Sex Changed at Birth Certificate

The American Certified Loonies Union (ACLU) is suing here in Illinois to force the state to change the sex designation "male" to "female" on the birth certificates of two men who had sex change operations in Thailand. I'm shocked. Not by the ACLU. They can't shock me anymore. (At least I hope not.) But from this story in the Chicago Tribune I take it that you can have a sex change made on your birth certificate, as long as the "sex change" done on your body is by a state licensed physician (any U. S. State will do).

The apparent rationale for the permitted change is that a birth certificate sex change operation helps protect transsexuals from harassment (it helps conceal their original or birth sex). However, these unfortunate "women" have been able to designate themselves as females on their drivers licenses, passports, and Social Security cards. This has some logic to it, as a patrolman stopping one of them on the road would be confused by M for male on the drivers license, possibly, though the photo would set him straight, perhaps.

The passport, drivers license, and Social Security cards all document the present condition, so to speak, of their bearers. Why is it so important to change the birth certificates? I can't remember the last time I had to produce my birth certificate, so it is not likely that a change will really protect them from harassment--it's not like a transsexual will show his birth certificate to the guy sitting on the barstool next him.

The birth certificate is a historical document. At such and such a time in such and such a place so and so was born--and he was born with male equipment..... Now perhaps these two plaintiffs, who have altered their bodies, now feel entitled to alter history as well. The right to rewrite documented history is apparently now a Civil Right, denied because the surgery was done in Thailand.

But wait, isn't the ACLU just defending a right recognized (i.e., created) by our Supreme Court, a right to have whatever version of reality you want to embrace to be respected and acted upon by the state whenever possible, including changing the past? Whatever.

Comments

[Josiah A. Roelfsema]

Altering history...the protagonist's job in Orwell's 1984. After reading which, I never wanted to live in it.

[John Smith]

I think they should be allowed to change the sex on the birth certificate ... if they pass a blood test showing that they have changed their chromosomes.

[labrialumn]

Somehow I doubt that gene therapy has come along so far.

I strongly suspect that they are mutilated men, not women.

[Kamilla]

Ah, but Labrialumn, it cuts both ways, so to speak. There are surgically mutilated women as well.

Kamilla
(former resident of the "sex change" capital of the country)

[Sharon]

I don't know about the states but in Australia, you have to produce your birth certificate for a lot of things, as it is one of the 100 points of Identification, some of the things you have to show your birth certificate for are, Passport application, centrelink payments, (similar I suppose to some sort of Social security in the States), some jobs, especially government, also opening bank accounts and applying for some licenses, so if it has a gender marker on it that is opposite to what a person has transition to, then they may have problems that might not have occurred if the correct gender was on the birth certificate.

Regarding the chromosomes, the 46 karotype is not the only chromosomes/genes to identify gender, there are also others, which in combination cause the gender differences, as there have been cases of people who grow as female with XY chromosomes as well as males that have XX chromosomes, then of course you also have other variants like xxy

Just my 2 cents worth

[Bobby Neal Winters]

>>Regarding the chromosomes, the 46 karotype is not the only chromosomes/genes to identify gender, there are also others, which in combination cause the gender differences, as there have been cases of people who grow as female with XY chromosomes as well as males that have XX chromosomes, then of course you also have other variants like xxy
<<

These are, of course, disorders.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>These are, of course, disorders. <<<

Objective ones, too!

[MgS]

How about the civil right to live one's life in relative peace without the state throwing up obstacles at every turn?

A transsexual is not a criminal;

An amended birth certificate does nothing except remove an obstacle for day to day life. The originals remain on file with the amended version. It can be traced if need be, but for the most part, there is seldom a need.

Since the birth certificate is a primary means of establishing citizenship (a requirement for getting a passport last I checked), there is no reason why an amended version should not be issued for those very practical purposes.

[Bob]

I want my "race" changed to "Black" on my birth certificate.

Now you begin to see the benefits. . .

[Polly Prim]

It's interesting that they would have two birth certificates on file.

My husband was adopted by his stepmother and has two birth certificates. One is the original, showing his birth parents, and the second shows his stepmother who became his legal mother after his birth mother lost custody of him.

Thus far the only complication is when I can't remember which mother's maiden name is associated with our bank account.

[Bob]

Hey, I wonder if O Face can go back now and put Abraham Lincoln as his dad on his elusive birth certificate.

[MgS]

I want my "race" changed to "Black" on my birth certificate.

Now you begin to see the benefits. . .

Spurious comparison. Birth certificates in Canada and the US don't document ethnicity.

[Bob]

"Spurious comparison. Birth certificates in Canada and the US don't document ethnicity."

Too bad. I'll have to find some other victim group to join retroactively. How many do you belong to?

[Stuart Koehl]

You can't put your race or ethnicity on your birth certificate, but it goes on a host of government forms that can have transformative effects upon your life, if you happen to belong to the lucky downtrodden. For instance, if you own a business and belong to a 'disadvantaged minority group", you can register your company under Section 8(a), which gets you a lot of government sole source contracts. Same applies at the state and local level. There are also set asides for woman-owned companies, so changing the sex on your birth certificate can pay off handsomely. Belonging to the right ethnic group also opens up a host of scholarships, low-interests loans and job opportunities. It can also greatly increase your odds of getting into a top college or university. According to one study, blacks and hispanic males were between 50 and 100 times as likely to be accepted into various law schools as white male applicants with equivalent GPAs and LSATs.

Yes, we want to judge a man by the color of his skin, not the content of his character. And yet, there are anomalies, like my daughter's friend whose parents are in fact Spanish (i.e., born and raised in Spain) but who is not considered an "Hispanic Surnamed American" by the bean-counters in the civil rights movement. Spanish is just white, after all. So is being Afrikaans, even though my South Aftican friend with the blond hair and blue eyes is the only real "African-American" I know.

[Bob]

"who is not considered an "Hispanic Surnamed American" by the bean-counters in the civil rights movement."

Oh, Stuart--I bet somebody will come and write a nastygram to you for that pun, unintentional or not (I thought it was hilarious either way).

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

"According to one study, blacks and hispanic males were between 50 and 100 times as likely to be accepted into various law schools as white male applicants with equivalent GPAs and LSATs."

Wow. I wonder if there are pro-affirmative action folks who'd reply that back in the day, the situation was reversed and whites were 50-100 times more likely to get into various graduate schools than a similarly qualified black/hispanic.

Anybody remember the Bakke case for admission to UC Davis medical school?

[Tom]

I was going to write a comment about genetics, sexual birth defects, and brain chemistry, but it's pointless to have a discussion with people who are unwilling to see any point other then their own narrow point of view, much the way fundamental Christians view their religion and other religions different from their own. I might as well be talking to a wall.

[labrialumn]

Tom, no, but you are encountering reason, which may not have been even taught to you in the government schools.

Kamilla, an XY eunuch is a male eunuch, not a woman of any kind. An XXY person, a very rare condition, is -probably- still male due to the presence of the y chromosome, and probably should be helped along with male hormones, but I'm not as well-read on that.

[MgS]

So far what I've seen is ignorance of the realities of transsexuals - not reason.

An XXY person, a very rare condition, is -probably- still male due to the presence of the y chromosome, and probably should be helped along with male hormones

Eh? That makes no sense at all. If you actually did a little research, you would have discovered that the IS movement argues that no intervention should happen without the individual's consent. If they request male (or female) hormonal intervention, then you provide it.

Kamilla, an XY eunuch is a male eunuch, not a woman of any kind.

Gender is about a whole lot more than chromosomes or what's dangling between the legs. A Eunuch still identifies as male - a MTF transsexual does not, and likely never did.

Gender has huge psychological and social aspects to it that go far beyond mere physiology and chromosomes. To reduce gender to chromosomes one must then address a myriad of chromosomal conditions which produce ambiguous results. These people are, physiologically, neither male or female, but somewhere betwixt.

In fact, arguably, the best evidence for the validity of transsexuals lies in the very fact of the variety of chromosomal intersex conditions in the world. If there is such a broad variety of genetic expression, why on earth would we assert that the same diversity does not extend into psychological and social aspects of humanity?

(an aside - transsexuals are rare - likely only marginally more common than a specific IS condition)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>an aside - transsexuals are rare - likely only marginally more common than a specific IS condition<<<

All the more reason not to perpetuate lies on their behalf.

[MgS]

All the more reason not to perpetuate lies on their behalf.

What makes you think that's lying? One of the most common traits of transsexual narratives is an awareness of their situation extremely early in life - often long before any concrete awareness of gender would have been established.

There's considerable evidence to suggest that this is a condition that starts at birth - but because of the very obstacles that society puts forth, is seldom dealt with until adulthood.

Placing more obstacles in lives that are already difficult because of societal prejudice and ignorance is hardly helpful to anyone.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>What makes you think that's lying?<<<

The lies in particular have to do with facts concerning sex, and the alteration of fundamental identification documents in order to perpetuate the lie that a person of one sex is in fact a person of the other sex. Sex is real. "Gender" is pure BS invented by social scientists to cover a multitude of perverse and erroneous ideas. Sex is immutable, something with which we are born, that cannot be altered or "reassigned". Not all the surgery in the world will provide a male transexual with ovaries, a uterus, that very necessary second X chromosome. Not all the surgery in the world will give a female transexual testicles and a prostate gland (though many men would gladly donate theirs, once they reach a certain state of life).

We are born male or female, and we die male or female, and we do not change in the interim. I truly feel sorry for those poor souls who feel they got the wrong body to go with their psyche, but those are the breaks. If they want to mutilate their bodies to gain a simularcum of a different sex, I have no problem with that (just don't insist that I pay for it, or endorse it in any way). I am perfectly willing to let these people live out their lives in whatever peace they can find (though, in fact, "gender reassignment" seems to cause many of them more pain than it was supposed to cure). However, whatever their outward appearance, whatever they think they are, the do indeed remain the sex they had at birth. That doesn't change, and neither should their birth certificates. Altering those perpetuates a lie.

[Enbrethiliel]

+JMJ+

Josiah already said so in the first comment to this post, but it bears repeating:

Winston Smith "correcting" documents in the Ministry of Truth springs to mind immediately. Yet it's not just Orwellian; it's Huxleyan, too. This is where Nineteen Eighty-four and Brave New World meet.

[JD Salyer]

Orwell references are obviously apropos, but I find there's a scene from Monty Python which inevitably comes to mind.

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-07.htm

[Peter Gardner]

It seems to me that if someone can legally change their name and get a new birth certificate, if they can legally change their sex, they should get a new birth certificate too. Likewise, if they can't get a new birth certificate after legally changing their name, they shouldn't get a new birth certificate after legally changing their sex either. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Peter,
But they aren't changing their sex, they're just changing the appearance of some of their bodily equipment.

This phenomenon is just a part of a very American idea taken to an extreme. Who I say I am now (right now) takes precedence over anything else that I may have said or done or been in the past. And all those around me have to approve/accept/deal with it as I see fit. It's individualism run amok. (That may be redundant.)

Paul McHugh, the former chairman of the Dept. of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, has written at length on the problems of those who want sex reassignment surgery. The majority of M to F transexual wannabes have a sexual fixation on the idea of appearing female to males. That is, they become aroused at the idea of *being* sexually arousing (as a female) to a male. This is not a sound basis for surgery.

[Peter Gardner]

Note my use of the adjective "legally". I'm saying the law should be applied evenly here; if one legal change warrants a change in birth certificate, so should the other. If one doesn't, neither should the other. Whether any given change is a good idea for any given person at any given time is not something I particularly want to get involved in.

[MgS]

The lies in particular have to do with facts concerning sex, and the alteration of fundamental identification documents in order to perpetuate the lie that a person of one sex is in fact a person of the other sex. Sex is real. "Gender" is pure BS invented by social scientists to cover a multitude of perverse and erroneous ideas.

Let's talk about "real" and "fact" for a moment.

Fact: Sex, whether chromosomal or simply observed genitalia is wildly diverse in this world.

Fact: Sex is assigned at birth based on observed genitalia.

Fact: Physical sexual appearance is not necessarily indicative of chromosomal status.

Fact: The birth certificate is a legal document establishing (primarily) when and where someone was born.

Fact: The birth certificate does not document IS conditions.

Fact: Gender is as much between the ears as it is between the legs. It has significant social and psychological dimensions.

Fact: Human behaviour is extremely diverse in all respects. Gendered behaviour (what is perceived as masculine or feminine) is human behaviour.

In short, it's pretty hard to convince me that someone who is transsexual is outside of the normal range of human diversity.

Second, since the birth certificate is an amended document, the original filed copies are not destroyed.

Third, if your definition of male and female is based solely upon birth genitalia, then you must provide for those who are born with ambiguous genitalia somehow. (Notably, the birth certificate does not currently do this at all) Is a woman less of a woman because she has no uterus? Or perhaps her ovaries didn't form? Of course not.

Lastly, fraud suggests that there is intent to deceive. The desire to live one's life in relative peace is not fraudulent. These people are asking for the same right to personal privacy as any other citizen. Having a birth certificate with an inappropriate gender marker on it raises all sorts of questions that are unnecessary.

[MgS]

Godbold writes:
Paul McHugh, the former chairman of the Dept. of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, has written at length on the problems of those who want sex reassignment surgery.

McHugh has always been hostile to transsexuals. He has, to my knowledge, never been a specialist in the area nor has he published significant research on the subject. The paper you are referring to is an opinion piece published in "First Things", and he has never substantiated his claims in any peer review setting. There are a lot of psychiatrists and psychologists who would disagree with him, and they've published actual data to back their claims.

The majority of M to F transexual wannabes have a sexual fixation on the idea of appearing female to males.

This is J. Michael Bailey's pet theory (along with Ray Blanchard and Anne Lawrence). Sadly, it flies in the face of the expressed narratives of thousands of transsexuals. Perhaps it is Ms. Lawrence's personal experience of transition, but it certainly is not the experience of many others. Perhaps worse, in order for that theory to sustain itself, it relies on declaring anyone whose narrative conflicts with it a liar. That's pretty weak science if you ask me.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Fact: Sex, whether chromosomal or simply observed genitalia is wildly diverse in this world.<<<

In H. sapiens sapiens, you get two choices. No substitutions.

>>>Fact: Sex is assigned at birth based on observed genitalia.<<<

It's worked for millennia. Why change now?

>>>Fact: Physical sexual appearance is not necessarily indicative of chromosomal status.<<<

But usually is.

>>.Fact: The birth certificate is a legal document establishing (primarily) when and where someone was born.<<<

Other things as well, e.g., parentage, sex and nationality.

>>>Fact: Gender is as much between the ears as it is between the legs. It has significant social and psychological dimensions.<<<

Plants have gender. Nouns have gender. Humans have sex. Talking of gender is merely an attempt to muddy otherwise clear waters.

>>.In short, it's pretty hard to convince me that someone who is transsexual is outside of the normal range of human diversity.<<<

Some people also believe the world is flat and the moon is made of cheese.

>>.Second, since the birth certificate is an amended document, the original filed copies are not destroyed.<<<

It's still fostering a lie, like saying a cat is a dog, or (closer to the mark), an ox is a bull.

>>>Third, if your definition of male and female is based solely upon birth genitalia, then you must provide for those who are born with ambiguous genitalia somehow. <<<

Hermaphrodites are so rare as to not be worth altering the system.

>>>Lastly, fraud suggests that there is intent to deceive. The desire to live one's life in relative peace is not fraudulent. <<<

It is when you have to lie about it.

[Judy K. Warner]

>>>Fact: Sex, whether chromosomal or simply observed genitalia is wildly diverse in this world.<<<

That statement flies in the face of the usual pro-transsexual claim that our sexuality lies on a continuum of male-to-female. There's nothing wildly diverse about a continuum. If you are referring to the number of perversions, I suppose there is a wild diversity of them, but that has little to do with chromosomes or genitalia. It simply looks like a statement from someone who believes that everything is socially constructed and wants to make that seem attractive.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

I'm a molecular biologist and a biochemist so I'm a little more inclined to give weight to chromosomes and expressed sex hormones than, say, the expressed narratives of thousands of transexuals. (You've read all of these? Have they been collated, verified with appropriate instruments?) Sure, I realize that there are conditions where odd things happen during development with hormone fluxes and dysfunctional (or missing) receptors and such. It makes sense that the psychological state of such folks might be altered. But I also recognize the role that abnormal psychology can play as well and I'm not as quick to dismiss such things as (apparently) MGS is.

McHugh's experience with sex reassignment surgery goes beyond an article in FT--he inherited (and closed down) the Johns Hopkins sex reassignment program (in the late 1970s, I think, but I could be wrong) *because* he realized that the assumptions by which it justified its existence had never *ever* been tested by any remotely objective measure whatsoever. The justifications amounted to opinion and those "expressed narratives". Surely you realize that people in the grip of something as strange as transsexualism are going to grasp at whatever they can to justify their behavior and desires. It's simply human nature. BTW, I'd be delighted if MGS were to direct me to peer-reviewed studies that pertain to these things.

Sex is a biological fact that is determined by *both* the chromosomes and whether their gene products are appropriately expressed. (XYs can be females if the expression of proteins on the Y chromosome is partially or completely shut down.) It is not diverse in humans unless you consider two sexes and hermaphrodites to be diverse. (A diversity of three? That's just a smidge more diverse than the asexual, tetraploid ameba I used to study.)

Gender is something a word has.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Gender is something a word has.<<<

Or a fern.

[Nick]

Thank-you Gene. I love the basic "facts" as if we've never picked up a book and read about this stuff. Not to mention the charge being thrown down of ignorance.

Also most of the factoids don't address the real issue, that transsexual behavior far exceeds the instance of hermaphroditic individuals in the population. So, why so many? If it is a hormonal imbalance or a peculiar sexual deviancy shouldn't it be treated as a disorder?

[MgS]

Surely you realize that people in the grip of something as strange as transsexualism are going to grasp at whatever they can to justify their behavior and desires. It's simply human nature. BTW, I'd be delighted if MGS were to direct me to peer-reviewed studies that pertain to these things.

(1) Transsexuals don't "grasp" at anything. They are surprisingly lucid about what they are doing and why.

(2) If you are looking for peer reviewed journals, I'd suggest starting with WPATH's publication "International Journal of Transgenderism" as a starting place, and articles on transsexualism appear in numerous psychological research journals on a regular basis.

It is not diverse in humans unless you consider two sexes and hermaphrodites to be diverse.

Actually, if one examines the plethora of conditions that result in various forms of Intersex status, it's surprisingly diverse. IS covers a broad range of conditions that nominally result in what used to be called Hermaphroditism.

Someone wrote that Intersex conditions are too rare to consider. I'm sure that a lot of IS people out there would disagree with you on that. Transsexualism is hardly commonplace either.

McHugh's experience with sex reassignment surgery goes beyond an article in FT--he inherited (and closed down) the Johns Hopkins sex reassignment program (in the late 1970s, I think, but I could be wrong) *because* he realized that the assumptions by which it justified its existence had never *ever* been tested by any remotely objective measure whatsoever.

My problem with McHugh is that he came in as a Director of the psychiatry program at Hopkins, and to my knowledge has never published a single scholarly paper to substantiate his claims regarding transsexuals. His position is, in my opinion, based on assertions that fly in the face of a significant body of research.

It makes sense that the psychological state of such folks might be altered. But I also recognize the role that abnormal psychology can play as well and I'm not as quick to dismiss such things as (apparently) MGS is.

When did I dismiss the psychology of the matter? It is in fact the psychology of transsexuals that flies in face of the assertions that people routinely make about transsexuals.

Have I read the narrative of every transsexual out there? No, of course not. That said, I have studied an awful lot of the research on the matter, and those narratives are surprisingly consistent across multiple studies.

Lastly, to those who argue that gender "isn't real", I suggest you observe how young children play and the natural differences in how very young children play - you will find that boys and girls in general terms play quite differently - even before gender is socially important; and every so often a boy is surprisingly feminine in how he plays; or a girl is equally masculine in her play. While we don't understand how such things develop, it's pretty clear that there is more to the picture than a purely social construct.

[Judy K. Warner]

Gene, don't hormones play a part in the womb as well as chromosomes? You mentioned hormones but I don't know if you meant in the womb. I've read that imbalances of hormones in the womb can be responsible for some of these sex disorders.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Yes, hormones in the developing CNS in utero and in early childhood both affect development. I'm not (at all) arguing for a purely social construct in sexual disorders. For some there probably is a biological component to their feelings. For all? Who knows? Sexual fixations in our very oddly sex-drenched society can be very powerful conditioning agents. Childhood sexual experience can alter the neurochemistry of the brain. There is a bit of a chicken and egg situation about what comes first, though. This is certainly one reason why parents try to protect children from such. Stuff that happens to one while young has a much larger effect than experiences that occur to folks with more mature nervous systems.

(Incidentally, I've got seven boys and one girl and so I have some experience on observing how very young children play.)

[GL]

I have watched this thread with some interest. As a father of a child who has a chromosomal disorder, I have some sympathy for MGS's concerns. Certainly, if a child is born with some biological disorder related to his or her sex, it a serious matter which requires those of us not dealing with such a disorder to not jump to uninformed conclusions. On the other hand, orthodox Christians are and should be suspicious of these all too real problems being exploited by those who do not have such disorders to advance agendas which are very damaging to our society.

My thoughts on the sex of humans is that there are, in fact, only two: male and female. That is, after all, what Scripture teaches and what common sense tells us. Hermaphrodites represent a disorder of some type, just as my daughter has a disorder that does not relate to her sexual identify. Such disorders, like my daughters, are a result of the Fall. Our justified opposition to same-sex "marriage" and to transvestism, should not lead us to reject out-of-hand the legitimate needs of those who have legitimate disorders.

With that said, I am too ignorant to comment on specifics as to what are and are not reasonable accommodations for disorders related to sexual identity. I appreciate Gene's contribution to this discussion, recognizing that his education and experience give him a unique ability to offer informed opinions.

[Stuart Koehl]

When one changes one's name, there is a legal action involving an application and a judgment by a magistrate, and that remains on record. If a birth certificate is amended as a result, that, too, is a legal action which has a paper trail. In other words, no matter what, you can always get back to the original birth record with the original name(s).

Now, if one changes one's sexual appearance through surgery, is there the same sort of paper trail? Does one have to apply to the court to "change one's sex"? Because there are very good reasons to know whether a person is a surgically altered transexual. For instance, a person is in a car crash and burned beyond recognition. When the autopsy is performed, you end up with bones that say "male", and DNA that says male, and even dental records that may say "male", but the person's ID says female. How do we reconcile the forensic evidence with the ID if we cannot go back to the original birth records?

Similarly, a crime is committed, and DNA recovered at the scene indicates it was committed by a male, but the only person spotted near the scene of the crime is visibly female. Do we routinely ask for a DNA sample from that person, even though there may not be probable cause if we believe the perpetrator was male?

As with all these sexual anomaly cases, altering the system to accommodate an infinitesimal minority creates more problems than it resolves.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Stuart Koehl: "When one changes one's name, there is a legal action involving an application and a judgment by a magistrate, and that remains on record. If a birth certificate is amended as a result, that, too, is a legal action which has a paper trail. In other words, no matter what, you can always get back to the original birth record with the original name(s)."

You would think so. But with regards to Barack Obama's birth certificate (and although the inquiry is not related to his original name, but his place of birth), one cannot get back to the original birth record although legal petitions have been filed.

There is a horrendous double standard about disclosure between conservatives and liberals. Liberals are by far the greater hypocrites.

Libs demand that George Bush produce records of his National Guard service. He did.

Conservatives demand that John Kerry produce records of his military service. He refuses.

The public demands that Sandy Berger produce records of what information he stole. He refuses.

Conservatives demand that Barack Obama produce his ORIGINAL birth certificate to prove that he wasn't born in Kenya. He spends big bucks to prevent the release.

What's up with that? Why do libs get a free pass on their blatant hypocrisy?

[Judy K. Warner]

I think a certain amount of the accommodation has been done because the "transgressive" nature of transsexualism is titillating to those who don't like boundaries. I've probably related my personal connection to this stuff before, but here goes again.

My cousin and her husband are probably my most left-wing and counter-culture relatives out of a whole bunch of left-wing relatives. They were hippies in a commune, took a lot of drugs and sold some too. They became respectable as they got older, and had two nice daughters. But they remained great advocates of alternative lifestyles. At about age 16 the elder daughter announced she was a lesbian. Nobody objected, at least out loud. A couple of years later she announced she was a boy. She re-named herself, dressed like a boy, and hung around with transsexuals.

Were my cousin and her husband pleased at the next generation's continuing of the tradition of rebelliousness against society? Hardly. My cousin cried every day for months.

I thought this was not a physical problem, but an attempt by the girl to find some way of rebelling against her parents. It was awfully hard to find something that would upset them, but she managed. Most of the family disagreed with me, but as things turned out I think they probably agree now. Because as the years passed, she decided to be a female again, and moved home for a while, though I think she's still a lesbian. She is a very bright person who was full of promise, and from what I hear she's pretty much a wreck now.

The presence of transsexualism as a cultural phenomenon that gets a fair amount of attention gave her the framework she needed to go down this road. A generation ago this horribly destructive path of rebellion would have occurred to very few people, consciously or unconsciously (and I'm not sure which it was in her case). Her parents were able to come out of their destructive ways with no permanent damage, but this wasn't true for her.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Wow. Judy Warner, your personal story of your cousin and her daughter reminds me of the aphorism, "You reap what you sow."

And without God's grace and mercy, we do reap what we sow on both an individual and a collective societal level.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>You would think so. But with regards to Barack Obama's birth certificate (and although the inquiry is not related to his original name, but his place of birth), one cannot get back to the original birth record although legal petitions have been filed.<<<

If it became germane in a criminal investigation, it could be subpoenaed and would have to be produced. Same, too, with any civil case that went to trial. But you can't get personal records under FOIA.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I thought this was not a physical problem, but an attempt by the girl to find some way of rebelling against her parents. <<<

If she really wanted to be transgressive, she could have declared herself to be a Republican and joined Chabad. Or better still, converted to Catholicism and became a nun. Or joined the Marine Corps.

>>>Because as the years passed, she decided to be a female again, and moved home for a while, though I think she's still a lesbian.<<<

There are actually women in college, who, in order to avoid the emotional entanglements of going out with boys, take up with girls instead. They are known as "Lesbians Until Graduation" (LUGs), and most of them return to very conventional lifestyles once out of school. But then, female sexuality has always been more mutable than the male kind (though the example of the Janissaries shows that you can indeed train up boys to be homosexuals--it just takes a lot more conditioning).

[Judy K. Warner]

She actually dropped out of Smith College because she said all the women there hated men, and she didn't hate men -- she wanted to be one.

[Bobby Neal Winters]

Wow, there is a lot of stuff going on here. Just a few remarks. Man was created male and female, but he is fallen. The variation on these sexual categories is a mark of that falleness. Jesus Christ came to reconcile us to God's Creation through his sacrifice. Reconciliation is not about saying there isn't a problem. Reconcilation is about fixing that problem while maintaining a standard.

It is normal for humans to have an upper lip that is not split in the middle. Saying that someone with a harelip is normal doesn't fix the issue. It simply allows the matter to go untreated. Similarly, redefining normal will not help these people. Their problems are deeper than simply a harelip as sexuality is such a complicate thing at best. My heart yearns for these folks to be reconciled to creation, but shifting our basic metaphysics is not the way to do it. Some might require surgery; some might require psychotherpy; some may simply have to bear the cross.

Back to the original question, all of the above having been said, whatever legal modifications are done along the way should leave a trail in order to avoid confusion. Our birth certificate ties us to our roots and is part of our history and should reflect that reality.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>She actually dropped out of Smith College because she said all the women there hated men, and she didn't hate men -- she wanted to be one.<<<

Should have applied to VMI, then

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>It is normal for humans to have an upper lip that is not split in the middle. Saying that someone with a harelip is normal doesn't fix the issue. <<<

Is isn't normal for human beings to be dear, either, but the "Deaf Community"--or at least its most, um, vocal advocates, are steadfastly opposed to any procedure (e.g., cochlear implants) that could rectify the problem. For them, their abnormality is the source of their identity, what makes the "special", and thus, rather than rejoicing at the chance to hear, to gain an entirely new avenue of sensation and be more closely integrated into the human community, they choose to embrace their disability and elevate it to a gift.

This, too, must be a consequence of the fall.

[Christopher Hathaway]

Stuart,

My niece is deaf, and I have tried to argue that deafness is a disability, and been shot down by her parents. There is a definite bending of rationality involved.

But on the other hand, communication is a basic human need, and the deaf can communicate with each other through sign language than they can with the hearing community. This creates an intensely strong community amongst themselves. We hearers cannot relate to them, If they give up their deafness they are sacrificing that intense community and merging into a larger one in which they will be still at the margins, for implants do not make them as fully functional as we hearers.

It's a lot to ask, "give up your identity and tight knit community so that you can join the rest of society that never really cared that much about you enough to learn sign language ourselves". That may not be a fair criticism, but I'm trying to see it from their point of view.

[Stuart Koehl]

Christopher,

On the other thread, look for the "Next" button just above the Post A Comment box. Click on it.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>It's a lot to ask, "give up your identity and tight knit community so that you can join the rest of society that never really cared that much about you enough to learn sign language ourselves". That may not be a fair criticism, but I'm trying to see it from their point of view.<<<

So, what are they going to do when, comes the Resurrection, they not only can hear, but can hear perfectly and have perfect pitch to boot?

[MgS]

One last comment regarding Paul McHugh as some kind of authority on transsexualism.

(1) He arrived at Johns Hopkins with his mind made up about closing down the gender clinic.

(2) The study that he used to justify it was one by Jon Meyer, and it has been validly criticized as being deeply flawed - particularly in its methodology.

(3) It flies in the face of twenty years of follow up studies already available by 1979, and contradicts most studies done since.

(4) McHugh, along with Bailey/Blanchard have adopted a theoretical model that requires calling transsexuals who don't fit into it liars about their motives for pursuing transition and surgery. To me, that's pretty lousy science.

McHugh might be philosophically convenient, but his positions are rooted in his personal dogma, not science that is well supported by objective research.

[Monica Jennifer]

What many here have missed in the talk of birth certificates and gender of a transsexual person I wold like to help clear up.
1.) A birth certificate is sometimes required by a boss hiring a prospective employee as proof they are in fact a citizen eligible of hire. I myself have run into a company in the past with such a requirement. Now if a transsexual person was looking for a job there and their gender marker on the birth cert read other than their present actual gender they might not get the job because of discrepancies or prejudice.
2.) Some here think a person who is transsexual should still be called either Male or Female by what their birth gender was determined as at the time a doctor saw them at birth and signed the birth cert. What some overlook is that the brain sex is sometimes not the same as the outer body sex. Regadless of chromosomal setup the brain sex is affected during cascade of hormones in utero. If the fetus gets the right hormonal cascade in utero then they develop with a brain sex that matches their outer body. But when the wrong cascade happens a transgender child or an intersexxed child will result. To say that the person who develops as havng the wrong brain sex in their body should live as the outer sex of birth in such cases is ludicrous. The person goes through a situation of identifying as the gender opposite their outer body and sees each outer body change in puberty as horrifying. Imagine for a moment going to bed one night with your present gender and waking up in the morning with a body of the opposite gender and everyone thinking it was your gender all along. Now imagine the horror you would feel if your brain still sees the gender you were living as the night before as who you should be but your outer body does not match. well the situation is similar for a transsexual. The body does not match the mind. They feel trapped in a cage of the wrong gender. Most trans persons have had attempts at suicide before their 18th birthday due to their gender mismatch. Imagine the fears of rejection when having to tell your family that you are the wrong gender. Even worse imagine telling your friends. The fear of losing family and friends often makes many transpersons try to deny their true inner gender till later in adult years. Many even try doing things of the assigned gender that would be for the bio male ultra macho or for the bio female ultra feminine in hopes that they can overcome the inner identity that does not match their body. But guess what? Their need to fix the birth error grows stronger instead of weaker till the point they can not deny it any longer. They need then to either transition to the brain gender or die trying. Regarding brain gender there is a medical document on the web that might be of interest to some of you as it prooves female brains in male to female transsexuals medically. : http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtc0106.htm

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[Bobby Winters]

Monica,
Please remember there are those who would have us believe there is no difference between male and female other than that "unimportant shell" we call the body. Then there are those, such as yourself, who ask us to believe there is are male brains and female brains and sometime these brains are paired with the wrong bodies. These opinions are mutually exclusive of one another but sometime they are held by the same person at once.

Biblical teaching is that "God created them male and female." That is the Christian way of looking at it. I do not doubt that the trans-gendered are in need of being reconciled with creation in some way. The question should be "How is this to be done?" What I see coming from certain quarters is that anyone who does not by this tremendous shift in the classification of the human species is a bigot. For my part, I will stick to the created "male and female" paradigm and allow for variations in need of reconcilation. Where there is ambiguity in genitalia, certain prayerful decisions need to be made. Where people believe they've been born into the wrong sort of body, well, that's a different sort of thing. There are people who believe that having a right arm is wrong, that it doesn't belong there. They've always felt that way. It's a complicated old world.