About Being Transgender, Part 4

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Resuming from yesterday's BLOG...the family...parents and siblings.

This is, to say the least, no piece of cake. There are, unfortunately, too many sad stories of rejection and abandonment by parents of transgender individuals. The most prevalent negative reaction is the religious one. "You are going to hell." That old and worn out passage from Deuteronomy is the first one dredged up to advance the belief that being transgender is against God's laws. This is particularly true for those unfortunate souls born to families who subscribe to reconstructionist and literalist dogma. At one time, I was a member of an online group whose primary function was to provide support for those whose lives had been discombobulated due to the guilt they had been forced to swallow on account of their being transgender. Many of these people had been driven to the brink of committing suicide because they had been unable to reconcile their lives with their religion. I am purposefully NOT using the term "faith" because it has little to do with faith. Rather...it is an imposition of judgement that presupposes infallibility. These same judgers, however, have conveniently "cherry picked" the parts of the Bible to which they resort for bombastic fodder. Has it not been said "He who is without sin...let him cast the first stone."?

And..do we support stoning those whom we consider to be heathens, savages and non-believers?
Furthermore...do the Ten Commandments state "Thou Shalt Not Kill", yet these same reconstructionists support the death penalty. Do we not smell the stench of hypocrisy?

I always appeal to love...how can parents with any sense of conscience and who love their children lay this gulit trip on them? This surpasses my ability to comprehend. The same set of circumscriptions are often promulgated by siblings and they serve to provoke the same responses that condemning parents provoke...confusion, despair and an inability to reconcile their lives with what has been crammed down their throats.

So...I appeal to the power of love to open these small minds...to let the light of love shine in. Only love can transmute this recalcitrant refusual to go beyond the parochial dogmas of judgement, pentitence and redemption which are grounded in intolerance, fear and hatred.

Tomorrow I will address the standard and oh so typical patriarchal response often heard from the father.

trickster108