Episode 671: Richelle, Transgender LDS shares her story as a faithful LDS and a transgender woman.

Listen, Learn & Love Hosted by Richard Ostler

Richard Ostler

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 839 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2023

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Richelle begins by sharing some of the observations of her childhood and how these no doubt trying experiences helped to shape her life and strengthen her personal testimony as well as develop a strong relationship with the Savior—her experience and her journey have helped her to just “trust in the Lord” seek to find joy in your life and accept that all will be made right in the end. Richelle shares how she came to know that her long held feelings needed not be a source of shame and that embracing her gender dysphoria only fully surfaced after the unraveling of her marriage of 25 years. She talks about the peace and joy she feels being honest about her gender identity and helps us better understand how to support her and others on their unique path. She talks about attending her local ward and regaining trust with her priesthood leaders as everyone tries to do their best to love and support her—including some very positive experiences with her relief society sisters. Richelle talks about how some voices in society today seek to brand trans people as sexual perverts out to target their children. With deep emotion, Richelle talks about how painful that is to hear as in her sincere desire to embrace womanhood she only wants to nurture and defend children. We conclude with reading from the Church’s web page about loving and supporting transgender Latter-day Saints—and emphasize how the Church’s web site contains none of the politically charged statements otherwise being shouted out in the public arena. Richelle encourages us to remember the second greatest commandment and to be willing to get to know the individual just as the Savior knows us individually. Thank you, Richelle, for your courage to be on the podcast and share your story. You are a wonderful woman with a great life ahead of you! Links: Church's webpage on supporting transgender members: www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/transgender Index of Podcasts: listenlearnandlove.org/podcasts Ministering to LGBTQ Latter-day Saints Facebook Group facebook.com/groups/1433556613672143 Richard Ostler Book: Embracing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints: Deseret Book: deseretbook.com/p/listen-learn-and-love-embracing-lgbtq-latter-day-saints Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/1462135773

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome listeners to another episode of Listen, Learn, and Love, hosted by Richard Osler.
0:09.2	My guest on today's podcast is a transgender Latter-day Saint.
0:13.4	Welcome to the podcast, Rochelle.
0:16.3	Happy to be here and happy that you invited me to be on your on your podcasts.
0:22.3	I've kind of shared this a little bit. My wife and I, listeners, were in Israel and we walked to a hill and
0:27.8	were able to look over the road to Jericho and our tour leaders taught us the parable of the Good Samaritan.
0:33.8	And I thought of the context of that time in the world and how the world thought about or the Jews thought about Samaritans.
0:42.0	And Christ taught very differently about Samaritans and you can call them good Samaritans. And then in that example, you know, exhibited really wonderful moral behavior on what we know well is the parable of the Good Samaritan.
0:56.3	But I thought of transgender people and how the principles that a parable, in my feeling, apply to
1:04.0	transgender people that often exhibit superior moral behavior, but often are vilified in our vernacular.
1:13.0	So I reached out to Rochelle and said,
1:15.1	would you come on the podcast and share your story?
1:17.2	And she said yes.
1:18.2	And it's really brave of her to do this.
1:20.2	She's going to steer, she's in her 50s.
1:23.7	She's going to talk about her journey,
1:26.0	this long-term journey with gender dysphoria, coming out as transgender.
1:32.8	She identifies as female.
1:34.4	I use she, her pronouns, I believe, and Rochelle is your name.
1:38.7	And so I just, as a grace, honor those pronouns, that name.
1:43.0	It doesn't cost me anything. It's part of
1:44.8	my baptism governance. And so I see as a wonderful woman doing the best she can and walking this
	...

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