There Have Always Been Trans People, And They Have Always Been Diverse

The topic of transgender Catholics and gender identity in the church is not a new one, asserts a transgender Catholic writer in an essay for Sojourners magazine.  

Max Kuzma, a lifelong Catholic, has been living openly as a transgender man for six years points out that despite the fierceness of current political and ecclesial debates about gender identity being a historical novelty, “To engage the history is to understand we have always been here.”

St. Joan of Arc

He continues:

“There are already gender diverse saints, not just gender non-conforming heroines like St. Joan of Arc, but other saints who lived beyond the gender binary and enjoyed a vibrant devotion in the medieval ages. These historical figures were not side characters within the Christian faith; they are of central importance for ordinary people of the time.”

Today, secular governments pass laws making gender affirming care less attainable, and Catholic leaders debate where, or even whether, transgender people belong in the church. Yet, Kuzma asserts, the “idea that gender exists along a binary, or that transgender people cannot be Catholics, ultimately proves to be misinformed and dangerous,” and “both scientific research and historical evidence affirm that transgender identities are real, have long existed across cultures, and deserve equal dignity and respect.”

The writer describes the experience of “waking up as [his] true self,” and finally knowing “true happiness and peace” in his transgender identity:

“In the past, despite my lifelong Catholic faith, I never fully felt close to God. I simply followed a checklist of rules and repressed any hint of my real identity. Now, I hear the voice of God more clearly than ever: I have received the graces and fruits of the spiritual journey of transition that many other transgender Christians and Catholics have experienced, too.”

Misconceptions, stereotypes, and myths about transgender people abound in current discussions. Catholics antagonistic towards transgender people, make two fundamental errors when talking about trans identities:

“First, they assume that transgender people represent a singular belief system… and second, they suggest that regret is the typical outcome for those who transition. But nothing could be further from the truth on both points.”

This singular belief system attributed to all transgender people, Kuzma continues, is “what many refer to as gender ideology.” This is a term “often deployed in Catholic and secular contexts to disparage contemporary understandings of sex and gender ….Its meaning is ambiguous, but in practice it signals a conservative agenda rather than a coherent scholarly framework.”

Kuzma says that congealing transgender peoples’ beliefs into one ideology, and one that seeks to destroy traditional values and families, makes gender ideology a “competitor to Catholicism that must be defeated by theology.” But in reality, “transgender peoples’ values and beliefs are varied and diverse.” Additionally, “less than 1% of trans people who seek gender affirming surgery regret it.”

Once these two ideas are refuted, the whole argument collapses “like a house of cards.”

“Without a high regret rate and without a scary ideology to fight against,” Kuzma says, “all that remains are empty, reductive anecdotes and stereotypes.”

In the wake of right-wing movements coming to power in many different countries, trans people are often the first to suffer. But they “need not be the canaries in the coal mine,” as Kuzma puts it. “Excluding groups of people from civil rights tends to be merely the first step to ever stricter exclusionary practices.”

To his fellow Catholics who would exclude trans people, Kuzma has one final message: 

“Instead, [trans people] should be treated with dignity. We should be respected as community members who make concrete contributions to society. We should be welcomed in church to participate as our full selves in Sunday worship and other ministries. Transgender people are not an ideology, nor do we have a single ideology that we all share. We are not theoretical, but real human beings. We are here, and it is good that we are here.”

–Lynnzee Dick, October 28, 2025