‘I’m a Christian for trans rights’: pro-LGBTQ+ Missouri pastor runs for office

When Phoenix Lemke was in his final year of high school, he had nowhere to go.

The family of the teenager from O’Fallon, Missouri, had long disapproved of him being queer, and in December 2021, at age 17, he left home without a clear plan. He spent several days couchsurfing with friends until he found refuge with an unlikely figure: a local pastor.

The Rev Susan Shumway, a minister at a nearby church, had known Lemke for years through his friends and offered him a room as soon as she learned of his predicament.

“She has a history of letting people stay here when they are struggling,” Lemke, now 20, said on a recent evening, seated with Shumway in their living room. “She was adamant in letting me know she supported me, and at some point I just started calling her mom.”

Shumway is something of an anomaly in this deep red state: a clergy member advocating for LGBTQ+ equality.

Missouri in recent years has been at the center of a national push to limit the rights of trans and queer people. State officials have pushed to outlaw healthcare for trans youth, block trans kids from sports, restrict trans people’s bathroom access and censor LGBTQ+ content.

As in other parts of the country, those efforts have found the support of Christian nationalist groups, and Missouri officials have explicitly pointed at their faith while enacting trans restrictive policies. Mike Moon, the state’s senator and author of its trans youth healthcare ban, has referenced God and the Bible to support his bill (and defend child marriage). The Missouri attorney general, Andrew Bailey, as well as the Missouri US senator Josh Hawley, who embraces the idea of America as a “Christian nation”, have promoted the anti-trans talking point that God “doesn’t make mistakes”, falsely suggesting children cannot be trans.

Shumway has a very different view. “I’m a Christian who believes in trans rights. And I’m going to be loud and make sure legislators hear from Christians who are not spewing hate,” she said.

Shumway’s now campaigning to become a state representative, hoping to be a strong opposition voice in a legislature that has become one of the most hostile in the nation toward queer and trans people.

“The Christian right has not had a challenge from the Christian left, and we need to join together and make some noise,” she said.

Shumway traces her LGBTQ+ rights advocacy to 1999, when she was in seminary, leading a youth group. As she prepared to move away, one of the young members confided he was gay, telling her last-minute and worried she would disapprove. “I said, ‘So what? I love you,’” she recalls.

The interaction taught her about how coming out feels risky to many kids, she said. “And I knew that wouldn’t be the last youth to come out [to me].”

Shumway is a member of the United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination with 770,000 members, which promotes inclusivity.

Over the years, she has helped lead numerous churches through the process of becoming “open and affirming” congregations that support LGBTQ+ members. She acknowledges non-queer congregants’ discomfort and tries to help them grasp what it might be like to struggle with dysphoria. She emphasizes the importance of treating people like Lemke with respect, even if they don’t understand them. “I affirm God’s love for this person,” she said. “I believe God created Phoenix to be a wonderful person of God just as he is.

“I believe it’s my job to kick open the doors that have been closed and allow Phoenix and others the opportunity to walk through if they want to,” Shumway added.

Moving in with Shumway was transformative for Lemke, he said. He came out as trans after he started living with Shumway, and began transitioning soon after. “Here, I could do what I want, be who I want and kiss who I want without being called a slur.”

Phoenix Lemke celebrates his legal name change. Photograph: Courtesy of Phoenix Lemke

Last year, he posted a joyous photo holding his court paperwork confirming his legal name change: “I just felt so much better and happier.”

Lemke said he’s estranged from most of his relatives, who have resisted acknowledging his transition. “By insisting they had a daughter, they lost the opportunity to have a son,” he said. “I wish I could get them to understand that – as much as you think you know me, you don’t live in my body. You didn’t live the first 17 years of your life looking at it and knowing something is wrong but not being allowed to say it, because you know you wouldn’t be safe.”

Lemke said he still feels unsafe using public bathrooms in Missouri. While he was grateful to turn 18 so he could access gender-affirming healthcare, he has also had distressing conversations with his doctor about how hard it has become to support trans patients in the state.

Lemke scoffs at the idea that Republicans are “protecting children” with bills restricting trans existence – laws that have been linked to sharp increases in suicide attempts among trans youth. “They want to die because they aren’t allowed to be themselves,” Lemke said of some of his peers. “I genuinely feel I am alive because I was able to put my foot in the door.”

Shumway said watching Lemke blossom had inspired her to keep fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. “It’s such a privilege seeing these shackles that were holding him down fall off, and seeing him become such a confident young man.”

Lemke isn’t religious, but sometimes makes food for Shumway’s congregation. When friends learn he lives with a pastor, “they say, ‘Are you okay? Blink twice,’” he said, noting how many of them have come to associate religion with intolerance.

Shumway added: “The corporate church has done such harm, and there needs to be healing.”

Shumway’s statehouse race is an uphill battle in a district dominated by Republicans. Whether she’s elected, she said she’ll advocate for the passage of a nondiscrimination law in Missouri, where state law does not prohibit employers from firing people for being LGBTQ+.

Other Missouri faith leaders have organized against anti-trans bills, some motivated by their own trans children.

Daniel Bogard, a St Louis rabbi, has pleaded with lawmakers to preserve the rights of his 11-year-old trans son. He cited sacred Jewish texts that scholars interpret as referencing nonbinary identity. “Legislators pretend like being queer is new, and it’s not,” he said. “There have always been queer people. It’s just another incredible way of being human.

“I used to believe, if I could show them that, they would leave my family alone. I don’t believe that anymore,” he continued, saying legislators now won’t acknowledge his family. “They stopped looking us in the eye, because it just hurt them too much to see us as humans … It works for these Christian nationalist politicians to get people to be fearful of and disgusted by my child.”

While disillusioned by the political process, Bogard said he will continue to encourage faith leaders to “stand up for the dignity and sacredness of trans kids.

“These kids need to know there are people who love them and are fighting for them.”