Trans Pastor Fired After Coming Out
July 24, 2020After trans pastor Junia “June” Joplin came out to her Mississauga church, she learned she’ll no longer be the lead pastor.
Joplin decided to share her “big, risky truth” with her parishioners and after a vote by 111 members of the congregation, her contract with the Lorne Park Baptist Church was terminated, with 52 percent in favour of the termination.
“If I never work another day in the church again for the rest of my life, I'll know that I've done what I was called to do,” she told ‘CBC News’ at the time of her coming out.
“I want you to hear me when I tell you that I'm not just supposed to be a pastor. I'm supposed to be a woman. My friends, my family, my name is Junia. You can call me June. I'm a transgender woman and my pronouns are she and her,” Joplin said during her online sermon last month.
“The Church has journeyed for the past month through a process of attempting to discern God's will resulting from June's announcement of June 14, 2020 that she is a transgender woman,” the church said in a statement.
“After a month of prayerful discernment and discussions between June and the congregation, it was determined, for theological reasons, that it is not in God's will that June remain as our pastor.”
Although she's saddened to learn her contract was terminated, Joplin remains grateful for the response she received from them immediately after coming out as trans.
“I am grateful to them and I want to acknowledge just how kind and respectful at least their language has been,” she said.
“Nobody intentionally misgendered me or did anything that was intentionally disrespectful so there has been a grace and kindness through the entire process.”
Joplin also stated that coming out was something she could not “forego.”
“That was a necessity at this stage in my transitional journey, so the decision to come out was something that absolutely had to happen,” Joplin said.
“I feel free in a way that I never did before I came out in transition,” she said.
“I was saying to a friend the other day, 'A bad day as my real self is better than a good day when I was repressed and out of touch with myself and living under this cloud that I didn't understand.’”
“I wanted to connect with people who, either in my congregation or elsewhere, needed to hear important truths spoken about who they are or who the people near them are,” Joplin said.
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