As I write this, it’s been less than 48 hours since North Carolina passed the most extreme, sweeping anti-LGBTQ legislation in the country. The bill guts anti-discrimination policies passed by local governments around the state protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens. It also removes the ability of local governments to raise the minimum wage above $7.25 per hour. But the centerpiece of the law and the driving force behind the unprecedented speed of its passage is the exclusion of transgender people from bathrooms that match their gender identity. The law specifically targets trans children, requiring them to use the school bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the sex written on their birth certificate. My goal is not to debate the merits of this law or to convince anyone that trans people deserve to exercise their humanity by choosing the bathroom appropriate for them. Maybe I’ll have the energy for that effort on another day. Today that argument is settled for me, and I want to speak directly to trans people. 

Back in March, just days after the North Carolina’s HB2 was signed into law, I wrote a love letter to the trans community called “I’ll Go with You”.  The post was shared and emailed around and a few days later, I received an email from a Catholic nun thanking me for my work. She wrote that she has been “a companion to God's trans community for over 17 years” and that her work with trans people has been “the greatest privilege of [her] religious life.” When Sister Monica (a 72 year old sister of 55 years) and I met over Skype a few weeks later, she told me that she devotes her mornings to prayer and would keep me and my clients in her prayers. She also explained that Sister Monica is a pseudonym she uses when she speaks or writes publicly about her trans ministry because, though the leadership of her religious community supports her work, the church hierarchy would likely not allow public recognition of this ministry.

A few weeks ago after a presentation I did for a conference of school counselors on supporting transgender students in schools, a group of counseling students came up to me and said that they were so afraid of offending someone by using the wrong language that they were afraid to talk about the LGBTQ community at all. I hear this a lot from well-meaning folks who haven’t had much experience with LGBTQ people but want to be respectful. Language around gender and sexuality seems to change continuously and rapidly, so it can feel hard to keep up and easy to feel out of the loop when you’re not sure how to use the newest term. The LGBTQ acronym itself can be confusing by mixing together gender (T) and sexuality (LGBQ). I explained last month that they’re not the same thing at all. (Remember that gender is who you go to bed as and sex is who you go to bed with.) If you missed that post about terminology related to gender identity, be sure to check it out. 

To the uninitiated, the alphabet soup of the LGBTQ community can be a little daunting. I’m here to break it down for you a bit and answer some frequently asked questions. Let’s start by separating out the concepts of gender and sexuality. As has been quoted often since Caitlyn Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer, gender identity is whom you go to bed as and sexuality is whom you go to bed with. When we’re talking about children, this is a bit more complex because sexual and gender identity are just beginning to develop. So for kids you might say, gender identity is whom you go to the playground as and sexuality is whom you want to sneak behind the bushes with to kiss on the cheek.

Some of the most rewarding aspects of my life revolve around family. My definition of family includes so much more than a group of people who are genetically related or bound by the legal contract of marriage.  I have children in my life who call me Aunt Heather, yet their parents are not my “blood relations,” as we say in the South. I have friends who serve as sisters, brothers, and eccentric aunts. (I’m still waiting to welcome the rich uncle who takes me on dream vacations into my family. I’m sure he’ll materialize soon.) If I limited my understanding of family to the people who share my DNA, I’d probably feel pretty lonely because most of them live really far away. Instead of feeling limited by other people’s understanding of family I’ve developed my own that’s about surrounding myself with people who help lift me up when I’m down. And hopefully I do that for them too.