Parents must lean into communities of affirmation to endure the religious, cultural and political backlash that comes with parenting gender nonconforming children, author Sim Butler said.
Butler said his new book, The Dragons Do Come: Raising a Transgender Kid in Rural America, is in part designed to provide some of the love and encouragement that sustained him and his wife, Rachel, in rearing a trans daughter in Alabama. “Before we can find solutions to our challenges, we have to find support because support provides a solid footing to help us through the struggles that inevitably come in this process.”
Butler said he calls those challenges “dragons” because they create an overwhelming sense of isolation, hopelessness and fear when encountered.
Sim Butler
For his daughter Kate, those dragons often have been brutal. A teacher at one school refused to recognize her gender identity and resorted to “deadnaming” her by using the name associated with the male gender assigned at birth.
“It just got worse and worse and worse, and it made such a huge impact on her that it got to where she would do everything she could to avoid going to school, and she loved the school up until that point. It was just so hard to see,” her father said.
Another challenge came when a neighborhood swim team balked at letting Kate join despite initially saying she could participate. Having to go to battle for a child often comes with the territory of raising transgender kids, Butler explained.
“All of a sudden, they were saying, ‘We don’t have the facilities for that,’ and I said, ‘You don’t have a pool?’ Then they said, ‘We have to clear this with the other parents,’ and I said, ‘Do I get veto power over other people’s kids?’ So, she was allowed to stay but we didn’t do it very long because she didn’t feel welcome there.”
Things got even more difficult when the LGBTQ-friendly charter school Kate later attended in Birmingham became the focus of fear-mongering ads aired during the 2022 gubernatorial campaign in Alabama, Butler recalled. “Then we had people driving through the parking lot yelling at the kids that they were going to hell. That was a really difficult one. They are just making these kids’ lives so much harder.”
But most intimidating of all was a series of pandemic-era bills targeting transgender people in Alabama. A 2022 law required children in K-12 schools to use the bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their gender at birth. A 2024 measure expanded the requirement to colleges and universities.
Alabama also became one of 27 states to pass laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The Alabama measure made the practice a felony punishable with up to 10 years in prison.
Those statutes eventually led the Butlers to leave Alabama for an undisclosed location where Kate, now a teenager, has access to the transgender medical care she needs.
“One of the biggest dragons for us was the state turning us into felons for seeking what every major medical organization in the world says is the best way to treat my kid. For us, that was daunting and terrifying, and it felt like an absolutely losing battle,” he said.
But it was the loving support and lived theology of a Baptist congregation in Birmingham that carried the family through some of the scariest times before leaving the state, he said. “Baptist Church of the Covenant provided us with the encouragement and hope my family needed on this journey. They gave us the strength we needed to get through this.”
The church was formed in 1970 when a group of people left First Baptist Church downtown to create a fellowship where a Black woman and her daughter could receive baptism and membership. Today, the congregation partners with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Alliance of Baptists and the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists.
That welcoming and affirming spirit came through for Kate when, at age 7, she came out publicly as female by wearing a girl’s bathing suit at a church retreat. At that time, only her parents and a few close friends at church knew her actual gender identity.
“We knew she had packed the bathing suit, but we weren’t sure she was actually going to wear it,” Butler said. “Personally, I wasn’t really ready for this, and I was definitely scared there could be a backlash and that we were going to lose our church.”
But the opposite happened. The other children at the retreat expressed curiosity and continued to play with Kate. The church responded with warm acceptance in the days and weeks that followed.
“I’ll give you an example,” Butler said. “The church gives baby blankets to all newborns, blue for boys and pink for girls. A couple Sundays after my daughter publicly declared herself a girl, they gave her a new baby blanket to recognize her gender.”
“I know some people left the church in protest of the way they were affirming us.”
But there were challenges at church, too, he added. “We were a diverse church with many different viewpoints and ideologies, and I know some people left the church in protest of the way they were affirming us.”
The Dragons Do Come was written in part to assure parents of trans children that allies can and must be found to help them navigate the challenges that change but never cease, Butler said.
“I want this book to show what advocacy for trans kids looks like and as a pillar of support for folks. It’s to say, ‘You’re not alone,’ that we’re right there with you, whether or not you’re experiencing the same dragons we are. As parents we all want our kids to be able to face down their dragons and to be brave and resilient and strong.”
Butler said he drew enormous strength and hope from a boy who approached Kate the day she debuted a girl’s bathing suit at the church retreat.
“The kid looks in the pool and says, ‘Whoa, are you wearing a girl’s bathing suit?’ My daughter said, ‘Yeah.’ And the kid asks, ‘So you’re a girl now?’”
Butler said he started sweating as he anticipated the worst. But again, it went much differently than he feared.
“When Kate said, ‘I’m a girl now,’ the kid just said, ‘Oh, can we play Marco Polo with y’all?’ And she said, ‘Sure.’ And that was it. That moment was the epitome of what it means to be welcoming and affirming, and it made a huge different for us.”
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