Evan Urquhart

The moment tattoo parlours open again, I am getting the following tattoo- a little cross on my arm near my elbow (been meaning to get this one for years now and has personal meaning to me beyond Jesus), but also I've decided to add Galatians 3:28 underneath to reflect 1/

the journey I've taken as a trans person. My love of that particular verse started in my teens when I was closeted and said nothing, and feared the worst- then it became like a plate of armour that I wore when I was a baby tranner and people from both sides would ask me 2/

how can you be trans and Christian? Which always felt like having to choose between two deeply personal aspects of my identity and I refused to do so. I still refuse tbh. Then it became a kind of shit-post tbh bc in Britain if you combine the statements "there is neither 3/

male nor female" with "we are all one in Jesus Christ" then you surely to God are trying to wind people up. Beyond that I actually can't disconnect my faith journey from being trans, or being trans from my faith journey. They're intertwined, entangled and the one has 4/

informed the other and vice versa and sometimes, often times, this intersection has been messy and difficult but if I'm being fully authentic then I am both. It's not so much that I refuse to pick a side, it's not that these are contradictory parts of me that I have to 5/

reconcile the one with the other, though reconciliation has been a part of it. It is more that if I reject myself on the basis of being trans then I am lying to myself, & lying is one of the few sins that from the point of view of faith I am an ardent believer in dogmatically 6/

avoiding it. I can't actually be a proper Christian without being honest about who I am, and to be honest aspects of my trans identity and how I view it have definitely been shaped by my faith. In fact, I'll go further- I think the general disconnect from my body has generated 7/