Yet another religious thread: religion and transsexuality

I hear prickling sounds of hell freezing over (time to turn my thermostat up).

I guess for the most part, trans* people have less to fear from the religious people, more from random people who get Trans Panic.

Pretty much.

One must remember that one don't own your body under catholic teachings. It's a gift from God which you must look after and protect. 

Sexually Realignment Surgery Is therefore not seen as a matter of establishments one's personal gender identity, but rather an act of vandalism. An attack upon the work of god. 

Wrong.

Your body is simply a gift. What you do with it after that is largely up to you, the single exception to this being suicide and that has nothing to do with the fact that you're editing your own body and a whole lot more to do with the fact that you're killing yourself and being all sorts of self-destructive.

After all, if that was true, Catholics wouldn't be allowed to get surgery, such as the ever so popular penis foreskin removal surgery that many people have done on their sons. So please, can we not make assumptions about the current beliefs in Catholicism? Or any church for that matter?

edited 4th Sep '11 3:22:43 AM by Ramus

That's what I was taught. I'm sure your upbring was a different.

I'm not going to claim it's the church's mainstream thought on the matter, but don't get off telling me I'm wrong.

edited 4th Sep '11 3:35:45 AM by joeyjojo

Let me guess, by a teacher who barely read (any edition of) the Bible, has no idea what the Catechism contains, and listens to Dante. Look, the thing is with many of the misconceptions about Catholicism and what it contains can be attributed to many different things, the causal believer who knows very little beyond the basics, the number of spin off sects that people get muddled with Catholicism, misconceptions being taught from generation to generation, etc. There's probably no one that can blamed for this, it just sort of happens, to extent where the religion for me as a whole radically changed when I actually began to crack open those dusty books.

Yet, doing some reading, you tend to find that what many of the official texts contain tends to be very different from what most people know today. Yeah, many of the messages have been warped by various groups and you can't expect people to necessarily have the time to do some deep in research on this stuff, but it still irks me to no end that what should be well known among the religious community isn't and that most of the people who follow the religion don't know much of anything about it.

No, it's no one's fault, but it's definitely a problem and what is public face of Catholicism and the actual face of Catholicism is are two very different images.

As an anti-religious transsexual, I once flipped through "Dianetics" JUST to find out what the esteemed Mr. Hubbard ordered his followers to think about my type.

I was most definitely not pleased with what I found.

edited 4th Sep '11 3:57:00 AM by Metalitia

I didn't actually know Scientology had an opinion on the topic. Care to tell us in more detail about the whole to that way your post isn't just another random potshot at religions in general?

Okay point well taken. But there is no reliable biblical 'evidence' in support for many religious practices. It's just a result of what people read from it and choose to follow that become a fundamental part of a belief system or not.

Eh, I've got a feeling if we start talking about what are true religious practices in various religions, we'd be going from vaguely on topic about "What's Catholicism's actual stance on transsexuality" to wildly off topic "Religion: Popular versus roots". Maybe next time.

Ah, well. I don't have the book in front of me at the moment (but the next time I do, I'll be typing the pertinent passage), but they basically don't approve of us transpeople. Moreover, their disapproval of transness was basically just a subheading of their disapproval of homosexuality.

But in any case, this should help for now.

Wow...you're a peach, Mr. Hubbard.

...I guess...at least he's not allowing for ambiguity?

Yes It was good that he took a hard line against 'teh gay'. It was also good of him to take a boat full of small boys out into internation to share his teaching with them

I'm surprised to see Hubbard criticizing sadomasochism, since the point at which I stopped reading Mission Earth was when I got the impression he was getting off on writing a sadomasochistic threesome.

He lived a colorful existence to say the least. I’m not sure how much of a sexual deviant he was, but I do know he horded drugs and basically instituted indentured servitude while still alive.

I have trouble accepting him as the authority of much of anything, especially morals and how to treat people…

This does make me curious if a transgendered person approached a “free stress test” given by a scientologist if they would be turned away or accepted so they , and their wallet could be saved.

Sort of guessing the later…I’m not sure if that’s the more or least cynical of the two options…

...why would you take Hubbard as any kind of authority on his own? He was just a guy. So was Jesus (in my opinion, anyhow...), but Jesus actually had good ideas, so I accept him as an authority. Hubbard was an idiot at best and a fraud at worst...

Jesus along with other founders of religion at least fall into a number of patterns regardless of where or when they started.

Notably, regardless of their message, they tended to live in poverty and be more concerned with spreading their message than any worldly possession. The religions, though small, are often VERY peaceful at least while the founders are still alive. Islam, for example, didn’t start punishing people with death for leaving the faith until AFTER Muhammad was dead (though it could be that Muhammad himself was charismatic enough that few if any had the will to leave).

L. Ron Hubbard’s life is marked be none of these the opposite of these. Also, most religious founders don’t have quotes like this associated with them:

So, regardless of if one humors the idea that Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, etc… had some sort of metaphysical aspect going for them, it’s hard to deny that records (historical and/or scriptural) tend to establish them as putting their views before their own well being as opposed to the other way around.

edited 4th Sep '11 5:24:13 PM by Justice4243

Well, to be somewhat cynically sociological for a moment, being poor tends to make one liberal (wanting change to make it so people aren't poor; therefore, likely, making one also idealistic) while being rich tends to make one conservative (wanting things to stay the same so you stay rich; therefore, likely, making one also cynical). Extreme idealism can change into religion, so...

I guess Hubbard is an outlier: so cynical it wrapped around again? I can't really say; Scientology and knowledge thereof isn't my strong point...

Except those poor religious figures generally advocate rejecting wealth, thus making everyone poor. Sort of.

edited 4th Sep '11 5:31:07 PM by Pykrete

Poor in material wealth, not poor in spirit...

Oh, okay.

I don't really know. I mean, to my knowledge, I don't know if the Bible even could condemn elective transsexuality. I mean... did that even exist at the time?

Jesus was all about accepting others as they were, sinner or saint, so, I would assume that means you're not supposed to persecute others, but with what the Protestants (and sometimes even the Catholics...) say...

Dammit, where are the Orthodox Christians?

Elective sex-change surgery wasn't exactly a thing. There wasn't much to say at the time :|

Well, I mean, the point is, there isn't a scriptural basis for it. Which means that I only have these people who say they knew what God wants because... well, just because. Basically, I see no reason why I should take their word for it, which is even worse than actually having a written record, even if it's of dubious authenticity with regards to authorship...

Buddhism's doctrine states nothing about transgenderism as we currently understand it. It mentions that two genders of people are unfit for entering The Sangha. The one was a thing that I forgot the meaning of and the other was akin to a very feminine male prostitute. Despite not being allowed to enter The Sangha these people were to be treated with loving kindness. Like everyone else in existence. Animals, gods, and ghosts are included in everyone by the way.

Now then...this leads to Buddhist stances on the topic largely up to the culture of whatever country it is in. Thailand for example is split between being accepting of male transgendered individuals (of both genderqueer and transsexual varieties) and not being accepting of it. They have various words for transgenderism the most well known of which being Kathoey which is translated as Lady Boy in English most of the time. Kathoey tend to fall into the genderqueer label. They have a separate term for what we would call transsexuals and for the life of me I cannot recall it at this moment in time.

On a vaguely related note we should keep in mind that Kathoey is also used as a derogatory term for feminine males and for gay males. It carries with it a meaning similar to fairy or fruit. So. A male lacking in masculinity and therefore a failure in the man scale of manliness. Homosexuality is also treated with this split view for the curious.

Other Buddhist nations such as Japan are not as open to the idea. It's easy to live in Japan so long as you are normal and can dance Japan's complicated social waltz. Falling out of this field of normalcy can lead to problems. Though we should keep in mind that Japan is slowly moving towards accepting the idea.

Western Buddhists tend to be more accepting of LGBT apparently due to their great embracing of the whole LOVE EVERYONE WHOO DIVERSITY idea. While this obviously doesn't hold as true for absolutely everyone we can keep it in mind as a general sort of...thing.

edited 4th Sep '11 5:51:44 PM by Aondeug