I shook hands with a transgender woman. I did not get cooties. I did not fear she would take over the plane. I did not have Satan ease into my being.
Every July since 2013, I travel to San Diego to attend Comic Con International. This is the largest gathering of pop culture in the world. In those years, I have met many people I knew from their work in the comic book media.
This year, I attended a panel by Mark Evanier with a focus on Jenny Blake Isabella. She used to be Tony Isabella. Isabella composed comics for Marvel and DC. One of her longest runs was her work on “Ghost Rider” in the 1970s.
Michael Parnell
This year Comic Con International awarded her the “Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing.
This award is to put a spotlight on those writers that have a body of work that has not gotten rightful recognition. Bill Finger was the first writer of Batman. He was for years not given any credit for his work.
When I boarded the plane to leave San Diego, Jenny and her wife, Barbara, were getting on ahead of me. As I passed by her seat, I reached down to shake her hand. I told her I had attended the panel discussion and I expressed congratulations for winning the award. She smiled and told me thanks. And that was it.
Nothing rubbed off on me. I did not feel any worse for taking her hand. It was a moment where I felt the need to recognize what she had accomplished.
I cannot understand what some people think is the problem. Some have said terrible things about those who transition from one gender to another. One suggested those who do such a thing to themselves should be put on a terrorist list. That is utter nonsense.
All this reminds me of something that happened to my father. He loved to go watch the softball games the recreation department in Lumberton, N.C., had in the summer months. My father carried his own chair, a webbed lawn chair, to the park. He would sit by the fence on the left side of the field.
People would come to where he sat. And there would be talk. Talk about the gossip of the moment. One time it was about the last scandal going in one of the local churches. There was talk about what this one had said and that another had done. It stretched on into other churches and other problems. Finally those who talked looked down at my father and said, “John, what do you think about all this?”
After thinking for a moment, my father said, “The last time I checked, when I die and go to heaven it will be me standing alone before the Lord.”
And that stopped the talk for the moment.
The great Baptist layman Jerry Clower used to say we need to learn to take care of our own rat killing. That means we need to deal with our problems and issues, not someone else’s.
Jesus said we should not judge another. Because we would be judged.
The judgment we hand out will be the judgment we will get in return. The speck we see in a trans person’s eye is not as big as the log in our own eye.
My father understood his issues were the only ones that mattered. The issues of others were not something one should gossip about or throw around in casual conversation.
Something another person did had no bearing on what his life was to be or how it would turn out.
I knew Isabella when she was Tony. She was at a panel the year before she transitioned. The person I saw at the panel this year was the same person I saw before, but now she is female.
I cannot understand why she decided to transition. Nothing of her journey to being who she is affects my daily life in any way. She is who she is. I am who I am.
I have enough trouble dealing with my rat problem and the logs in my eye.
It was good to shake her hand. I am thankful to congratulate her on the award. But I am not going to think she is any less a person than me. Because she lives in her skin. I live in mine. And that is OK. I believe the Lord understands her, and I believe the Lord understands me.
Mike Parnell serves as pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. He is a former board member of BNG.