“You can’t minister to people at a distance, you need to get right down in the cheeseburgers with them. If you’re going to reach out to the homosexuals, you need to be there with them, making friends with them, loving them, without contributing or endorsing it. You’re just there. That’s where Jesus went. He would hang with people like that and be Himself. That was the difference. Rather than getting all absorbed, He always stood apart because He was Himself in that environment, in love. I think that’s what attracted all the sinners to Him. He was going to tell them the truth, He wasn’t going to insult or hurt them . . .
We just insult God’s intelligence to think that we’re the arbiters of all this good and bad taste. I think Christians in this country are really hung up on a lot of things, because it makes life easy and manageable.” - Michael Roe, “The Cream Rises”
News story, make sure you listen to the media file found in the middle of the article.
You listened to the file, right? Because it’s the first line in there that really made me want to blog about this. Using the appeal to fear is nothing new from the Religious Right which wants nothing less than freedom and equality for all, so long as it follows conservative Christian guidelines. The article made me think that they were overreacting, using some purple prose, maybe, but nothing really out of the ordinary. But then I went back, read it again, and this time I listened to that file. And this time, I had also just finished listening to Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s short story Elites on Escape Pod.
I suppose that appealing to a mother’s protective instinct is likely nothing new either, especially for an organization so overtly manipulative as Focus on the Family, but still, it bothered me. Aside from the fact that in our post-Columbine nation a grown man (in a dress or not) isn’t very likely to be able to simply walk into a school unchallenged, simply because a man does choose to wear women’s clothing does not make him a sexual predator and it is irresponsible of Focus on the Family to imply that it does. The fact that most transvestites are heterosexual seems to have escaped Dr. Dobson and his organization. The fact that most homosexuals are appalled at the actions of groups like NAMBLA seems to have escaped them as well. In fact a lot seems to have escaped them. Bruce Hausknecht, a judicial analyst for Focus on the Family, had this to say in the article:
“With SB 200, we no longer have two ’sexes’. We enter a brave new world with a myriad of ’sexual orientations.’ This bill, unfortunately, is in keeping with a national effort by ‘transgender’ advocacy organizations to accomplish an open-bathroom policy.”
I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, Bruce, but we already have a myriad of sexual orientations. Aside from heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals, we also have transvestites, hermaphrodites, and transgenders. Of course, the last of these is purely a societal view, and groups like Focus on the Family like to believe that anybody who does not fall strictly into the first has some sort of disease. And then we wonder why people seem to despise Christians.
It is in that light that I wish to pose this question to Focus on the Family (though even if I e-mailed it directly to them I wouldn’t expect and actual answer): just what facilities would you expect a hermaphrodite to use? If a person has genitalia from both sexes, which restroom should they then choose? Should they simply hold it until they got home or explode since they don’t fall into one of two generally useful but not entirely inclusive categories?
A different and better question that needs to be asked is precisely how this “tramples religious freedoms”. It’s a question I’ve asked of some of my more theologically conservative friends, and I’ve yet to come across a reasonable answer. This fearful attitude that the world is only one bit of legislation away from crushing the Church needs to go away. For good. After all, more so than this law, that attitude is unbiblical.
Good blog. But still, a really stupid law. For all the so-called “confusion” out there, I wasn’t aware people were having problems figuring out which restroom to use. I thought the whole male/female thing was working out okay. I have yet to see hew and cry from the hermaphrodite lobby about male/female restrooms.
But I’m with you on the fear angle. It entirely misses the point that it’s really just bad law, and turns it into something it is not. It’s something that has ticked me off about the Church at large for a long time. If we ever get to sit down together again, Michigan Bryan, I will tell you all about it. But you probably already know.
It should also be pointed out that they are conflating four very different ideas: biological sex (male, female, or transsexual/intersex/hermaphrodite); social gender identity (which be “cis-gender” or transgender); sexual orientation (hetero/homo/bi/pansexual); and clothing preferences (which may be gender-neutral, gender-”appropriate”, or transvestite).
Biological sex is something that can only be changed with surgery and hormones. It’s not a simple matter of XX or XY, either; some people are born with physical anatomy that is intermediate between the two commonly-recognized extremes. This has nothing to do with sexual orientation; it’s just how the combination of genetics and environment affected you in the womb.
Gender identity is usually but not ALWAYS tied to sex; there are many “gender-dysphoric” people who identify more strongly with the sex opposite to the one on their birth certificate. This doesn’t have anything to do with sexual orientation, either; most gender-dysphoric people are aware of the discrepancy at a very young age, long before puberty is even on the horizon. We don’t know why it happens, but it’s a recognized, established phenomenon.
Sexual orientation is the one that seems to cause the most histrionics in groups like FotF, and its origins are no better understood than gender identity. What research HAS been done seems to indicate that orientation is a continuum, not a binary either/or proposition. The exact mixture of genetic and environmental effects that causes it is unknown, but we do know that non-hetero sexual activity show up in a wide variety of animals, not just humans. In some species, such as some penguins, homosexual couples will even form lasting pair bonds.
As for clothing options, the boundaries of what is considered gender-”appropriate” have changed constantly throughout history — and, as you point out, it has nothing to do with gender identity or sexual orientation.
Focus on the Family seems to be trying to take every kind of “not-normal” they can think of and lump them together in one amorphous bogeyman. Which isn’t terribly surprising, since if their listeners actually stopped to see these people as individuals instead of monsters, FotF’s scare campaign wouldn’t be nearly so effective.
Jim, go read the law. http://www.leg.state.co.us/CLICS/CLICS2008A/csl.nsf/fsbillcont3/BD7A295EB6F4460E872573F5005D0148?Open&file=200_01.pdf
Most of it has zero to do with the bathroom. Most if it has to do with denying folks housing, legal services, etc. In other words it’s about basic human rights. We can’t deny someone those things based on gender, sexual orientation, etc. It’s not a bad law, it’s being misrepresented.
I should have added “as usual”.
Also check this for more Focus wackiness.
http://www.spiritualtramp.com/2008/06/national_day_of_prayer.html
Hi;
I see reasonable conversations going on here. May I interject a real life situation. I’d like to hear your guidance on this.
My mother was given a drug to take to lessen the chance of miscarriage and promote healthy babies — that’s what the doctor told her. The drug is Diethylstilbestrol, or DES. In male fetuses, it feminizes the brains of one in five of us ‘DES sons’.
I finally came to terms with this, and realized my choice was transition or die. So, I’m now a male-to-female transsexual who’s had ‘the operation.’ I’ve changed all my legal paperwork and although I still have a male body with XY chromosomes, it has been retrofitted to approximate female anatomy, which is good because if I ever end up in an accident, there will be no ’surprise’ for the first responders.
I ‘pass’ very well, thank you. Only rarely do strangers figure out I was not born this way. Most people have to be told, by me, or, more often, by someone else who just has to ‘drop the bomb.’
The law really is about restraining those who react badly upon finding out I and others like me have transgressed the gender binary, and who wish to be the agents of retribution for being ‘deviants’.
The bathroom issue is a red herring — a scare tactic. But, unfortunately, it works.
So my question to you is — knowing what you know now about me, and assuming for the moment you get absolute power to make the determination — which restroom and changing facility do you feel I, a male-to-female transsexual, should use when in public spaces?
I eagerly await your responses;
Hazumu Osaragi
Hi Hazumu!
In situations where you have to choose between male and female restrooms, I would say to choose the female one. Your gender identity is female, and that is how you present yourself to the world around you. Regardless of what your chromosomes say, the face you show the world is the same way you see yourself: as female.
Thank you for sharing your story! It’s always good when we have the chance to take these sorts of discussions out of the purely theoretical.
Cheers,
Chris
You should definitely use the female restroom if you’re “passing” as female pre or post op.
I’ve gotta agree with Chris and Scott, Hazumu; generally, one wants to take the path that has the least possibility of getting them arrested.
That said, thank you for visiting and commenting. I hope you’ll continue to read as I post things here, your input would be most welcome.
Bryan
I liked this. thanks.
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