NUMBER 12 LOOKS JUST LIKE YOU When Conformity Becomes a Commandment

NUMBER 12 LOOKS JUST LIKE YOU

When Conformity Becomes a Commandment

The Twilight Zone warned us about a world where difference was treated as sickness. In 2026, are we listening?

8-26-2026

By Rev. Paula Josephine SadlerFounder & Founding MinisterUniversal Rainbow Faith ChurchActivating the Rainbow Light of Love

In 1964, The Twilight Zone took viewers into what seemed like a disturbing future.

Rod Serling asked us, for want of a better estimate, to imagine the year 2000.

In this future, science had supposedly perfected humanity. Disease had largely been conquered. People could remain young and beautiful. But this apparent paradise came with a terrible price:

Individuality.

Every young person was expected to undergo a procedure called “The Transformation.”

You did not simply grow into yourself.

You selected an approved face and body from a limited collection of standardized models.

Everyone became beautiful.

Everyone became acceptable.

Everyone became alike.

And one young woman named Marilyn Cuberle dared to ask the question at the center of the entire episode:

“Being like everybody? I mean, isn't that the same as being nobody?”

More than sixty years later, that question deserves to be asked again.

Because today, in 2026, a controversy surrounding a transgender/nonbinary music teacher at Middle Creek Elementary School in Wake County, North Carolina, has become about much more than one educator.

It has become another battleground over a fundamental question:

Who gets to decide what another human being is permitted to look like, wear, call themselves, and be?

A Teacher Becomes a National Controversy

Recent reporting identifies the educator at the center of the controversy as Aria Derrick, a music teacher at Middle Creek Elementary School in Apex, North Carolina.

Conservative activists, politicians and commentators have objected to the teacher's gender presentation, use of feminine pronouns and the title “Miss.” Some parents have requested that their children be provided an alternative to the teacher's music class.

At Wake County school-board meetings, however, other parents and board members have defended the educator.

One Middle Creek parent and pastor described the teacher as “perfectly qualified” and “a lovely person,” arguing that gender identity provides no reason to question the teacher's ability to perform the job.

Board member Jennifer Job described what she saw happening even more starkly: people were willing to sacrifice an educator's love of teaching for a larger “culture war.”

That distinction matters.

There is an enormous difference between debating what should be included in an elementary-school curriculum and arguing that the existence of a transgender or gender-nonconforming adult in front of children is itself inappropriate.

North Carolina law currently says that instruction concerning gender identity, sexual activity or sexuality shall not be included in the K–4 curriculum, with an exception for responses to student-initiated questions.

But the statute says instruction.

It does not say that transgender people may not teach.

It does not prescribe the clothing teachers must wear according to their sex assigned at birth.

And it does not say that the existence of a transgender teacher is itself a lesson in gender identity.

That distinction is essential.

A gay teacher does not become “instruction about homosexuality” merely by walking into a classroom.

A Jewish teacher does not become religious instruction merely by wearing a Star of David.

A Muslim teacher does not become a lesson in Islam by wearing a hijab.

A Christian teacher does not become compulsory Christianity by wearing a cross.

And a transgender or nonbinary teacher does not become a curriculum simply by existing.

Welcome Back to The Twilight Zone

This is where Number 12 Looks Just Like You becomes hauntingly relevant.

Marilyn is eighteen years old and approaching the age when society expects her to undergo the Transformation.

Everyone assumes she will want it.

Why wouldn't she?

Everyone tells her it will make her beautiful.

Everyone tells her it will make her happier.

Everyone tells her it is normal.

Everyone tells her that resistance is irrational.

Her refusal is treated almost as evidence of mental illness.

Marilyn answers simply:

“I don't want to be transformed.”

Her family cannot understand.

Her doctors cannot understand.

Her society cannot understand.

The disturbing brilliance of the episode is that almost nobody believes themselves cruel.

They believe they are helping Marilyn.

They have constructed a society in which conformity has become synonymous with health, morality and happiness.

Difference itself has become pathological.

And Marilyn sees something they cannot.

She understands that acceptance purchased through the destruction of individuality is not acceptance at all.

The Forbidden Books

One of the most extraordinary scenes occurs when Marilyn is questioned by Professor Sigmund Friend.

He wants to understand where she acquired these strange ideas about individuality.

Marilyn begins talking about literature.

Shakespeare.

Keats.

Shelley.

Aristotle.

Socrates.

Dostoevsky.

The professor tells her that such books were banned years before.

Marilyn explains that her father gave them to her.

She tells him that these writers wrote about something her society seems no longer capable of understanding:

“the dignity of the individual human spirit.”

And love.

The professor's response is chilling.

He treats these ideas as dangerous and subversive.

Think about that.

Individual dignity has become subversive.

That may be the most important warning contained in the episode.

Marilyn's Father

Then we learn why Marilyn's resistance runs so deep.

Her father had undergone the Transformation.

According to Marilyn, he eventually realized that something precious had been taken from him.

His identity.

She tells Valerie that her father cared about her not because of what she wore or how she looked, but because of what she thought and what she felt.

And then Marilyn reveals the truth about his death.

Her father died by suicide after losing his sense of identity.

This is fiction.

But its warning is devastatingly real:

What happens to a human being when society continually tells them that the person they know themselves to be is unacceptable?

“They Just Want Everyone to Be the Same”

Marilyn eventually realizes what the Transformation is actually about.

It isn't beauty.

It isn't medicine.

It isn't happiness.

It is conformity.

She tells her mother:

“They just want everyone to be the same.”

And that brings me directly to what I see happening around us today.

I want to say this in my own words.

A Personal Reflection — Rev. Paula Josephine Sadler

What I see happening to transgender people today reminds me profoundly of Number 12 Looks Just Like You.

We are hearing people insist that another human being must dress according to what they believe that person's biological sex requires. They insist that others must address people according to sex assigned at birth. They speculate about people's bodies and genitalia. They decide what clothing is permissible, which bathroom someone should enter, and even whether a person who refuses to conform should be permitted to teach, work or participate fully in society.

That is assimilation.

That is the very thing Marilyn resisted.

She simply wanted to be herself.

And that is what transgender people are asking for.

Transgender people are not demanding that everyone become transgender. LGBTQIA+ people are not saying, “You must dress like me. You must live like me. You must believe exactly what I believe.”

They are asking for something much simpler:

Let me live. Let me be. Let me participate in society as myself.

There is an enormous difference between expressing one's own identity and using governmental, religious or social power to compel another person to abandon theirs.

Clothing does not determine the value of a human being. Masculinity does not determine competence. Femininity does not determine competence. Whether someone conforms to another person's expectations of masculinity or femininity does not determine whether they can teach music, practice medicine, operate a business, preach a sermon, raise a family or contribute meaningfully to society.

How many masculine women have beautifully taught generations of children?

How many feminine men have done exactly the same?

How many transgender people throughout history remained hidden because they knew that revealing themselves could cost them their families, their careers, their churches, their homes or even their safety?

Nobody knows another person's entire journey.

Nobody looking at a photograph knows another person's anatomy, medical history or private decisions—and they have no entitlement to know.

Whether this teacher has undergone any particular medical transition is nobody else's business.

The relevant question should be:

Is this person qualified to teach?

If the answer is yes, then judge the teacher by the teaching.

The New Transformation

The irony is difficult to ignore.

Transgender people are frequently accused of demanding that society conform to them.

But look carefully at what is actually being demanded in controversies such as this one.

Dress differently.

Use the name we believe belongs to you.

Use the pronouns we assign you.

Use the restroom we designate for you.

Present your body according to our expectations.

Return to the identity we believe you should have.

And sometimes:

If you refuse, you should not have this job.

That is not freedom from transgender ideology.

That can itself become an ideology of compulsory conformity.

It is Number 12 Looks Just Like You turned inside out.

Instead of:

Become Number 12.

The command becomes:

Become the man or woman we have decided you must be.

Different vocabulary.

Same fundamental question:

Does society own the individual, or does the individual possess sovereignty over themselves?

The “Instant Smile”

The episode contains another extraordinary symbol.

Whenever Marilyn expresses sadness, frustration or anger, the people around her encourage her to drink something called Instant Smile.

She finally protests that she doesn't want to smile constantly.

Sometimes she wants to cry.

Sometimes she wants to frown.

Again, Marilyn commits the unforgivable offense:

She wants to experience her own emotions.

Her society has not merely standardized bodies.

It has standardized acceptable feelings.

This is what conformity eventually requires.

First:

Look like us.

Then:

Act like us.

Then:

Think like us.

Then:

Believe like us.

And finally:

Feel like us.

At that point individuality has disappeared entirely.

Children Are Watching All of Us

Opponents of transgender teachers frequently frame their position around protecting children.

I believe we should protect children.

But we should ask:

Protect them from what?

What lesson does a child learn from encountering a teacher whose appearance is different from what that child has previously encountered?

Perhaps the lesson could simply be:

Human beings come in many forms.

Perhaps children can learn that they don't need to understand everything about another person's life before treating that person with dignity.

Perhaps they can learn:

My teacher looks different from another teacher, and both can teach me music.

That is not indoctrination.

That is life.

The alternative lesson worries me far more:

People who don't look the way we expect are dangerous.

People who don't conform should lose their jobs.

People who are different should disappear from public view so children never encounter them.

What happens when the child receiving that message eventually discovers that they are different?

What Happens to the Child Who Cannot Become Number 12?

This question must be taken seriously.

Some of the children growing up in deeply conservative families will eventually realize that they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or otherwise different from what their families expected.

Not all LGBTQ youth experience mental-health problems, and being LGBTQ is not itself a pathology.

But rejection, bullying, isolation and stigma can profoundly harm young people.

That is why rhetoric matters.

Imagine spending your childhood hearing:

People like you are disgusting.

People like you are delusional.

People like you shouldn't teach children.

People like you shouldn't use this bathroom.

People like you shouldn't wear those clothes.

People like you are destroying society.

And then, at thirteen or fifteen or seventeen, realizing:

They are talking about me.

What happens inside that child?

That is why acceptance is not some trivial political slogan.

Sometimes acceptance means a young person discovers:

There is a place for me in this world.

When Religion Becomes the Transformation Machine

This question is especially important for people of faith.

There are Christians who sincerely believe their understanding of scripture requires traditional doctrines concerning sex and gender.

They have a right to those beliefs.

Freedom of religion protects them.

But freedom of religion must also protect the person standing beside them.

Religious liberty cannot mean:

I possess freedom of conscience, and therefore I possess authority over yours.

That is not religious freedom.

That is religious domination.

Universal Rainbow Faith rejects the proposition that human diversity represents a failure of God's creation.

We believe diversity reveals something about creation.

Human beings have never fit neatly into identical boxes.

Not spiritually.

Not psychologically.

Not culturally.

Not physically.

Not artistically.

Not intellectually.

And certainly not in gender expression.

Would We Recognize Jesus?

There is another spiritual irony here.

Christianity was founded around someone who repeatedly stepped outside accepted social boundaries.

Jesus touched people others considered unclean.

He ate with people society condemned.

He challenged religious authorities.

He crossed social boundaries.

He confronted those who placed religious rules above human compassion.

And eventually, the political and religious machinery of his society killed him.

So Christians should be extraordinarily cautious whenever the crowd begins saying:

This person does not belong among us.

Because Christianity itself begins with someone the respectable authorities decided did not belong.

The tragedy would be profound if people claiming to follow the crucified outsider became the people demanding that every outsider conform.

The Ending We Should Remember

Marilyn tries to escape.

She is caught.

The Transformation is performed against her will.

When she emerges, something terrifying has happened.

Her body has changed.

But so has the resistance within her.

She admires herself.

She looks at Valerie—who now looks essentially identical to her—and declares:

“And the nicest part of all, Val, I look just like you.”

The individual who resisted conformity has disappeared.

Society has won.

And everyone smiles.

That is the horror.

1964 → 2000 → 2026

Number 12 Looks Just Like You aired in 1964.

Its imagined setting was approximately 2000.

We are now living in 2026.

Our technology is different from what its writers imagined.

But the question remains astonishingly contemporary.

Who owns the human body?

Who determines acceptable appearance?

Who determines which clothes belong to which person?

Who decides which expressions of masculinity and femininity are legitimate?

Who gets to define another person's identity?

And what happens when government, religion, political movements or social majorities decide there is only one acceptable answer?

I Do Not Need to Understand You to Respect You

There is a spiritual principle underneath all of this that transcends politics.

I do not have to understand everything about another human being in order to recognize their humanity.

I don't need access to your medical records.

I don't need to know your chromosomes.

I don't need to inspect your anatomy.

I don't need to approve of your clothing.

I don't need to share your religion.

I don't even need to understand your journey.

I need only understand this:

You are another human being.

Part of humanity.

Not apart from humanity.

And therefore you possess the same fundamental dignity that I claim for myself.

To Aria, and to Every Person Who Has Been Made Into a Controversy

To this teacher, and to every transgender, nonbinary or gender-nonconforming person who has watched strangers debate whether someone like them should be permitted to exist openly in society:

You are not Number 8.

You are not Number 12.

You are not a pattern selected from somebody else's catalog.

You are not an ideology.

You are not a political talking point.

You are not a problem requiring society's correction.

You are a human being.

And whether another person understands your journey does not determine the legitimacy of your existence.

The Question We Must Leave Our Children

Perhaps the most important question is not:

What should our children be protected from?

Perhaps it is:

What kind of world are we preparing our children to inherit?

Will it be a world where little boys must all perform boyhood identically?

Where little girls must all perform girlhood identically?

Where men must dress, speak and behave according to an approved template?

Where women must do the same?

Where religion determines the permissible boundaries of another person's identity?

Where people who cross those boundaries lose employment, dignity, safety or participation in public life?

Or will our children inherit a society mature enough to say:

You don't have to look like me.

You don't have to dress like me.

You don't have to worship like me.

You don't have to love like me.

You don't have to experience gender like me.

You don't have to become Number 12.

You simply have to be you.

And I will be me.

And somehow, in the enormous mystery of creation, there will be room enough for both of us.

That is not the destruction of society.

That is freedom.

That is human dignity.

And I believe that is love.

A Universal Rainbow Faith Reflection

There is no divine commandment requiring humanity to become identical.

A rainbow exists precisely because its colors are different.

Remove the differences and there is no rainbow.

Perhaps humanity works the same way.

Our calling is not to erase one another until everyone resembles the same approved pattern.

Our calling is to discover whether we can love across difference.

Because the alternative was shown to us more than sixty years ago.

A beautiful world.

A smiling world.

A perfectly orderly world.

A world in which everybody finally looks just like everybody else.

And somewhere inside that perfection, the individual human spirit quietly disappears.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Rev. Paula Josephine SadlerFounder & Founding MinisterUniversal Rainbow Faith ChurchActivating the Rainbow Light of Love

Universal Rainbow Faith affirms the sacred dignity, spiritual sovereignty and inherent worth of LGBTQIA+ people and all people.

Sources & Further Reading

The controversy discussed here has been reported from sharply differing perspectives. Readers are encouraged to examine multiple accounts and distinguish allegations, political arguments and documented facts.

• The Hill — opinion commentary concerning the Middle Creek Elementary controversy.

• North Carolina General Assembly — G.S. 115C-76.55, concerning K–4 curriculum.

• Reporting on the August 2026 Wake County Board of Education meetings and community responses.

• The Twilight Zone, Season 5, Episode 17, “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” first broadcast January 24, 1964.

• Charles Beaumont, “The Beautiful People” (1952), the story upon which the episode was based.

When Prejudice Becomes Policy: The Words We Are Teaching Our Children

There is another part of the Middle Creek Elementary controversy that cannot be ignored: the words being used about this teacher.

This is not merely an abstract disagreement about curriculum.

A human being has become the subject of a national discussion about whether their appearance, gender expression and identity make them fit to stand in a classroom.

And the public record deserves to be examined.

What People Are Actually Saying

In a July 28, 2026 post on X, conservative North Carolina influencer Cassie Clark (@dogwoodblooms) identified the teacher and wrote:

“Aria is a ‘nonbinary’ man.”

Clark complained that students would address the teacher as “Ms.” and characterized parents as being “blindsided” by the teacher's presence.

When another X user asked what the problem was if the teacher was qualified, Clark responded:

“I don't take the opinions of those who can't define what a woman is.”

And in another response, preserved in the screenshots accompanying this article, Clark wrote:

“Because lying to children and forcing them to participate in an adult's delusion is wrong.”

That latter statement has also been independently reported in coverage of the controversy.

Notice what has happened.

We have moved away from evaluating an educator's qualifications.

The teacher has instead been characterized as a delusion in which children supposedly are being forced to participate.

From Our Facebook Screenshots

The rhetoric continued in comments circulating with Facebook coverage of the controversy.

Stacie Moukas Edgar — Facebook

A commenter identifying herself as a retired teacher of 25 years wrote:

“I don't think our youth should be taught by a person who mentally does not accept their gender.”

She continued that children should not be expected to “pretend” that the teacher is something the commenter believes the teacher is not.

This is particularly revealing.

There is no allegation in that comment that the educator cannot teach music.

There is no allegation of professional incompetence.

Instead, the teacher's identity itself becomes the alleged disqualification.

Other Facebook commenters went further toward exclusion.

Brooke LeBlanc Naquin — Facebook

“If everyone homeschools then the teachers would be out of jobs and they would be forced to stop this garbage in the schools.”

Cheryl Lea — Facebook

After claiming that schools expose children to an “ideology,” she concluded:

“If you can, homeschool!!!”

But something else happened in those same Facebook discussions.

People began asking an extraordinarily simple question.

Landy Townsend — Facebook

“What's the big deal? Is she a good music teacher? Isn't that all that matters?”

Vickie Laramay — Facebook

“I don't understand, is she not qualified to teach music?”

Robin Lea Dailey — Facebook

“I'm curious, what are you all, who are against this teacher teaching, afraid will happen?”

Those questions cut through an extraordinary amount of political noise.

What, exactly, is the alleged harm?

The People Who Actually Know the School Have Spoken Too

At the Wake County School Board meeting, Stephen Stacks, a pastor and parent of a Middle Creek Elementary student, defended the educator:

“This teacher is perfectly qualified and a lovely person.”

He added that there was no reason for the teacher's ability to perform the job to be questioned.

Wake County Board of Education member Jennifer Job identified what she believed was actually happening:

“People online and in this room are willing to sacrifice this person's love for their job for their culture war.”

Board member Chris Heagarty addressed proposals for gender-specific employee clothing requirements, saying that enforcing clothing rules based upon traditional gender roles would constitute impermissible sex stereotyping.

This matters.

People actually connected with the school are talking about qualifications, competence and humanity.

Much of the national conversation is talking about clothes, pronouns, sex and gender presentation.

And Then Government Begins Speaking the Same Language

This rhetoric does not exist only in Facebook comment sections.

It has entered American governmental language.

A January 2025 White House executive order defines what it calls “gender ideology” and describes recognizing transgender identities as requiring institutions to accept a “false claim.”

Another executive order concerning K–12 schools directs federal agencies to develop policies for eliminating federal support for what it characterizes as “gender ideology.”

And as recently as August 24, 2026, President Donald Trump said:

“I signed an executive order to ban... transgender ideology from public schools.”

Think carefully about the terminology.

Not inappropriate sexual material.

Not an age-inappropriate lesson.

Not an unqualified teacher.

“Transgender ideology.”

When the existence and identity of human beings are repeatedly described as an ideology, the distinction between opposing an idea and excluding a person can become dangerously thin.

Project 2025 Goes Further

The Mandate for Leadership produced by the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025 uses even more severe language.

Its foreword associates what it calls the propagation of “transgender ideology” with pornography and the sexualization of children.

Elsewhere, it calls for “gender ideology” to be removed from public-school curricula.

Whatever one's political position on curriculum, we should recognize the enormous rhetorical leap involved.

A transgender person is a person.

A transgender teacher is a teacher who is transgender.

Neither proposition establishes that pornography is being shown to children.

Neither establishes that sexual activity is being taught.

Neither establishes that children are receiving medical treatment.

And neither establishes professional incompetence.

Yet these ideas repeatedly become rhetorically bundled together.

That is precisely how moral panic works.

No, Schools Are Not Secretly Performing Sex-Change Operations

One particularly extraordinary claim entered American political discourse during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Donald Trump told audiences variations of a story in which a child supposedly leaves for school and returns after having undergone an operation changing the child's sex.

At a September 2024 rally he asked audiences to imagine a child going to school without the parents being called and having the child's sex changed.

At another rally, he described a boy leaving for school and returning after what Trump called a “brutal operation.”

There was no evidence that American schools were secretly performing gender-transition surgeries on children.

Independent fact-checking found the allegation false.

Schools do not send children into classrooms in the morning and secretly perform gender-transition surgery before dismissal.

This should not be a partisan statement.

It is a factual statement.

We cannot build public policy around imaginary events simply because those events frighten people.

And This Is Why I Will Talk About the Words “I Would Rather Have a Dead Child”

Some readers will consider this comparison too strong.

I do not.

Because LGBTQ history contains real children who have heard versions of precisely those words.

Consider Nathan Mathis of Alabama.

Mathis later became an outspoken defender of LGBTQ people. But he publicly acknowledged something painful from his own past.

When he learned his daughter Patti was a lesbian, Mathis said:

“I told Patti that I'd rather my child was dead rather than have a gay child.”

Years later he expressed profound regret for having said it.

He explained that his response came partly from what he had heard preached in church throughout his life.

That admission is extraordinarily important.

Because Mathis ultimately recognized something that many families never recognize:

Religious teaching had helped teach him to reject his own child.

And Sometimes the Story Ends in Actual Death

Here in Nevada, the 2017 killing of 14-year-old Giovanni Melton provides an even darker example.

Giovanni's former foster mother, Sonja Jones, said the boy had endured physical, mental and spiritual abuse and that his father hated that Giovanni was gay.

Describing what she believed motivated that hostility, Jones said:

“He would rather have a dead son than a gay son.”

That statement was Jones's characterization of the father's attitude—not a direct quotation from the father—and it should be reported as such.

But Giovanni really was dead.

He had been shot by his father.

So when LGBTQ people talk about the danger of rejection, we are not inventing some hypothetical nightmare.

There are graves behind this conversation.

This Is What I Mean When I Say Some Parents Would Rather Have a Dead Child

Rev. Paula Josephine Sadler:

When I say that there are parents who would rather have a dead child than an LGBTQ child, I am not saying that every conservative parent believes this. I am not saying every Christian believes it. They absolutely do not.

I am saying that these words have actually been spoken.

LGBTQ children have actually been disowned.

Children have actually been thrown out of their homes.

Children have been subjected to physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse in attempts to make them heterosexual or force them back into a gender identity others selected for them.

And some parents have convinced themselves that rejecting their own child is an act of obedience to God.

That is why the rhetoric surrounding transgender people matters.

A child listening to adults call transgender people “delusional,” “disgusting,” dangerous, pornographic or unfit to teach may eventually discover that those adults are talking about them.

Imagine discovering yourself while simultaneously discovering that the people you depend upon most have already announced what they think about people like you.

That is not an abstract political debate anymore.

That is happening inside the heart of a child.

The Parallel With Marilyn Cuberle Becomes Even More Disturbing

Return now to The Twilight Zone.

Marilyn's father had undergone the Transformation.

But according to Marilyn, something essential had been taken from him.

She tells Valerie that her father cared about her—not because of what she wore or how she looked—but because of what she thought and what she felt.

Then comes the devastating revelation:

“When they took away his identity, he had no reason to go on living.”

That is fiction.

But the underlying warning is painfully recognizable.

What happens when someone repeatedly hears:

You cannot be this.

You cannot dress this way.

You cannot use that name.

You cannot call yourself that.

You cannot teach our children.

You cannot use this restroom.

You cannot participate in this sport.

You cannot serve here.

You cannot exist publicly as yourself.

At what point does “protecting society” become erasing the individual?

The Fallacy at the Center of the Argument

There is an enormous logical difference between these two statements:

“You must become transgender.”

and

“A transgender person is your music teacher.”

The first would be coercion.

The second is simply society.

A child encountering a Muslim person is not being converted to Islam.

A child encountering a Catholic nun is not being forced into Catholicism.

A child encountering a person in a wheelchair is not being encouraged to become disabled.

A child encountering an interracial married couple is not receiving compulsory instruction about marriage.

And a child encountering a transgender or gender-nonconforming teacher is not being transformed into a transgender child.

Exposure to human diversity is not compulsory participation in that diversity.

Who Is Actually Demanding Conformity?

This brings us directly back to Marilyn.

The people surrounding Marilyn believed she had the problem.

Why wouldn't she want to be beautiful?

Why wouldn't she want to be normal?

Why wouldn't she want to look like everyone else?

Why wouldn't she take the Transformation?

Her resistance itself became evidence that something was psychologically wrong with her.

And Marilyn asks one of the most haunting questions in The Twilight Zone:

“Being like everybody? ... isn't that the same as being nobody?”

That is the question I believe America must answer.

If Aria Derrick is professionally qualified to teach music, why should conformity to somebody else's expectations of masculine or feminine clothing determine whether she belongs in a classroom?

If her clothing satisfies the same legitimate standards of professionalism, coverage, safety and appropriateness expected of other educators, why must her clothing additionally conform to somebody else's theology of gender?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who gets to choose Number 12 for another human being?

Three Final Reflections

There is something profoundly backwards about teaching children that they must be protected from encountering a transgender adult. Children are not harmed merely because they discover that humanity contains people who look, dress, worship, love or understand themselves differently. But children can be harmed when adults teach them that difference should inspire disgust, fear or exclusion. The transgender teacher standing in front of them may not be teaching a lesson about gender at all. The adults protesting outside may be the ones teaching the lesson—and the lesson may be conformity.

There is also something spiritually dangerous about turning personal religious conviction into authority over another person's body and identity. You may believe differently from me. You may understand scripture differently from me. You may understand gender differently from me. Religious freedom protects those differences. But religious freedom cannot mean that your conscience becomes my compulsory identity. Otherwise we have not protected freedom of religion; we have simply decided whose religion possesses governmental power.

And finally, this is bigger than Aria Derrick. It is bigger than transgender people. Every generation is asked whether individuality will be tolerated only until it becomes uncomfortable. Marilyn Cuberle answered that question in 1964 when she refused to select a government-approved face and insisted upon remaining herself. Sixty-two years later, perhaps the question confronting us is even simpler: Can we build a society in which another human being does not have to become Number 12 before we permit them to belong?

Because no human being should have to disappear in order to make somebody else comfortable.

Rev. Paula Josephine Sadler Founder & Founding Minister Universal Rainbow Faith Church Activating the Rainbow Light of Love