Your response captures so much of my personal belief and feelings. My shades of bias and prejudice seem to emerge at the moment I personally become overly judgmental, uncomfortable, and irrational without having knowledge, understanding or a personal relationship with the difference I am challenged by. Fear tries to take over.

I often try and imagine how different my life would be, how “successful” would I be in life, if my entry point into life was different from how I identify (white, male, heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied, US citizen, financially secure etc.). I am not arrogant enough to believe I am that talented and gifted to pull myself up by my “bootstraps” and bust through all the systemic barriers and disadvantages I would face for being different…probably not. Ironically, I would be the one on the receiving end of my fear generated hate and discrimination.

Thinking about this usually shifts my fear towards respect, sensitivity and a desire to use my various forms of privilege to serve creation without looking for recognition and reward. Getting pats on the back is not part of the deal going against the grain. I have also come to understand that by trying to do this doesn’t make me feel less whole. Changing my behavior to accept, respect and be fair with the other person to help make them feel whole only deepens who I am and my faith belief. I become more whole.

Thank you for all you are doing to open my mind to the “majestic range and complexity of the human condition.”

Remain strong.

Frank

I have coworkers that are practicing homosexuality. We have a very good working relationship because I treat them as decent human beings. I don’t spend all of my time trying to win them to Christ, but I have let them know that homosexuality is wrong in the sight of God, just like any other sin. I tell them that Jesus died for their sin. An open mind is to accept people, help them when they need it and correct them when they are wrong. This is exactly what Jesus did, but always told them to go and sin no more.

Thanks, I will keep participating. I will not condemn because I have the power to help. I am praying for you. Jesus died for your sins, but you like me have to accept it and follow his holy ways. Keep fighting for human rights, not rights to do wrong.

You answered this very profoundly, however incorrectly. You may have your opinions and promote immorality by stating removing your genitals to become something you can never become is okay, and that people can do what ever they wish. This is incorrect. Just imagine living next door to a repeated rape or sex offender? One changes their mind very quickly.

Until Christ come to set up his kingdom on this earth there will always be sin, and true Christians will always fight against sin. Is this hateful because we advise people not to walk off a cliff? Some of us are unwise in our approach and comments, but we will never say or condone a person trying to change their sex. We know the affect that sin has on this world; abortion, lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, bestiality, adultery, fornication, witchcraft, homosexuality and the likes. Luke, do you believe that there is such a thing as sin? If you do then who determines it? If there is sin then there is help.

Call us right wing or whatever name you wish; it will always be wrong for one not to accept their birth gender, and to change it. God is still in control, but allows man to destroy himself, but not without warning. And I am at trumpet. The problem here with transgender or transvestites is the confusion of the mind. If you have someone openly saying that they have changed their gender, they are also saying they don’t know who they are. In order to change the gender, one must change a part of their brain and their pelvis bone. Then they will end up like Dr Frankenstein’s monster. To put people like this in high level positions is to risk a job being done from the beginning. If the person is capable of doing the job, why do we have to know if they had their genitals remove? If the President hires a one arm person, should we know this or see it?

Luke, I would like to say to you and all your readers (you will not publish this even though it is considered diversity) that God loves each one of you, but he has standards. Those standards are the things that will judge us after this life. Christians, left wings nuts as you and your readers call us, know that God is sovereign, and his law is final. I love you in the name of Jesus Christ and pray that God’s mercy will cause all to repent. If not a fiery day awaits those that reject Christ’s offer of salvation. Call the fiery day statement a fear tactic, but it is a real statement.

..at least that approach would be more constructive, in any case.

I appreciate this comment, because I had a minor epiphany when I read it: Is there really a difference between being transgender and being inter-sexed?

I know the technical meaning of each word. However, in common usage, one seems to upset some people more than the other, probably because most people in our culture still make a separation between the “physical” body and the “mind.” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker coined the phrase, “The mind is what the brain does.” Why is being inter-sexed more acceptable on some level than being transgender?

The organs of the body are all part of a single system. Humans have made divisions and named the parts, but those separations are arbitrary. Where, for example, does the spinal cord end and the brain begin? There is no abrupt transition.

I have seen the statistic that one in 500 newborns has some anomaly of the reproductive system, and I would assume that there is a continuum of such differences. Where do we draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not? Many inter-sexed persons who were surgically “repaired” as infants are now saying it is a mistake to try to make everyone fit into either one sex or the other.

We could choose to consider transgender as within the range of intersexed people. The brain and the reproductive organs are definitely part of a holistic system that makes us, in terms of both sex and gender, who we are.