I was selling manufactured gender to the select few over three decades ago. I don’t think it was much of a contribution to the human condition. At a queer only meeting, in Amsterdam, we passed a resolution, ‘homosexuality doesn’t exist’. The solidarity of the supposedly non-existing franchise, wasn’t perturbed by the irony. It was an argument against integration and normalization.

What was important, was to go forward collectively decisively, integration wasn’t possible because the revenue from pornography, prostitution and bars, couldn’t be eschewed by being normal. The objective was to destroy family, faith and patriarchy. We were also at war with the idea of gender, ideology required the aboli­tion of marria­ge, of coupledom and sexual dicho­tomy.

I might have named a club ‘Sedate’ if I couldn’t call it ‘Rohypnol’. If your position is that the house-queers just want to pee like the hetero-urinators, fine, you keep hold of that idea. I don’t see this legislation as anything other than win/win for group-think extremists who will be happy enough to join in any backlash against ordinary gays etc. when a propitious moment arrives.

YD

Montgomery County’s leaders gave due consideration to the rights and welfare of the majority, and there is still room for negotiation or amendment of details. Restrooms and locker rooms obviously pose difficulties, but they are resolvable — provided that people really want to resolve them.

Culture warriors do not seek a win-win solution. They object to the entire law, not just provisions. There are those (and I count PFOX among them) who oppose any public recognition, equality, or accommodation to transgender and intersex citizens. There are, to be sure, a few radical transgender activists who favor social revolution, but they are not a factor in Montgomery County, where the transgender community consists largely of upper-middle-class suburban Washingtonians who have rather sedate lives, jobs, and families.

I am confident that other concerned entities — Karen Booth’s group, and individuals like Dr. T — are sincere in wanting to preserve and balance the welfare of all. Solutions and compromises might include exemptions in the law for restrooms, exemptions for religious institutions, incentives for unisex bathrooms, grandfathering of old-fashioned gender-specific bathrooms, security cameras, and so forth.

My objection remains to PFOX’s mission creep. FRC has taken a group that once defended exgays and turned it into a political weapon against non-exgays. Meanwhile PFOX has crept away from sound thinking about exgays and adopted the unsound and sexually counterproductive approach of Richard Cohen.

That is very silly.

There are very many examples of gender identity issues related to sex crime. In fact we are often reminded that the deviants once convicted are really heterosexuals.

When is a gay not a gay, when he is cauht offending against kids.

At that point the ‘openly gay’ definition is used. Living openly as a gay without hetersexual attributes.

If it is funding for something gay, anything, absolutely anything can then be gay.

I would also point out that pedophiles would not be defined as pedophiles if an openly pedophile standard existed! In other word all the perverts are hetero and all the nice people are gay.

I have been involved in gay issues for decades. The time has to come when we dump umbrella activism and separate out the issues, otherwise it is a rainbow fraud based on threats & targeting.

It is interesting to note that nobody is giving a damn about the human rights or privacy of people with sexual conditions other than the minority.

YD

I apologize to the folk on this thread for bringing that particular fight here. It was inappropriate and I’ll try not to do it again.

For the record, I do not think you are an “ignoramus”. I do think you are intelligent and well-spoken, but that does not mean I agree with you on issues, nor does it mean I can’t or won’t be critical of some of the things you say. Believe me when I say I know what its like to be the receiver of criticism – but I think it (criticism) helps us grow.

But I think ultimately that the reason the Church is involved (or getting involved) is because most people are confused by it. The popular media has been giving more exposure to trans people and issues, and the Church, which Martin Luther King (I think) said is more often the tail light than the headlight in culture, is finally taking notice. So we have to take some time (though I hope and pray not thirty years) to sort out the confusion.

Since most of the folk who are now responding to my post think I’m basically an ignoramus, what follows at the end of this post is a snippet of a piece of legislation I’ve lately written for our United Methodist General Conference next spring. (Be prepared; it’s lengthy.) This year, our denomination faced the issue of a female-to-male pastoral appointment, and though we’ve spent thrity+ years battling it out over same-sex issues, we haven’t addressed trangenderism/transsexuality.

I’m not being snarky here, JAG, so I would really appreciate any insight you could give to the stuff I wrote that deal with its scientific/psychological understandings. But I don’t have the time or desire to debate the theological applications, especially with folk who have just treated me like crap on the Ex-Gay Watch blog. As Timothy already pointed out, we will probably not find common ground about what people of faith should believe and how they should respond, and I have no problem with that. And apparently no one noted that in my initial post above I didn’t state where I am personally on the issues, though many posters jumped in and made those assumptions.

Here’s the legislation …

“Transgender is an umbrella term used to describe an individual whose internal feelings of gender do not mesh with the gender assigned to him or her at birth. This is usually, but not always, coupled with a desire to live as the opposite gender, and may be accompanied by cross-dressing. Some individuals, however, choose instead to live inter-gender, identifying as neither male nor female, or as both together. Transgender people may also express a variety of sexual desires and may self-identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual or asexual.

Transsexual individuals identify as, or desire to be accepted as, a member of the opposite gender assigned at birth, and they usually seek to alter their bodies to align with these inner feelings. This is most often accomplished through sex reassignment therapy, which includes hormone therapy to repress or develop secondary sexual characteristics such as breasts and facial hair and sex reassignment surgery (SRS) to deconstruct and be-build sexual organs. Such people are often described as having “transitioned” from male to female, or vice versa.

In order to qualify for and obtain SRS, individuals must usually be diagnosed with “gender identity disorder,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. The psychiatric field also concedes that persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder, and other harmful psychological conditions may also seek this surgery. The benefits of the surgery are therefore debated in scientific and medical circles.

Although there are several genetic, hormonal and psychological theories, there is currently no known cause of transgenderism or transsexuality.”

I can’t speak for transsexuals, but my answer would be a resounding YES!