Remarks from Louis Mitchell, on the occasion of Transgender Day of Remembrance 2012

We gather here again this year to mourn, to remember those of our communities who have been slain - those who have lost their lives violently, who have suffered death at the hands of murderers, some of these killers will use their faith to justify their bigotry and these hateful atrocities - I declare that there is no God in these acts of savage violence.

We grieve those who have been murdered tonight. I also lift up those who have been lost to non-violent death and to suicide. I lift up those families – spouses, children, siblings and parents who have told us that we are dead to them, therefore rendering their active love and kinship dead to us.

Today, even in our sadness we must strive to make our losses cause us to be stronger and more cohesive - not just cause us to cry, but to cry out for justice!

I declare to you tonight that we, we who may be identified as cis-gender, transgender, multi-gender, mixed gender, we are all in the likeness of our Creator.

Even as we count our losses, we give thanks for those who love us, stand with, for and by us – those family members who continued to show us love and support, those who have become family to us, those who have taken in our wounded, frightened hearts and held them gently, reverently, lovingly.

I claim, here and now, in the midst of the Ancestors and the All, that love is a many-gendered thing. And that the love of God is also a many-gendered thing. I ask you to join me in living in to that truth by reaching out to the many who are not here with us in this room, that in the coming year none may fall without someone there to support them and none may perish without witness to the crime.

May the One who has created us in all of our diverse magnificence watch and keep us all, until we meet again.

Amen.