Transgender bathrooms?

[Elok]

...Let me point out, though, that by any reasonable Christian standard, being married by a judge is not a real marriage - is it?  Is it not tacit complicity in something against your beliefs to contribute to ANY wedding not before a preacher man of a denomination you don't find hopelessly blasphemous in its doctrine?  Like, flowers arrangements for a Christian Science-officiated wedding is wrong for the nice church lady, according to her own lights if only she'd thought it through.

I mean, marriage is a religious issue right? (A legal own-goal every time you shrill it out, social "conservatives") and that nice brown Hindu couple you know isn't really married, whether it's any of your business or not -and your uncle and his 'wife' who went before a judge are openly living in sin- or it's live and let live, and Mark and Steve's legal arrangement is really, REALLY none of your business.  You can't pick and choose about what Jesus, who I don't recall ever discussing what marriage is, wants.

Hey Elok - I think maybe I've given you reasonable time to cool off --- I'd really like a response to this point, leaving aside the issue it was embedded in...

Eh.  If you really want my opinion, in no particular order, after a twelve-hour shift:

1. The "Jesus didn't specifically mention X" objection is the easiest to answer.  At no point did the Jesus of the canonical Gospels offer a clear opinion on whether or not it is acceptable to burn small animals alive, to drink and drive, or to leak nuclear secrets to Stalin; to determine what this figure would want, you need to extrapolate from not-so-precise statements.  What marriage was, was in no way controversial in first-century Palestine, and would not have warranted a significant mention.  However, Jesus of Nazareth's opinion on sexual issues (going purely by the text) was notably conservative in general; in Matthew he tightens divorce law considerably and in John he goes out of his way to chide the Samaritan woman at the well for serial monogamy.  Probably other examples too, that's just the two I remember.  As for defining marriage, the classical example is an approving reference to "for this reason it is written that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to a wife, and the two shall become one flesh," or similar.  Plus the the very first miracle at the Wedding at Cana, which implies tacit approval of the whole thing.

2. I don't recognize marriages between non-Christians as being explicitly sacramental in character, and properly Orthodox Christians should be married in a church in an Orthodox ceremony.  That does not mean that people who have gone through some other form of ceremony to become man and wife are not really married, that their children should be considered bastards (though that term is meaningless and indeed the practice is normal nowadays), etc.  I likewise believe that divine grace can reach them through their marriage if they have the right intentions.  Presumably also through gay couplings, though I don't think of them as "married" in the same way and this does not legitimize same-sex relations (theologically) any more than Islam is as good as Christianity if reading the Quran makes a young Muslim behave better than he would have otherwise.  God is free to reach us through any number of channels; He worked through Judas Iscariot, for example.

3. Proviso to that last statement: I am apathetically in favor of gay marriage as a civil matter, in the sense that it makes sense in a pluralistic society.  The government has no reason to be invested in the question for a union that doesn't normally produce children, but it makes sense for stable gay couples to be able to file jointly, to have next-of-kin rights, etc.  If nothing else, it doesn't make sense for end-of-life decisions for a gay guy to be made by his estranged brother rather than by the guy he's lived with for thirty years.  This lackluster endorsement will not withstand the institution of gay marriage being used as a bludgeon against people who don't believe in the broader philosophical or religious claims behind it.

4. As to a Christian Science wedding, you are conflating disapproval of Christian Science as a religion with disapproval of a gay marriage as an entire institution.  This isn't really a sensible objection from my perspective and I'm too tired to dredge through the whole chain of reasoning why ATM (not really interested in doing it later either).  Shortest version I can come up with is that the focus of the CS wedding is the wedding, not the validity of CS as a belief system.

5. This whole thing has cooled off in the intervening decade, as America is by and large settling into an equilibrium where most people and places are okay with people being openly gay but lose tolerance fast when they get militant about it.  I live in the FL panhandle, half the ICU nurses at my (Christian) hospital are openly gay, nobody cares, but nobody wants to be associated with anything "woke" either.  The movement is in a different place, with the T component having become a very heavy albatross for the whole thing.  As for T (original thread subject), don't recall if I even expressed an opinion in 2016 and not gonna look it up but letting them use whatever toilet seems simple enough in most cases.  If the privilege is abused in some way, that likewise seems simple enough to punish on a case-by-case basis.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's a pretty good reaction, thanks.

[Green1]

...Let me point out, though, that by any reasonable Christian standard, being married by a judge is not a real marriage - is it?  Is it not tacit complicity in something against your beliefs to contribute to ANY wedding not before a preacher man of a denomination you don't find hopelessly blasphemous in its doctrine?  Like, flowers arrangements for a Christian Science-officiated wedding is wrong for the nice church lady, according to her own lights if only she'd thought it through.

I mean, marriage is a religious issue right? (A legal own-goal every time you shrill it out, social "conservatives") and that nice brown Hindu couple you know isn't really married, whether it's any of your business or not -and your uncle and his 'wife' who went before a judge are openly living in sin- or it's live and let live, and Mark and Steve's legal arrangement is really, REALLY none of your business.  You can't pick and choose about what Jesus, who I don't recall ever discussing what marriage is, wants.

Hey Elok - I think maybe I've given you reasonable time to cool off --- I'd really like a response to this point, leaving aside the issue it was embedded in...

Eh.  If you really want my opinion, in no particular order, after a twelve-hour shift:

1. The "Jesus didn't specifically mention X" objection is the easiest to answer.  At no point did the Jesus of the canonical Gospels offer a clear opinion on whether or not it is acceptable to burn small animals alive, to drink and drive, or to leak nuclear secrets to Stalin; to determine what this figure would want, you need to extrapolate from not-so-precise statements.  What marriage was, was in no way controversial in first-century Palestine, and would not have warranted a significant mention.  However, Jesus of Nazareth's opinion on sexual issues (going purely by the text) was notably conservative in general; in Matthew he tightens divorce law considerably and in John he goes out of his way to chide the Samaritan woman at the well for serial monogamy.  Probably other examples too, that's just the two I remember.  As for defining marriage, the classical example is an approving reference to "for this reason it is written that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to a wife, and the two shall become one flesh," or similar.  Plus the the very first miracle at the Wedding at Cana, which implies tacit approval of the whole thing.

2. I don't recognize marriages between non-Christians as being explicitly sacramental in character, and properly Orthodox Christians should be married in a church in an Orthodox ceremony.  That does not mean that people who have gone through some other form of ceremony to become man and wife are not really married, that their children should be considered bastards (though that term is meaningless and indeed the practice is normal nowadays), etc.  I likewise believe that divine grace can reach them through their marriage if they have the right intentions.  Presumably also through gay couplings, though I don't think of them as "married" in the same way and this does not legitimize same-sex relations (theologically) any more than Islam is as good as Christianity if reading the Quran makes a young Muslim behave better than he would have otherwise.  God is free to reach us through any number of channels; He worked through Judas Iscariot, for example.

3. Proviso to that last statement: I am apathetically in favor of gay marriage as a civil matter, in the sense that it makes sense in a pluralistic society.  The government has no reason to be invested in the question for a union that doesn't normally produce children, but it makes sense for stable gay couples to be able to file jointly, to have next-of-kin rights, etc.  If nothing else, it doesn't make sense for end-of-life decisions for a gay guy to be made by his estranged brother rather than by the guy he's lived with for thirty years.  This lackluster endorsement will not withstand the institution of gay marriage being used as a bludgeon against people who don't believe in the broader philosophical or religious claims behind it.

4. As to a Christian Science wedding, you are conflating disapproval of Christian Science as a religion with disapproval of a gay marriage as an entire institution.  This isn't really a sensible objection from my perspective and I'm too tired to dredge through the whole chain of reasoning why ATM (not really interested in doing it later either).  Shortest version I can come up with is that the focus of the CS wedding is the wedding, not the validity of CS as a belief system.

5. This whole thing has cooled off in the intervening decade, as America is by and large settling into an equilibrium where most people and places are okay with people being openly gay but lose tolerance fast when they get militant about it.  I live in the FL panhandle, half the ICU nurses at my (Christian) hospital are openly gay, nobody cares, but nobody wants to be associated with anything "woke" either.  The movement is in a different place, with the T component having become a very heavy albatross for the whole thing.  As for T (original thread subject), don't recall if I even expressed an opinion in 2016 and not gonna look it up but letting them use whatever toilet seems simple enough in most cases.  If the privilege is abused in some way, that likewise seems simple enough to punish on a case-by-case basis.

I personally think that if two people have some sort of agreement and call it marriage, so be it. Who am I not to recognize what they want? I have always been of the opinion if you want a life partner, it should be whoever you like as long as they can consent and make decisions and it's mutual.

But then again, I do not have a mountain of dogma that says otherwise. though I can see why many bronze age religions discouraged it. You have members that don't produce kids, your religion dies out or you become slaves of the people of an oposing religin next valley over who can field more 16-22 year olds with spears. Evn modern times. Look at the The Shakers.

You are right about the "woke" stuff. The term started out as "hey, you are aware people exist like this and they are human beings" and "hey, you realize everything is rigged and messed up" to a way for marketers, militants, and zealots to manipulate people. ie: "You can't be racist if you are X group" (of course you can. It's in the dictionary!) or saying all lives matter is bad when it's the basis of many, many religions both ancient and New Age and even in Secular Humanism. Or used as a snarl word to attack social and political opponents. Like saying something like universal health care is bad because people might be using it to get reproductive parts lopped off kind of nonsense I think insurance is behind.

it's a reason I stepped away from the Unitarian Universalists.

Also, this is unpopular on many corners of the web and get you banned (especially on Reddit) but I think giving hormones to kids for gender affirming care is very sick. If you want to go full that route, fine. Maybe a bunch of 12 to 15 year old boys would want Testosterone shots to dominate in sports and have a longer third leg (the only time in life T does this according to Wikipedia) . Maybe little Suzie wants silicone implants at 12. But NO ONE would want that. And we know what happens if you do that at least with steroids. People would be griping about doping in sports and folks ending up in Juvie because they went in a Testosterone rage.  LOL. that's gender affirming care too, if you think about it! In my state of Louisiana, they castrate those convicted of child SA. That's gender affirming care , too! But I don't think this should be because 12 year old Johnny thinks he is a girl you should be able to go to a doc if you have tons of money and do this. probably should be some form of child abuse.

Past 18, fine... if you got the cash. But that's the same as tattoos, cosmetic surgery not due to accidents. There's one dude that altered and transformed his body into a human tiger. Tens of thousands of dollars in tatoos, dental work, and plastic surgery. But that person was an adult with full decision making capacity a child does not have.

I mean, if you are going to be gay, BE GAY! Why add extra steps? Steps that will mess you up rest of life? Over on r/detrans, there's all sorts of horror stories. People not peeing straight, wounds that won't heal, zero libido (which the fetish is why they did this in the first place!) etc. Proponents say it's a minority and suppress it, but even a 1 in 10 chance of being screwed up should be significant.

As far as bathrooms, there are LOTS of bathrooms with restrictions. If you are homeless in touristy areas, you can't even go to Mc Donalds to use the restroom unless you buy something. Some of them even have token gate locks or a special key you have to get from cashier. Whoever owns the restroom gets the say. But no one is going to be making people pull down pants to check. You pass, you go. You don't you don't. And there are lots of unisex restrooms.

And MtF kids in sports, if you started life as a boy then transition but still have your parts, this is the natural equivalent of taking tons of steroids. It's banned in most professional sports if done artificially and I personally would be very worried if I had a daughter in locker rooms with some "chick" with a third leg out (who professes to be a lesbian - but has hanging bit in the nether) and is like a big cornbread fed dude.

But let me stop before I get some of these folks doxing me and giving my family issues for ust stating a reasonable opinion that is not hateful at all.

[Lorizael]

I personally think that if two people have some sort of agreement and call it marriage, so be it. Who am I not to recognize what they want? I have always been of the opinion if you want a life partner, it should be whoever you like as long as they can consent and make decisions and it's mutual.

But then again, I do not have a mountain of dogma that says otherwise. though I can see why many bronze age religions discouraged it. You have members that don't produce kids, your religion dies out or you become slaves of the people of an oposing religin next valley over who can field more 16-22 year olds with spears. Evn modern times. Look at the The Shakers.

There's not really anything in the Bible (an Iron Age/Classical period document, not Bronze Age) about gay marriage because that just wasn't a coherent concept at the time. They (Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, etc.) didn't conceive of sexuality the way we do now, so there simply weren't "gay" people who might want to get married. There are some proscriptions against some same-sex sexual activities, but the reasoning behind why is variable (based on temporal and cultural context of the passage) and a matter of debate. Some scholars, for example, look to cultural conceptions of masculinity, where taking a receptive/submissive/feminine role in sex was seen as unacceptable/unclean. (Note that in such a conception, a penetrative/dominant/masculine role might be just fine, regardless of the sex of who's being penetrated.)

[Buster's Uncle]

That last is pretty much exactly the attitude of the Romans...

-And the whole post is Yes, exactly.

[Buster's Uncle]

I have to throw out for general discussion, not trying to force argument on poor Elok, that his point 4. dodges the heart of my thesis, which is that marriage is a religious issue -as the religious reactionaries eternally shout- in which case marriages not of your religion, QED, don't count --- OR it's none of your business.  Christian Science is not the point - substitute the Hindus or your uncle before a judge OR Mark and Steve.  Substitute your own hypothetical example of something marriage a Christian might not hold with.  My point still stands, and I reckon the logic scans.


Green raises a couple points I figure are worth kicking around - trans people in sports -a fairness issue nearly as old as the medical science being good enough, i.e., older than me- and treatment for minors, somewhere I tend to agree with his ethical assertion, but more complicated than that.

Both speak to complex arguments about what's for the best, and somebody gets shafted no matter what you do - the poor old lady and her cakes, once again.

Thoughts?