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Title: Callison: Embracing the Church Transgender minister to be ordained as ELCA pasto
Post by: Shana A on July 22, 2010, 08:27:47 AM
Callison: Embracing the Church
Transgender minister to be ordained as ELCA pastor

Jill Callison
July 22, 2010

http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100722/COLUMNISTS0113/7220309/1057/COLUMNISTS (http://www.argusleader.com/article/20100722/COLUMNISTS0113/7220309/1057/COLUMNISTS)

When Darlene Audus was a teenager, her Lutheran father discouraged his daughter from dating Roman Catholic boys.

She didn't understand that kind of prejudice then, and the 76-year-old Clark woman today doesn't understand the prejudice directed at her granddaughter, Megan Rohrer, a lesbian.

"I back her all the way," Audus says. "She's a super gal."

Rohrer, 30, is the first openly transgender Lutheran pastor ordained in the United States. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Only a very few choose to change their bodies through hormones or surgery.