For me, the crucifixion of Christ represents not just the death of God’s earthly representative or incarnation, but of God itself, after which the dead Christ is resurrected as the Holy Spirit that is nothing more nor less than the love that arises between believers. (“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”) The death and erasure of God is the emancipation of the human—the radical freedom to make ourselves and our communities. What is worshiped, then, is not something that transcends but exists within and between humans in community. As such, you cannot practice faith without a body. (“You should know that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you and was given to you by God.”) The Holy Spirit could not exist in a brain in a vat, for the body is the force through which acts of worship are mediated, the locus from which communal love arises. Thus, the pre-transition body can be likened to Sunday school in the murky basement of an unassuming and uninviting house detached from the community in which it is situated, where restriction and chastity—in opposition to self-actualization—are preached as virtues. The post-transition body, on the other hand, comes closer to the beautiful cathedral in the town square, a reification of hard work and care, with open doors that welcome the egalitarian gathering of believers. Said differently, the worship of God in the Holy Spirit as communal bonds is only enriched by taking place in and between self-actualized bodies. Transitioning as self-actualization, therefore, is a moral good.
I find it odd mormons don’t accept trans when they believe souls are already gendered before being put into bodies like it’s so easy to make the leap that some of us are out into the wrong bodies as a trial.


