Transgendered minister Rev. Erin Swenson leads workshop in Blacksburg
The Rev. Erin Katrina Swenson fought to retain her ordination after her sex change.
By Tonia Moxley
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/199482 It's been more than five decades since 11-year-old Eric Karl Swenson hid a newspaper clipping with the headline "Ex-Marine becomes bride" in a hole in the bedroom wall of his family home in Atlanta, Ga.
That story about a transsexual Korean War veteran who married a man in the late 1950s "was a thing of hope for me," the Rev. Erin Katrina Swenson said.
But it would take nearly 40 of those years for Swenson to come to grips with her gender identity. In that time, Eric Swenson would marry, father two children, become pastor of a Presbyterian congregation and establish a successful marriage and family therapy practice. Yet, he would struggle with crippling depression, even thoughts of suicide, before confronting himself, his family and his church with a truth he'd known since he was a child: He felt like he was a woman.
