Yet another religious thread: religion and transsexuality

Because we only ever hear about religion and homosexuality: from a religious perspective, how do you feel about transsexuals, and why?

Relevant Wikipedia article.*

I'd like to state in advance that this is not a thread for bashing religion, though it may be a thread for questioning interpretations of specific religious texts or doctrines. Also, "I'm an atheist, and I have no problem with transsexuals" would be a very common post, so let's not make it (though I might be interested in "I'm an atheist, and I disapprove of transsexuals for this philosophical reason.")

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I know, atheists have no say here, but why I think *

religions oppose gender-nonconformity is the same reason they oppose all non-coonformity. In the view of a perfect system there's no room for exceptions. There's men and women who do men and women's deeds, and changing that up is dangerous rebeliion against god's order.

the statement above is false

@Feo: Growing up, my church believed that transsexuals were just faking it for attention. The ones that did get operations and hormone therapy were considered to be possessed and needed immediate salvation before they were doomed to hell for eternity.

Then again, we explained a lot of things by way of possession or demonic involvement.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

"there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." -J.C.

Yeah, this is a common debate in the Catholic church with no real majority (surprisingly). For me, I've always found that gender is irrelevant as far as being a better person is concerned unless you decide to make it relevant. I've also come to believe that people can only really reach their full potential as far as morality, work ethic, and intellect by being comfortable with themselves. As such, if they honestly believe that they should be a different gender, or neither or both, then so be it. It causes no one any harm except for those who get unnecessarily tangled in someone else's life.

The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.

Edit: Self thumped for being a post full of bollocks.

edited 2nd Sep '11 1:33:30 PM by whaleofyournightmare

Dutch Lesbian

Here we go. You guys might want to look at this as far as Jesus's thoughts on homosexuality and transexuality goes. It's biased (as usual) but not against them.

The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.

I believe the reasoning goes "we are all God's creations, and God is perfect, therefore we, as we are born, are perfect in God's eyes. Ergo, attempting to change a very basic, inherent part of yourself is wrong, because it's rejecting God's design for you, in favor of your own "sinful" vision of yourself."

I think, anyhow...

I am now known as Flyboy.

Except that falls apart in so many ways and doesn't even backing from the Bible.

The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.

Since when did theology require that? A mishmash of passages can be used to justify anything, and it kinda starts in the beginning when god creates mankind as two, set, binary genders, and assigns them different roles.

the statement above is false

Hey, don't argue with me. I dropped Christianity at least in part because of its anti-LGBT stance in everything. And I was lucky enough to be in one of the more liberal denominations (Catholic). I can only imagine how much I'd be chafing right now in a conservative Protestant family...

I am now known as Flyboy.

Not necessarily. Unless there’s a clear verse, proponents of a dubious scriptural claim generally gather a dozen or more verses and often take them out of context to support their point. Doing that doesn’t automatically give it legitimacy.

Someone who REALLY wants to add a degree of legitimacy will do something like what happened in the article Ramus linked and examine the cultural and vocabulary significance of the scripture to determine what it was intended to say.

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

Yet, Jethro, you'll find the most mishmashes of passages don't analyze the rhetoric too deeply. While the man and woman passage is taken on a literal level by many people, most don't know of the eunuch passage due to its lesson being buried deeper under metaphors. Let's put it this way, Jesus really liked allegory and metaphor. He rarely ever gave answers straight, meaning that if you really wanted to find answers, you had to think and even then, you wouldn't find close to all of them, allowing for you to always be a student to others and those people to you.

Another example, getting the camel through the needle's eye as the same difficulty as getting into Heaven. Seems like an impossible task until you realize there is a pass between mountains near Jerusalem named The Needle's Eye (around long before Jesus to boot) and is notorious for being difficult to get through it with hooved animals, but still doable. Thus, the task to getting into Heaven is no longer impossible, but simply quite difficult, which is fitting seeing as it's paradise, and made possible by thinking a little deeper and being a little more knowledgeable.

Yeah, you can take any bundle of passages and derive meaning from them by forcing them in a line hard enough, or you can take passages as they stand alone and research them a bit more deeply.

The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.

I think it's only right to add that save possibly Ramus, we've yet to have any religious folks come into the thread and talk about their views, possibly because the unflattering speculations on how religious people behave started on post 2. So some sort of attempt to stay on topic is probably desirable if we want an actual discussion on the topic.

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

Er...we're about as not-liberal as they come. I'd think Baptists, some of the crazier Pentecostals, and the usual loud fringe elements are about the only less liberal denominations I can think of.

They're liberal about some things. Evolution, for example.

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

Well, they're certainly fiscally liberal, and at my Catholic school the teachings are very considerate. Our morality class is basically "everybody has a different opinion, this class is how to decide for yourself what is right and wrong, and this is what the Church tells us that God says is right and wrong."

The most I've ever heard about gays and whatnot is "the Bible may or may not tell us that they're being immoral, and it's not really the biggest concern in the world anyhow," so... yeah...

I am now known as Flyboy.

Tangent, but you can't really say wherther catholicism or protestantism is more liberal or conservative, mostly because there's so many protestant denominations and interpretations, and there's splits in the church of Rome too.

Anyway, on topic, at least Iran considers Transsexualism, and allows SRS, but it's also used as a treatment of homosexuality.

the statement above is false

Most people would find this website filled with convoluted liberal interpretations to take clobber passages in non-conservative ways. It also contains some weird passages as well like with David and Jonathan as well as Ruth and Naomi which are interpreted straight forward.

TU NE CEDE MALIS CLASS OF 1971

I skimmed a bit.

I’ve seen infinitely more flimsy attempts establish/disestablish a deep rooted doctrine. Both using the Bible either as a pro-life or pro-choice point gets pretty silly quickly.

Considering the sheer amount of “evidence” to support their interpretation, though, I’m not going to deny they’re probably stretching things quite a bit. Concentrating on aspects like taking verses in context with those around them and examining the vocabulary is generally a better plan, they've done a bit of this.

Though, if you’re suggesting some of their interpretations are “weird”, I’m not going to disagree.

edited 3rd Sep '11 3:04:06 PM by Justice4243

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

Not that I'm an expert on this stuff, but wouldn't the rightness of one analysis be unaffected by the other ones?

" You maybe. Now me? Oooh Ms. Mindfang. Let's do it." -Aon

If we’re talking evidence for a certain Biblical interpretation, generally what happens is both conflicting (or perhaps even more groups) provide SO much evidence that’s been shoved through subjective selection to better illustrate the point that any one interpretation practically becomes personal preference.

At least in this case, the “pro” homosexuality side has some leeway where most of the passages concerning homosexuality are rather vague, and there’s some *

potential evidence to support them.

It’s better than a “We should endeavor to take the Bible as literal as possible” defense when the translation isn’t always an exact science (English wasn’t around back then, the word “homosexual” didn’t even come into existence until the late 1800s). , anyhow.

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

IIRC at least a couple of the instances in Romans where homosexuality is referenced were actually inserted sometime around the 50's as a questionable translation of one of the words nobody was sure about.

EDIT: Here we go. Wasn't Romans, but still.

edited 3rd Sep '11 7:08:46 PM by Pykrete

I have no strong feelings on this issue.

Huh.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard

"And thus the world ended."

Seriously though, I think that's the last thing I expected to see when I clicked on this thread in my "Watch list"

Justice is a joy to the godly, but it terrifies evildoers.Proverbs21:15 FimFiction account.

@Justice: Well some traditions are accepting (Hinduism), while others logically wouldn't be (Confucianism), and Christianity is vague about it. So maybe it's a matter of legitimate cultural variation.

“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard