He is a 16-year old boy, stocky, sturdy, bright and articulate, who uses my own brand of humor to disarm me when he needs me to agree with his point of view. He was born with the thoughts and feelings and longings of a boy, but the anatomy of a girl. And I am his mother.

Within the confines of the sect called Jehovah’s Witnesses, he is an abomination. He has no right to exist in the manner that could provide him a full and enriched life. And by supporting him and participating fully in activism that will someday secure him rights in this nation whose laws still discriminate against him and others, based on archaic understandings of this niche population, I have become a pariah amongst people who at one time had welcomed me and accepted my support and friendship.

Adrien and his mother Amy at the GLSEN Safe Schools Advocacy Summit in Washington DC, where the pair lobbied on Capitol Hill for an amendment to a safe and drug-free schools and communities law that enumerates sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in the anti-bullying policies of schools receiving federal funding. (photo compliments of Amy Arnao)

My sin? I have chosen to love and support this amazing person, who happens to be my child, in what has to be one of the most difficult life situations anyone could have to face, a reality that I cannot begin to imagine — becoming aware of an irreconcilable dichotomy between one’s felt gender and one’s physical expression of gender. How could a mother choose to do otherwise?

With many, if not most, religions, there is always an admonition to remain faithful — faithful to the doctrines and dictates delivered from on high, by means of some element of humanity. To deviate from the commands, to walk a path unprescribed is judged in the immediate as unfaithful and worthy of sanction from human agents of the unseen divine, and retribution is assured.

Within the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the ongoing practice of shunning, a severe form of excommunication, is practiced, often with intense zeal and a sense of righteousness. It is the expected course, when one chooses to “practice sin” or recant one’s former belief in the teachings of the sect, to be summarily rejected until such time a proper course of reconciliation is deemed fulfilled.

I suppose by the definitions the Witnesses would render, I am indeed practicing sin and I definitely have recanted belief in the teachings that would have me view my son as unnatural and sinful.

It begs the question for me: When is the choice to reject one’s own child for a doctrine considered unnatural and sinful? What power is there, in heaven or on Earth, that sees as righteous the deliberate severing of the most elemental of human bonds, that of a child and mother? If there is such a power, it cannot have my allegiance. It shall not have my adoration. It certainly will never have the surrender of my relationship with my child.

In a world filled with pain and suffering, it is unconscionable, in my thinking, to voluntarily participate in creating  more, with deliberate acts of misguided piety and unctuous certainty of righteousness. I cannot be that person. I will not be that person. If it is an inherent weakness I have failed to overcome for this brand of righteousness’ sake, may I be in trespass with every breath I draw.