‘As a trans woman, we are so often despised . ... I was determined to make a change.’

under Sharia law — LGBTQ citizens face increasing prejudice in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. The rise of a conservative brand of Islam has amassed more power in Indonesian politics and society by fueling anti-LGBTQ sentiment. Conditions are rarely better in minority Christian or Hindu enclaves.

Indonesia ranks as one of the least tolerant countries for LGBTQ rights, according to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, which placed the Southeast Asian nation 150th out of 174 countries for social acceptance.

Only 9% of Indonesians say homosexuality should be accepted by society compared with 72% in the U.S., according to a Pew Research poll published in June.

In 2016, the Indonesian Psychiatric Assn. classified homosexuality a mental disorder. Even today, LGBTQ Indonesians are subjected to forced exorcisms akin to ritualistic conversion therapy. Private parties, homes and businesses harboring LGBTQ events are commonly raided by police or crashed by religious conservative groups. Lawmakers have tried to criminalize same-sex behavior, including with a recent bid to change the nation’s criminal

code to prohibit consensual sex between unmarried people.

The intolerant environment has created special hardships for transgender Indonesians, known in the country as waria, which comes from the Indonesian words wanita, meaning woman, and pria, meaning man.

Treated as pariahs today, waria face limited career prospects. Employment with the government, considered one of the few stable paths to the middle class, is next to impossible. Many are disowned by their families, suffer from loneliness and depression and have few options other than to work on the streets, often as buskers singing to outdoor diners.

In April, a group of men killed a 43-year-old transgender woman in Jakarta by dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire after accusing her of stealing a phone and wallet.

The case follows numerous other instances of violence, including beatings and murders of transgender sex workers.

“The condition for trans people in Indonesia is deteriorating,” said Kanzha Vinaa, head of Sanggar Swara, a Jakarta-based support group for transgender Indonesians. “Hate speech and violence

is escalating. Conservative political groups know they can use their opposition to LGBT people to attract votes.”

Residents of Habi said they overcame their prejudices when they saw how committed Kelan was to the community, earning her the election victory.

“She is a decent woman. She is open to everyone,” said Yuni Bara, 23, who attends the same church Kelan volunteers at in the predominantly Catholic community. The more he spoke to Kelan, the more he came to appreciate the complexity of gender identity and understand the mistreatment of transgender Indonesians.

“They are not just pretending to be women,” Bara said. “It turned out the stigma for waria was wrong. She made me wonder how a trans woman can accomplish so much. How can she be so active in the parish and still have some people not accept her?”

Kelan was born in Habi, but moved with her family to the province of Papua when she was still an infant. As a child, she was relentlessly teased for not being masculine enough. She tried to obscure her femininity, with little success, by taking up karate and taekwondo.

By the time she was a teenager, she would secretly apply makeup when she was alone. She felt she was coming into who she was, and relished the few times when no one was around when she could try on her dress of mosquito netting.

“I was ashamed,” she said, “but I had no doubt of my femininity.”

But many Indonesians were not ready for such transformation. Searching for answers, Kelan turned deeper into her faith. Growing up attending mass almost every day, she felt compelled to enroll in a seminary after junior high school and later took an oath as a Catholic brother.

Living in a monastery in Yogyakarta, a city known as the cradle of Javanese culture, Kelan increasingly struggled to reconcile her personal struggle with church teachings. She developed vertigo from the stress and eventually quit the clergy in 2015 after initially being denied by the local archbishop.

“I thought God was unfair,” she said. “I felt like I had sinned by not being like other men. I even protested to God: Why create me in the body of a man if I feel like a woman?”

Kelan started working at a nonprofit agency helping