BBC television is currently screening series two of ‘Gentleman Jack’, a drama based on the real life of a remarkable Yorkshire-woman named Anne Lister. Her home was Shibden Hall, on the outskirts Halifax, which I visited last summer. It is modest by stately home standards but large and comfortable enough for a family of local importance. Anne Lister herself made significant alterations and additions to it. She was a landowner, a mine owner, a business-woman and a largely self-taught scholar. She belonged to the Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society and was the first woman to be elected to its committee. She was a traveller and a meticulous diarist and correspondent, her letters and diaries being an invaluable source of information about her remarkable life and relationships. But the most important thing about her for modern audiences was her sexuality: she was a gay woman, a lesbian, who had a succession of partners, always looking for someone with whom to share her home and her life.
In her day – she lived from 1791 to 1840 – lesbianism was not illegal but it was very much frowned upon. It had the Bible against it for a start. Male homosexuality is condemned in Leviticus (18: 22) and female homosexuality is added to this in Romans (1: 26), as Anne Lister would have known, being a practicing Christian well-versed in the Scriptures. She was of sufficiently independent mind not to let this bother her, though, writing, “I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved of them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.”
She recognised and even rejoiced in her distinctive and individual nature, writing “I am not made like any other I have seen. I dare believe myself to be different from any others who exist.” What did she mean by this? Not her lesbianism only, perhaps, because she had relationships with other women who were, presumably, lesbians too. Perhaps it was more to do with what we might now call a transgender identity. The clue is in the nickname she was given: “Gentleman Jack”. Dressed always in black, her clothing and her manner verged on the masculine, and in this too she defied both contemporary and biblical norms in a way that courted unfavourable comment at the time. In the book of Deuteronomy (22: 5) it decrees, “No woman may wear an article of man’s clothing…for those who do these things are abominable to the Lord your God.” It was a decree that Anne Lister tested to the very limit. In many ways she appeared as she behaved: as a man in a man’s world, including, perhaps, her relationships with women, but as to whether she would ever have identified as transgender in the modern sense it is impossible to say. I suspect she was too comfortable in her own skin to have worried about such things, anyway.
I don’t know what the Unitarians of the 19th century thought of Anne Lister, but today I suspect that most would admire her for her courage and her integrity. On matters relating to gay, lesbian and now transgender issues Unitarians have been in the forefront of progress for over fifty years, as I know from personal experience. For example, in 1972 the Unitarian Young People’s League – the UYPL – held a conference on homosexuality, at Great Hucklow. It followed a resolution at the previous AGM supporting “the lowering of the age of consent for practicing homosexuals from 21 to 18”. With speakers from such organisations as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and the Gay Liberation Front, UYPLers at the conference had their prejudices challenged and their consciousness expanded on a subject that was still surrounded by ignorance. At the closing plenary session the UYPLers not only resolved to educate their membership on homosexuality but to “press at the 1973 General Assembly meetings for full consideration of the subject at the General Assembly meetings in 1974.” In 1973 a UYPL motion was passed at the GA Meetings – after “fast and furious” discussion – setting up a commission to study “the homosexual rights question” and to report back in 1974. When the report duly appeared it was well-received and “called upon churches to lead the way in promoting more liberal and tolerant attitudes.” As the years passed Unitarians did indeed lead the way on an issue with which most other churches struggled, often on the basis of the biblical texts that Anne Lister had blithely but conscientiously ignored. Today, of course, many Unitarians are proud to take part in their local ‘Pride’ events and to welcome same-sex weddings to our churches, but more recently another issue has moved centre stage, that of transgender.
At the recent General Assembly Meetings in Birmingham, a resolution was proposed on this subject. It was passed by a substantial majority, although this was not unanimous and there were a significant number of abstentions. It should be said, though, that the debate was, although emotional at times, always courteous and intelligent. What the resolution said was this:
“This General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches,
a. Affirms with joy that each person’s understanding and statement of their own gender identity is a matter of conscience;
b. affirms that transgender rights are human rights;
c. joins the BMA, the TUC and others in civil society in urging the adoption of the self-declaration model for gender recognition by the UK and devolved governments.”
It should be said that no one really opposed the spirit of this motion but some people did raise serious and well-argued objections to aspects of it and either voted against it or abstained. Personally, I would have preferred something analogous to that resolution in 1973 that set up a commission to report on a difficult and sensitive issue. This would have allowed congregations to give the matter informed consideration before making a public statement. Someone did suggest this but the tide of opinion was against it.
On the day I didn’t feel ready to vote for the motion, although I certainly wouldn’t have voted against it. My reservations were these. I don’t agree that “gender identity is a matter of conscience”, I think it is far more fundamental than that. Be we male or female, gay or straight, transgender or cisgender, our sexual identity is not a matter of choice, as the word conscience implies, but rather something essential, relating to who we are as human beings. Taking myself as an example, I choose to be a Unitarian as a matter of conscience but I am male as a matter of biology and psychology. But my sense of the resolution’s inadequacy relates more to the inadvisability of a brief statement being adopted as a resolution after a brief debate in a charged atmosphere. It was impossible to explore problematical issues such as ‘safe spaces’ for women, fair competition in sport, the possible abuse of the self-declaration model, and the question of age-limits on sexual transitioning. With the best will in the world such difficulties must be addressed and resolved before, as a whole society, we can move on. As we have seen with homosexuality, tremendous progress can be and has been made in a relatively short period. The same can probably be true of the transgender issue, but it may take some time, some understanding and some goodwill to get there.
Some will be understandably impatient at any delay at all, and impatient with those who seem to advocate it, but while I would like to have more thought and more serious conversation about issues which are not as straightforward as they might appear, the object is the same: recognition of everyone’s right to be freely and openly who they really are without suffering from abuse, persecution and prejudice of any kind. Inasmuch as the GA Meetings resolution has this intention then I see it as the continuation of a tradition of which we can be proud. I just wish it had recognised the need for our liberal religious communities to give it the longer and deeper consideration it deserves. Maybe then a more impressive unanimous resolution would have been possible.