A Hate Crime Brings Out Love
Violence against transgender people is real. No one who hasn’t completely buried their head in the sand is unaware of the fact that a trans woman of color is killed with horrible regularity in this country—about once every two weeks.
But it hit close to home for me not too long ago, right in the place where I live.
Let me tell you a bit about Newport, Oregon. We’re in a beautiful town of about 10,000 souls on the center of the Oregon Coast. In addition to logging and commercial fishing, we’re a big draw for retirees, artists and visitors from all over.
The life of a newly out transgender woman, Lauren Jackson, and a visitor from Idaho intersected one recent Saturday morning at one of our most popular state park waysides.
Lauren was visiting Oregon, looking for a place to launch her new life. She had a spouse and a career in Utah, but she knew she wasn’t living her truth. Just two weeks before, she had started hormone replacement therapy and though she had never set foot in Oregon, she felt something calling her here.
She and her attacker’s wife happened to use the women’s restroom at the same time.
Trigger warning; some brutal details follow.
The attacker’s wife said something to her husband after exiting the restroom. Lauren, who was fixing herself breakfast at her car, said the attacker came rushing over to her, shouted “So you think you’re some kind of a lady?” grabbed her hair and began punching her in the head repeatedly. Someone finally pulled her attacker away, but not before Lauren suffered a skull fracture and multiple breaks in her jaw.
Police officers are used to seeing the worst of the world, but the officer who came to the scene and arrested the attacker commented in his report multiple times about how much blood was all Lauren and all over the ground.
She was hospitalized in Portland for four days and returned to the coast the day after her release to testify before a Grand Jury proceeding, which resulted in her assailant being charged with a hate crime. He’s locked away in the local jail, and likely will remain there until his trial.
Oregon has had a hate crime law on the books for thirty years, but it was just updated this year to include gender identity.
A group of local pastors has led the community response to this vile act. They organized an impromptu witness at the Courthouse the day of the Grand Jury proceeding, then a larger rally that happened three weeks to the day of the attack. More than 100 people turned out, and I was one of several speakers, but the most remarkable words came from Lauren. She had a message of forgiveness and unconditional love that moved me, and many others who were there, to tears.
The pastors, meanwhile, promise the rally won’t be a one-and-done event. They’ve got seventeen signers on an open letter condemning this action and promise an ongoing effort to replace the message of hatred and rejection so many churches have sent to transgender people through the years with one of unconditional love.
I am proud of my community. I’ll be prouder still when people everywhere stand up against transphobia, trans violence, and hatred in all its malevolent forms. And I know I’m not going to live to see the day, but I will always dream of a world where this kind of witness isn’t necessary. In the meantime, I will do all I can to move that vision closer to reality.
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Category: Transgender Body & Soul
About the Author (Author Profile)
Claire Hall was born and grew up in a large city on the left coast and has spent most of her adult years in a beautiful small coastal community where she's now an elected official in local government after spending many years as a newspaper and radio reporter. In her space time she loves reading, writing fiction (her first novel was published by a regional press a couple of years ago), watching classic Hollywood movies, and walking.Subscribe
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