Letter from a Woman They Told You It’s Okay to Hate

Nazis destroy the first transgender health clinic in Berlin, 1933.

Dear reader,

I hope all is well for you in Utah. You might spend your time cradled between majestic, snow capped mountains. Perhaps you see long-dormant volcanoes out of your car window, or austere red cliffs. You live in a beautiful place. 

I am writing to you from far away. It is not exile—not exactly. My wife and I love where we live; we are happy and thriving here. But it is not not exile, either. 

I am a practicing attorney, happily married with plans for the future. I have a dog, two cats, and a near-perfect moist banana bread recipe. I've lived all over the United States for one reason or another. I've traveled abroad, too: I honorably served my LDS mission in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I learned to speak the Spanish I use every day in my legal practice. 

I used to love visiting home. I loved the recipes that both of my parents still make. I can almost taste my dad's meatloaf. I can picture my brother standing ten miles tall in his uniform adorned with many well-earned commendations. I imagine how my nieces and nephew have grown taller, stronger, and smarter. I tried to make myself useful whenever I was there: I'd dig up the garden, move boxes, wash dishes—the works. I loved how the kids would look at me with that glimmer I imagine I used to have when I saw my aunts and uncles at their age. 

I remember details of the buildings where we attended church. I remember the scratchy fabric that came up the wall several feet; the heavy—obscenely, crushingly heavy!—rollers of metal folding chairs lined up in the cultural hall. I remember how the kitchen smelled, where the classrooms were; what bishop had which kind of candy in their desk jar. 

I remember the laughter. The way my dad's eyes crinkle, or the silly voices my mom will make. I remember how the congregation in sacrament meeting would either politely or genuinely react to the high councilman's joke at the beginning of his talk. The way my nephew giggled when we went down the waterslide for the millionth time. The last time.

As far back as I can remember, I remember a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that one day, somehow, I'd lose my family, the church, the way that rolls smell in the chapel when someone bakes them mid-meeting. That I wouldn't be welcome anymore. 

You see, dear reader, I am a woman—a transgender woman. 

I grew up in a time when people like me were gaining a modicum of acceptance in American society, but I didn't know it. If we came up at all it was in a punchline from a scout leader or a threatening storyline in a movie. I believed that my dreams as a girl—my prayers to be one, my childhood choice of name I would take if somehow, some way, that prayer were answered—represented an impossibility. A shameful one, at that. I knew that if I ever attempted this impossible thing, to live as the woman a tiny me believed I would grow up to be (that's really true!), I'd lose my family and my church. I couldn't bear it. I didn't dare mention my secret to anyone around me for fear of it. For fear of what would happen. 

Alas, for fear of what happened. 

Utah: the state where I have some of my earliest memories playing in my grandparents' garden. The state where my grandpa got really mad at whoever threw away that scrap of rug he had hoarded in the garage (he grew up during the Great Depression). The state where many of my ancestors are buried. The place where, as I was taught in Primary, God led his people, my people, the pioneers. 

Children who were braver than I, who told the world who they are, have been banned from playing sports there. From using the bathroom at school. From accessing proven, safe, life-saving medical care. I remember when my voice finally, completely changed. It cracked on stage during a talent show. I never sang a solo again. I often consider that some children could be spared that terrible pain, the realization that your body will grow further and further from your soul, by taking a safe medication routinely prescribed to "normal" children (read: not like me). I consider that the government has chosen to rip it away to score points with base voters. And I cry. 

Do you know what it's like for the government to invite your former neighbors to inform on you?

And then there's the church. How I longed to be like the other kids in youth groups! They could so effortlessly be themselves, and it took me endless effort to be anybody. I dreamed, for a glimmer, that the reversal of the policy that children of gay and lesbian couples are anathema until adulthood would signal thawing in more long-hardened policies. 

I was wrong. It's not just that I can't be me and go to the temple: I can't even teach a youth class. I was the president of my deacons quorum, my teachers quorum, and was my priests quorum’s first assistant. Now, I'll have a notation on my record that marks me like a heinous criminal. I can't use the bathroom without a chaperone to clear the room first. I'd wear the prettiest bow in the men's restroom, that's for sure. 

I did not want to leave the faith of my fathers. I didn't. I swear, with God as my witness, I did not. 

The church did not want me to stay. Oh, I know we're “welcome to participate.” But listen to the vicious description of my trans family in conservative media and you'll understand it. I don't want to be harassed, humiliated. I am a woman, and attempting to force me to be segregated with men does both of those things. It validates the smears, the rumors. It also puts me in real, physical danger. 

I had hoped that familial affection would transcend me being different. But when I told them I was transitioning, they no longer had a use for me. I told them that I was finally, genuinely happy. It did not matter. I had been right as a child. There is no bond—supposedly sacred or not—that can withstand hatred. Hate always destroys. 

God does not make mistakes. I am exactly as I was created. I was born with the challenge of finding my soul, in an era when medicine has advanced to allow me to better be myself. I embrace that challenge. God made me trans just as sure as he made you how you are. Transition has not distanced me from God, but from people and institutions that usurp the divine. 

History is replete with us, from times before we had words to describe ourselves or the freedom to be. Read Kalonymus b. Kalonymus' Prayer for Transformation (written in 1322); look up Magnus Hirschfield, the doctor who, along with his colleagues and pioneering patients, blazed the path of modern gender medicine (until the Nazis burned their books and research early in their reign of terror. Yes, these photos). 

If tyrants the world over had their way and we all disappeared today, rest assured you would find us anew among your children tomorrow. 

Dear reader: dear, dear reader. You and I are not unalike. I have lived an interesting life. You as well. I have my loves, my fears, my disgusts. You as well. I know the way that snow crunches when it falls overnight on my parents’ driveway, but it's too late to shovel and make it to an early meeting at the church. I'm guessing you heard it when you read that sentence, because you know it too. 

The state that is my mother's home, and that of my mother's mother, and my mother's mother's mother, and her mother too, who pulled a handcart to get there: that place passes laws that tell me to stay away. My mother wishes the same. The church formalizes policies that make my existence transgression. If I outlive my loved ones, and someone thinks to tell me about a funeral? I couldn't even use the bathroom in the building. A building where I spoke from the pulpit a hundred times. 

Those who choose intolerance, who multiply hate and misunderstanding, who nurse the sickly seedlings of prejudice that can never take root on their own: they affront humanity and mock God. Somehow, that category includes my dear family, the church, and 26 other states, including the Great State of Utah. 

I take them at their word: Donald Trump and Christian Nationalists in his movement intend to methodically drive LGBTQ+ people out of public life. One month from tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in United States v. Skrmetti, as to whether banning healthcare for trans children violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Questions presented.

There is much to mourn, but I'm not telling you all of this in mourning. Consider it the allocution of a woman they told you it's okay to hate. 

My wife loves me. 

After decades, I love me, too.

My colleagues embrace me. 

Judges address me respectfully in their courtrooms.

My clients trust me. 

My friends care for me; they have heard me weep for those who no longer do. My pets love me no less as Emily. 

I live in a state that has enacted robust legal protections for people and families seeking healthcare. 

God made me as I am, a woman. God does not make mistakes. 

My soul is cloaked tightly in the truth, come what may. And what comes need not be cruel: the future can emulate all of this love and acceptance. All the questions about what happens next? You, dear reader, own a share of the answers.

I do not despair: I rejoice. I live in color. I move forward. I will fight for my rights. For yours, too. I will petition for redress until my last breath, which I shall surely breathe a woman. I will live where I am safe, where I can access the treatment my doctor prescribes. What will you do?

A few suggestions: foremost, be kind. Stop following "I love you" with a "but" when it comes to queer people. Pay attention to the laws that marginalize people like me. Reach out to queer and trans friends and family members. Offer support. Do not vote for the people who are publicly committed to denying us basic dignity. Do vote for Harris/Walz.

If anything I've said to you here resonates, look inside yourself. You’re not alone, and it is never too late. 

I will do all I can so that no one—not one more beautiful, trans child of God—must ponder the question that graces my Sunday mornings, and that I leave you with now.

Will I ever be welcome in that beautiful place again? 

Authentically yours, 

Emily

A woman they told you it's okay to hate