Baptist Sex Scandal: Trust Your Child with a Trans Person?
More glass houses and stone throwing
I recently wrote an article that pointed out the greatest risk to children was not anyone in the transgender community. I identified professional and religious groups that have a documented history of child abuse.
Now I have to add a new group: Southern Baptist ministers.
According to a nearly 300-page report just released by Guidepost Solutions*, a troubling pattern arises from the senior leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) of repeated denial and hostility against claims of sexual abuse and child abuse brought against members of the church. The report claims senior SBC leaders protected and even supported alleged abusers. The church’s leaders maintained a list of offenders while keeping it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued.
According to the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio in their 2019 article: “Abuse of Faith,” hundreds of SBC church leaders and volunteers have been criminally charged with sex crimes since the year 2,000.*
Tragically, the suppression of victims is also common in every other organized religion. I have yet to find one that was immune from both child abuse and suppression of victims and their claims. It is so hypocritical that these are some of the same people who point fingers at the transgender community as being the “true” source of child abuse and of being a danger to women in women’s bathrooms. Sadly, the media does nothing to discredit these lies.
These are lies of convenience.
State legislatures sweeps these truths aside because it is more convenient to attack and scapegoat a minority with no political power than to confront politically organized and well-funded religions. Other than the media, which profits from the sensationalism of these scandals, the only other group to take note of the abuse within these religious organizations are the law firms around the country who set up practices and gains millions of dollars in profits from prosecuting the religious groups. Otherwise no one would know the depth of the coverup by the leadership of these religions.
Where is the true righteous anger? Where is the justice in the state legislatures? Who is hiding to protect their jobs? Who is going to challenge the liars?
Who is protecting the children?
Emma Holiday
Thank you for reading my work.
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Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.
