Gender Damnation to Hell
What am I doing on this line anyway?
I was raised Catholic. I had 12 years of Catholic education starting in 1960. During that time the Mass went from Latin to the language spoken locally as it tried to be more meaningful to its population. Much has happened since then but unfortunately strict adherence to a classically conservative and bigoted interpretation of the Bible has left many Catholic churches empty on Sunday. This has been going on for years.
The Vatican announced last month that it bars blessing gay marriage, saying God ‘can’t bless sin.’
Being transgender isn’t much better. Last year the Vatican released “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education,” that rejected the idea that gender is distinct from biological sex. Yet again the Catholic Church denies medical scientific facts. They haven’t progressed much further than when Galileo found that the Earth revolved around the sun. He was then deemed heretical by the Catholic Church.
A transgender identity, the Vatican document asserts, seeks to “annihilate the concept of nature.”
Wow, my transgender identity is annihilating Nature! I didn’t even know I had super powers. I always thought I was a victim of Nature. According to the Catholic Church, I should see gender dysphoria as something that is a challenge to “overcome.”
Now wait a minute! That’s not right!
In other words, I should wear a gender dysphoria “hair shirt” for the rest of my life and suffer for God’s will because God built me this way?
That doesn’t seem quite fair. Obviously God has a wild sense of humor.
But hold on a moment.
The concept of being transgender is never specifically identified in the Bible, so, like being a rational person trying to prevent eternal damnation, I want to get some clarity from the Bible.
Since it is confusing whether, as a transgender individual, I am technically gay, lesbian or straight, I will simplify my search by Googling “Where does the bible say that gay is a sin?” as a “Hail Mary” play to get to God’s will from His written word right from the source…
It didn’t work out well for me.
According to many Bible scholars, the jaws of damnation are wide open for me — but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I wasn’t relying the interpretation of a few religious bigots. There had to be some intelligent, well-educated Christians who could save me from the eternal fires of hell …
And I found him. In this article published two years ago, What does the Bible say about homosexuality? , the author applied intelligence, historical reality and a rational perspective to the verses of the Bible that were taken out of context. After reading it, I feel like I just may skip the fires of hell and eternal damnation after all.
It took a Methodist to save me.
Not to be out done by the Methodists though, some Southern Baptists have also stepped up their game.
Now that took me totally by surprise.
A Georgia church, kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention in the US for allowing gay members, wants to make sure ‘everybody’s welcome.’
On February 23, the SBC Executive Committee voted to remove Towne View for affirming LGBTQ members, the culmination of a two-year inquiry.
“Essentially the SBC has decided that because we welcomed these folks into our family that we’re no longer welcome in their family, and we’re OK with that,” Conrad said. “What we decided is that when we say everybody’s welcome, that means everybody.”
“I feel like most people know or are related to someone who is LGBT, so when you say this group of people is not welcome to be part of our faith tradition, you’re closing yourself off to a very large cross section of the country,” Reynolds said.
Wow, I feel hope for the religious world yet. They may finally get it. Somebody contact the Vatican. It is time they entered this century. Tell them Galileo was right.
It turns out that God loves all of us. She even loves me.
Emma Holiday
Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.
My writing has three specific goals:
1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.
2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.
3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.
Thank you for reading my work.
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