Patrick and Jacki Rohan have been honoring the lives of transgender people even before their own loved one came out.
The couple, who are members of the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Newton (FUUSN), on November 19 attended the group’s Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil. The ceremony included music and prayers, but the most poignant moments featured members reading the names of 300 transgender people from around the world who were killed between October 1, 2022, and October 1, 2023.
“I think it’s really important to recognize” how many people have been murdered each year, said Patrick Rohan.
“We feel that the vigil is an opportunity to stand in solidarity with folks whose lives are on the line simply by existing, so we feel the vigil is the least we can do,” said Rev. Parisa Parsa, FUUSN’s interim minister.
FUUSN started holding annual vigils in 2011. The day of remembrance itself “was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester’s death,” according to LGBTQ+ advocacy nonprofit GLAAD.
During the somber ceremony, FUUSN member Bob MacWilliams played original music about loss and heartbreak on his guitar.
He said the vigil “makes visible the horrific loss of so many beautiful lives due to hatred.”
Although FUUSN members took turns reading the 300 names of murder victims and honored 100 more whose names were unknown, MacWilliams said “this is just a fraction” of the actual number of those who were killed over the past 12 months.
According to a press release this year from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, “the rate of violent victimization of transgender persons was two and a half times the rate of cisgender persons. Particularly transgender women of color, are disproportionately affected by violence and harassment, the majority of violent deaths within the LGBTQI+ community are Black transgender women because they face the intersection of several forms of discrimination — transphobia, sexism, and racism.”
This stark reality was addressed in the opening passage read by Devin Shmueli, FUUSN’s director of family and community ministries:
“This is a prayer for those whose lives were taken in violence,
“For who they were
“And how they loved.”
The moving lines of the reading continued:
“This is a prayer for the survivors of hate crimes and hate.
“For those who live in fear
“and cannot flourish as they are.”
One by one, several FUUSN members came up to the front of the building’s sanctuary and read from the international list of names, lit a candle, and placed it burning among other candles standing in a round container of sand. Attendees, some with their eyes closed and heads bowed, listened in silence.
At the end of the event, participants stood in a circle and placed more lit candles into the container after the ending prayer read by Rev. Parsa. In it, she touched on hope for the future:
“Bless those who survive,
“and continue to see a new day rise in the rays of your sun.
“Bless every beautiful gender of your creation.
“Bless us in all our different lives and experiences.”
