves in a world that condemns this form of authenticity to death.
Precious community, thank you for being here. Thank you for your impossible courage. Thank you for your hard-won wisdom and your priceless perspective.
Love,
Your student, your fan, your people.
Tess
