Church’s ‘Gender Justice Jam’ series addresses anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment ahead of US presidential election

[Episcopal News Service] One day ahead of today’s U.S. presidential election, The Episcopal Church dedicated its sixth virtual Gender Justice Jam session to the election and its potential impact on gender-based issues.

Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment has grown nationwide in recent years. In 2023, state legislators introduced at least 510 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights, nearly triple the amount proposed the year before. Hate crimes targeting marginalized groups, including LGBTQ+ people, have also increased.

“On this election eve, I’ve got a lot on my heart … and I’m thinking about the precarity of bodily autonomy. I’m thinking about gender-affirming care in connection with reproductive health, access to gender-specific spaces and activities around the country,” the Rev. Cameron Partridge, rector of St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco, California, said during the Nov. 4 webinar. “I’m thinking about the use of trans people for legislative and political gain – the distorting, hateful use.”

Partridge made history in 2014 as the first transgender priest to preach at Washington National Cathedral.

The Episcopal Church launched Gender Justice Jam, a 12-week virtual education and formation series on gender justice, in September. The webinars continue via Zoom every Monday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Eastern through Dec. 16. Each session addresses a different topic related to gender justice – including reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ youth and families, gender-based violence and more – using scripture, theology, prayer, arts and culture. Aaron Scott, the church’s gender justice officer, and the Rev. Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian minister who serves as executive director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, co-lead the sessions.

The Nov. 4 webinar, “Gender Justice Election Issues,” included several speakers, including Partridge and the Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a queer ordained minister in the United Church of Christ who serves as strategic partnerships director for Political Research Associates, a nonprofit social justice research and strategy center.

“We should see [the rising restriction on freedoms] as a global phenomenon. What we see is that the increasing threat to democracy around the world is parallel to a rise in state-sanctioned rhetoric and policymaking that directly targets LGBTQ+ people and women broadly,” said Washington-Leapheart, who’s also an adjunct professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University. “We should see these things as connected. You don’t find an authoritarian movement that is not patriarchal, that is not attempting to control reproduction, to control the bodies of those who can reproduce.”

In the final days leading up to the election, former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, amped up their opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, especially transgender and nonbinary rights, using demeaning language at rallies, in interviews, on social media and in campaign videos.

“I think we’re all a little unsure about the world in which we’re living in, and the placement of the people we care most about,” said Theoharis, who’s also co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, a nonprofit patterned after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final project before he was assassinated in 1968.

“Scripture has been weaponized … to attack and critique LGBTQ people,” Theoharis said.

During the webinar, Scott read and provided historical context to Romans 1:21-32, where Paul, a “colonized person of Judean descent,” describes humanity’s downfall after rejecting God as creator and provider, condemning lustful same-sex behavior between men.

“Paul is writing here as a person who himself is under constant threat of imperial violence, and that includes a threat of sexual violence because … sexual violence was a pretty explicit common policy of Roman military conquest,” Scott said. “Maleness is, essentially, the position of power control and dominance, and femaleness is a position of subjugation and violation. …When Paul is writing to the Romans here, he is writing specifically to an oppressed, poor, multi-ethnic community that is trying to survive in the belly of this imperial beast in Rome.”

Scott showed a photo of an ancient Roman coin with the face of Emperor Nero – who was notorious for his debauchery, opulence and murderous cruelty – and said “there is a great deal of evidence” that Romans 1:21-32 is a critique of Nero and the ways people would worship the emperor. This includes all forms of sexual exploitation, which was used to establish dominance over women, slaves and conquered populations, including men and boys.

“If you read the writings of [Roman historian] Suetonius, there’s this direct tie between Nero, like proving his political power by committing public acts of violence, including sexual violence,” he said.

Webinar participants used Zoom’s chat function to ask questions and share their opinions. Several people noted what they see as a parallel between political rhetoric during the Roman Empire and today’s discourse.

One participant, Ariel Strickland, asked what she can do as a trans Episcopalian to “advance things in our church and to work for social justice.” Washington-Leapheart stressed the importance of working with congregations to fix the power dynamic in local contexts and researching who are the “agents of authoritarianism right in our backyard” before turning to issues at the national level.

“What are the specific pieces of legislation that are attempting to move through your state legislature? What’s going on with nondiscrimination ordinances in your local municipality? How are they under threat? How is religious freedom being used to undermine the nondiscrimination policies that currently exist where you are? These are the kinds of specific pieces of investigatory work that we need to do in our local communities,” she said.

Partridge reminded the 52 webinar participants that Nov. 20 is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside worldwide to memorialize the transgender people who’ve been targeted and murdered because of transphobia. The day was founded in 1999 in response to the separate murders of three Black trans women. Several Episcopal churches, including St. James Episcopal Church in Tempe, Arizona, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fremont, Ohio, will host events observing Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The next Gender Justice Jam session, taking place Nov. 11, will be the first of a two-part educational series on gender injustice and poverty. Click here to register.

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.