Alabama clergy voice support for transgender children in open letter

Story at a glance

• Clergy and church staff across Alabama have signed an open letter expressing their support for transgender children and their families as a new state law criminalizing gender-affirming care takes effect.

• Clergy in the letter acknowledged that religious institutions and leaders have “caused great physical, emotional, and spiritual harm to the LGTBQIA+ community.”

• Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) last month signed the measure into law, invoking her personal religious beliefs in a signing statement. The law took effect Sunday.

A group of religious leaders in Alabama signed a letter voicing their support for transgender children and their families just a week before a new state law criminalizing gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary minors went into effect Sunday.

“As clergy and faith leaders in the state of Alabama, we want to express our sincere love and concern for your physical, emotional, and spiritual health,” clergy and church staff from across Alabama wrote in an open letter to transgender youth and their loved ones.

“While we may not fully understand your unique experiences, many of us know what it is like to feel rejected, left out, cast aside, bullied, targeted, and denied access to civil rights,” the letter reads, later adding that religious leaders, institutions and ideologies have in the past “caused great physical, emotional, and spiritual harm to the LGTBQIA+ community.”

“The religious voices against you are often the loudest ones. We repent for this spiritual malpractice, and we regret not raising our voices louder for you to hear our support above the clamor,” the letter, published on al.com, continues. “We hope that you might hear our voices now.”

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As of May 1, the letter had collected more than 80 signatures, including that of Rev. Paul Eknes-Tucker of the Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Birmingham, a plaintiff in one of several lawsuits challenging the Alabama law. The legislation makes it a felony – punishable by up to a decade in prison – for doctors in the state to provide or recommend puberty blockers, hormone therapies or other interventions to patients younger than 19 years old.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed the measure, officially titled the “Alabama Vulnerable Child Protection Act,” into law in April. In a signing statement, the governor leaned heavily on her religious beliefs as justification for enacting the law, writing that, “I believe very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl.”

“We should especially protect our children from these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life,” Ivey wrote. “Instead, let us all focus on helping them to properly develop into the adults God intended them to be.”

Eknes-Tucker during a hearing on Friday said he had counseled transgender children and their families for roughly four decades, sometimes referring them to the gender clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s medical center.

The pastor said Friday he feared he may be held criminally liable under the new law, which states that “no person shall engage in or cause” the prescription or provision of puberty blockers and hormones to minors.

Rev. Erica Cooper, the pastor of Baptist Church of the Covenant, which circulated the letter to Alabama clergy and church staff, said she believed it was important to send a message that there are religious supporters of transgender rights.

“As clergy we want to make our voice heard,” Cooper told AL.com last week. “I want people to hear alternative faith voices.”

“We want people who are transgender to know there is a large group of faith leaders who care about them,” she said. “I think it’s very significant.”

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