Created Male *AND* Female - The Conjunction is important

It has been a while since I last posted to this blog, but I have been moved to action by a horrific attack on transgender people by so-called "religious" leaders who should know better, spearheaded by pernicious officials at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office of the Family.  The following is my response:

Created Male *AND* Female: An Open Letter TO “Religious” Leaders

December 19, 2017

Dear “Religious” Leaders: 

I have seen your letter of December 15, 2017 promulgated at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website, at http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/promotion-and-defense-of-marriage/created-male-and-female.cfm

You begin your letter by claiming a commitment to marriage as the foundation of society, but only if that marriage is a “union of one man and one woman.”  The emphasis on heterosexual unions is rooted in six biblical references Gen, 2:24, Mt. 19:5-6, Mark 10:8, 1 Cor. 6:16 and Eph. 5:31 to becoming “one flesh.” But what about your rejection of those of a same-sex attraction whose commitment of love and fidelity move them to becoming “one soul?” We see this in one passage, 1 Sam. 18:1-3.

¹ And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. ² And Saul took him that day, and would not let him return to his father's house. ³ And David and Jonathan made a covenant, for be loved him as his own soul.

You claim that the one man, one woman marriage is a “natural marriage,” but that is a heterosexist notion, Becoming “one soul” is just as natural for gay and lesbian couples, as becoming “one flesh” is for straight couples.  And doing otherwise is the unnatural.  Your promotion of opposite-sex marriage and denigration of same-sex marriage is the first evidence of your animosity against people who are created by God to be different.

You who are the scribes and Pharisees f the modern era do not heed the lesson of Mt. 7, and in this letter, show yourselves to be like the foolish man that build his house upon the sand (Mt.7:26).

Beginning in error, you compound the error by attacking transgender and intersex people, who are created by God to be different.

In your letter, you cite the words Gen. 1:27 but fail to understand their significance of the conjunction “and” in the context.  After you share the idea that human beings were created “male and female” in the image and likeness of God, you proceed in the rest of your letter to separate that creation solely into beings that are “male *or* female” – and there is a difference.  You assume that sex is naturally “male or female” though that is not true, either biblically, culturally, or scientifically.

In Mt. 19, Jesus acknowledges more than two sexes – while he starts in verses 4 through 6, he refers to the “one flesh” concept that is the foundation of heterosexual marriage.  But 1n verses 11 and 12, Jesus points out that this message is not intended for all, but only to “they to whom it is given” (meaning in context, those who are heterosexual and cissexual).  But then, in recognition of the teachings found in Isaiah 56, Jesus points out that “male and female” is not merely “male or female” but also includes people referred to as “eunuchs.”

¹² For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it.

Transgender and intersex people are created by God as transgender and intersex people. The science shows that we are “born so from our mother’s womb” and some of us seek gender confirming surgeries so that we can fit into binary socio-cultural expectations that we be “male or female” even though we were created different.

Indeed, the reality of gender cannot be separated from one’s sex, but those whose genital tracts are shaped differently, or whose brains followed one gender path while their genital tracts developed differently, or those whose bodies develop entirely along one line but, aside from a complete androgen insensitivity gene expression, might have turned out developing entirely along the other path.  Binary sex, arbitrarily dividing “male and female” solely into “male *or* female” is a cissexist concept that is an affront to the diversity of God’s creation, and to the very concept of a respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person to which you scribes and Pharisees pay only lip service.

Sexual difference within the variability of being “male and female” is in reality more complicated than seen through  the overly simplistic heterosexist cissexist lens of seeing people as naturally “male OR female” – and as you write “sexual difference is not an accident or a flaw—it is a gift from God that helps draw us closer to each other and to God.”  So, then, why do you reject the inherent dignity and worth of transgender and intersex people who God cleaved differently out of that inchoate “male and female” creation?

Know this, that the gender dysphoria experienced by transgender and some intersex people is not a discomfort with one’s actual sex, but rather a discomfort with the arbitrarily-defined cultural binary sex to which one was incorrectly assigned in the first place.

If it is your responsibility to “respond … with compassion, mercy and honesty” then why do you persecute us?

Children are not told that they can “change their sex.”  However, some children assert, correctly, at an early age, that they really do not belong grouped together with the sex they were assigned at birth – that is not their inherent sex, despite external genital evidence.

It does these children who are different great harm to suppress their natures as gender-different.  Other children should be taught to respect the worth and dignity of those relatively few who are gender-different, just as Jesus did.  Unlike you who wish to stifle the natural diversity of God’s creation, I call upon parents and our medical institutions to not harm these children. (And that includes stopping the barbarity of infant genital mutilation still sometimes practiced on intersex infants.) I agree that “The state itself has a compelling interest, therefore, in maintaining policies that uphold the scientific fact of human biology and supporting the social institutions and norms that surround it,” but those words do not mean what you advocate them to mean.

In your letter you create a “straw man” that makes it seem that transgender and intersex people operate under the notion “that a man can be or become a woman or vice versa” rather than recognizing that it is possible for a transgender person to have been created by God having a brain and genital tract that do not match up in a cisgender manner.  So instead, you would rather condemn transgender children to suffer “ridicule, marginalization, and other forms of retaliation” so that you can preserve your cissexist blindness in the face of biblical truth and scientific developments about the natural world.

Your call for policies to uphold a person’s sexual identity is good, but for your limitation to the diversity of “male and female” to be cleaved solely into a cissexual male *or* female.  The privacy, safety, worth and dignity of transgender and intersex people is as relevant and important to all is the dignity of cisgender people – and yet in your blindness you do not see Truth. If you truly believe in “authentic support” for those who God created to be different, you will rescind and reject your letter.

Sincerely,                                                                                     

s/

Joann Prinzivalli

Serva Servarum Deae

This open letter is intended in particular for the following modern scribes and Pharisees who signed the December 15, 2017 letter:

Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera 
Bishop of Scranton
Chairman, USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs

The Most Rev. Dr. Foley Beach 
Archbishop and Primate
Anglican Church in North America

The Rev. John F. Bradosky
Bishop
North American Lutheran Church

Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Philadelphia
Chairman, USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth

Most Rev. James D. Conley
Bishop of Lincoln
Chairman USCCB Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage

The Rt. Rev. John A. M. Guernsey
Bishop, Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic
Anglican Church in North America

Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison
President
Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod

Imam Faizal Khan
Founder and Leader
Islamic Society of the Washington Area

Most Rev. Joseph E. Kurtz
Archbishop of Louisville
Chairman USCCB Committee for Religious Liberty

Melchisedek 
Archbishop of Pittsburgh
Orthodox Church in America

The Rt. Rev. Eric V. Menees
Bishop, San Joaquin
Anglican Church in North America

Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, III 
Founder and Director
Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies
Church of God in Christ

Rev. Dr. Gregory P. Seltz, PhD 
Executive Director
The Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty

The Rev. Paull Spring 
Bishop Emeritus
The North American Lutheran Church

Rev. Tony Suarez 
Executive Vice President
National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference

Very Rev. Nathanael Symeonides 
Ecumenical Officer
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

The Rev. Dr. L. Roy Taylor
Stated Clerk, General Assembly
Presbyterian Church in America

Andrew Walker 
Director of Policy Studies
Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

The Rev. Dr. David Wendel 
Assistant to the Bishop for Ministry and Ecumenism
The North American Lutheran Church

Paul Winter 
Elder
Bruderhof