吃瓜网

Today is Trans Day of Remembrance. We honor the lives of transgender and gender-expansive people whose lives have been taken by anti-trans violence, discrimination and neglect. We speak their names, grieve their absence, and recommit ourselves to building communities where every person can live, thrive and be fully known.

This year, Trans Day of Remembrance carries an added resonance: 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of Vatican II’s “Nostra Aetate”—the landmark declaration that reshaped interreligious dialogue by affirming the shared dignity of all peoples. Though written within Catholicism, its call to honor the Sacred in every human life has guided interfaith spaces, campus ministries, community chaplaincies and movements for justice across the world.

Yet we must acknowledge the painful tension of our time. Even as Nostra Aetate invites us toward a deeper relationship and mutual care, claims of “religious liberty” are increasingly invoked to deny the very dignity it sought to uphold. Across the United States and globally, religious freedom is used to justify discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people—including transgender and gender-expansive individuals who face exclusionary policies, restricted health care access and social stigma.

We are living in a moment when lawmakers and institutions wield religion to impose narrow theological views on the public; when disputes over reproductive justice and gender-affirming care threaten personal autonomy; when some interfaith alliances collaborate not to expand our collective moral imagination, but to undermine civil rights; and when concerns about religious bigotry are used to deflect needed critique.

Trans Day of Remembrance calls us to reject the weaponization of religion and to reclaim the moral heart of spiritual traditions: the unconditional dignity of every human life. Across faiths—Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Indigenous, Humanist and many others—we are guided by teachings of compassion, liberation, mutual responsibility and the sacredness of embodiment.

May we move forward with clarity and solidarity, creating communities where every person—especially our transgender siblings—can live without fear, flourish in authenticity and know themselves cherished.