How do you think transsexuality fits into religion? How do you deal with the conflicts?

You have asked quite a question, in asking me how I relate religiously to transsexuality. I will answer, though.

I personally have no conflict, nor do I see a conflict, whatsoever, between religion and being transsexual.

I do see conflict between human bigotry, and transsexuality, though....deadly conflict.

Islam, Judaism and Christianity all share the same basic roots, and even much of the same texts, and all three have passages regarding how 'male and female' are together in the soul, and much else besides. They also seem to share passages condemning homosexuality and crossdressing, but none of the big three can address transsexuality, because they cannot even recognise that it exists.

I really do not care, to tell you the truth. 2000+ years is a long time, and the bottom line is that real is real.

It is real that gravity exists, and will kill a person who falls from a great height, no matter what they believe. It is true that the earth circles the sun and that the moon orbits the earth as a planet, whether or not the Catholic Pope pardons Galileo or not. And babies are born with physical and neurological defects and mutations all the time, just as they always have, for all time.

One such mutation, or 'defect', or whatever one wishes to label it, is the biochemical events that occur in a fetus that lead to homosexuality, or in the extreme form, transsexuality. It happens in animals, including the animal known as mankind.

This is reality seen unflinchingly. Some babies are born with obvious physical sex differences, they are called 'intersex' babies, and are often altered to fit one sex or another. When they grow up, if the doctors guessed wrong, they get really upset, and they seek to have the problem corrected. This is reasonable: there is a sex for the body, and a separate sex for the brain. Sometimes the two do not match in some, or all degrees. Snipping the body does not change the brain. Snipping the body can only change the garment the brain, the mind, the soul wears. Hopefully to a proper fit.

The problem with religion today is that it is built on really, really ancient books written by ordinary men ('inspired' or not, they were still just men) who only knew what was known in the time they lived in. They knew nothing of the nature of the universe but what they could see in a desert sky, and the intricate and amazing clockwork of life was to them only a sticky mess that would gush out of a butchered animal, or slain man. Mysteries and gore.

Now we can identify, and deliberately create, animals who lack heads, or limbs, or other such genetic and developmental errors at will, and of course many neurochemical alterations as well, among them transsexuality and homosexuality.

Transsexuality is real. It is part of nature, it is a biological event as clear as the  living cells of the cornea of the eye, or the hydrochloric acid inside a stomach.

Those who preach any given religion may have great issues with all sorts of things. The Catholics killed and imprisoned people for daring to suggest that the moon was an imperfect cratered body instead of a perfect pearl, and I do not think I need to draw similar comparisons in the behaviors of the fervent believers of Islam, Judaism, or any other major religion. Observing reality can make some religious people nervous, if what is actual conflicts with what is traditional.

When religion tries to make any statement or law, about something it cannot possibly address, to which the texts of the religion are blatantly, clearly, utterly out of date, knowledge, or possibility of understanding, and when people try to enforce such ancient ignorance blindly, for no other reason than it is old, I consider that one of the greatest true evils mankind can commit.

It is the evil that leads to slaughter, and torture, and misery, all for the sake of a wisdom half understood from an ancient age that had no understanding whatsoever.

If this is what any god wants, then I stand against that sort of god, utterly. I do not care how scary a god is, a tyranny of ignorance cannot be tolerated.

But I do not think that any god would want such a thing. We humans do it to ourselves, clinging to moldering books, out of date, and out of time.

We are the product of reality. If reality is the work of any god, then all the things in reality are the creation of god.

If this is true, then transsexuality, being a real thing, a natural thing, as is homosexuality as well, is the creation of god just as surely as the moon, gravity, or babies born without legs.

A person cannot just grow new legs by wishing, and a transsexual or homosexual cannot reconstruct the neural cells of their amygdala and hippocampus just by wishing either. Just because something is hidden inside the skull, where we cannot see it, does not make it less real. Real is real. And where reality intrudes, religion, must bow.

So, either god is an evil tyrant beyond vileness, or the things of nature have some purpose. We cannot be other than what we are, and to ask the legless to dance or be damned forever is despicable.

Transsexuality is a matter of birth. No amount of religious intolerance can cure it. But hormones and surgery, real things, can. And in this 'cure' comes some measure of happiness and productivity in life, which means everyone benefits.

If this is ungodly, if happiness and productivity and sparing people from agony and misery is ungodly, then I am forever the enemy of god.

Surely god is not that evil.

So therefore, any religious passage condemning anyone for how they are born, must be in error. It must be ignored.

This still will not save you from being stoned or burned or stabbed or shot to death in certain countries, however. Including the United States, where I live.

So my long winded argument boils down to this:

Either being transsexual, and having the condition treated with hormones and surgery is a godly thing, or god is an evil tyrant that should be opposed utterly for the sake of all living things.

I prefer to believe that if there are any god or gods, that they are not monsters. I could be wrong, and god could be a psychopathic tyrant, but I would rather not see things that way.

So, with regard to religion, transsexuality should be all right, and any religion that clings to hate in the light of real understanding, must be modified or ignored altogether. Take your pick.

I say mindless hate cannot be tolerated, nor misery permitted based on books and scrolls 2000 years past their Freshness Expiration Date. I have had my fill of a history of Inquisitions, Jihads, and general genocide.

If there is a god, then I think being Queer is just fine in Her book.