LISA SALAZAR — BLOG

A young woman I greatly admire is Rachel Held Evans . She is an amazing author, blogger, speaker, wife, mother, and a seriously articulate progressive Christian writer and blogger who is not afraid to enter into conversations that would make many others run and hide in their little dogma houses. Earlier in September of 2012, Rachel contacted me to see if I would be willing to be interviewed as part of her popular blog series titled "AKS A…" Would I be willing to be in the hot seat for "Ask a Transgender Christian?" My new friend Justin Lee, executive director of the Gay Christian Network (GCN) and author of the soon to be released book "Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate"  suggested me as the person to ask. (In the same way, Justin is the person Rachel chose for the "Ask a Gay Christian" interview. Having followed Rachel for several months, my initial reaction to her email was disbelief and trepidation, given t...

This had been the greeting in recent letters from the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA). I called them to complain, but though the person I spoke to was very sympathetic, she could not change the gender marker responsible for the misgendering. She could not access this option; it was above her pay grade, and she gave me another 1-800 number to call. After wading through the menu options and waiting in the queue long enough to hear the “due to heavy volumes…” blurb several dozen times, I finally spoke to a real person who listened to my request and politely informed me I had to call another government office. After another 1-800 routine that lasted another twenty minutes, I learned I had to contact another office. After over one hour of phone calls, I was finally given instructions for what I had to do.  This insignificant one-letter change could only be done by going in person to a Canada Services office, and I would need to bring my Canadian citizenship card, my passport—both of w...