Then God’s design for gender is a gigantic rainbow of variation, not a black-and-white conformity with sex if the Bible is our guide.
Jay Michaelson
Picture Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Regular Beast
On February 18, the Kansas Republican Party passed an uncommon anti-transgender quality that is more theology than politics. Proposed by Eric Teetsel, mind regarding the Kansas chapter regarding the Family Policy Alliance (the governmental supply associated with the Christian Right behemoth concentrate on the Family) it really is section of a nationwide technique to delegitimize transgender individuals plus the notion of transgender itself, all on spiritual grounds.
Those, then, would be the terms upon which we, as being a rabbi, will engage it. Because as a theological document, it’s profoundly flawed.
“God’s design had been the creation of two distinct and complementary sexes, male and female,” the resolution states. Nonetheless, “many have tried to normalize transgenderism and define gender according to one’s self-perception apart from biological structure.” After detailing a few of the ways that culture has been doing therefore, the quality claims “these cultural currents run counter to God’s created order and break the dignity of every human being.”
For that explanation, it concludes, “we affirm God’s design for sex as dependant on biological intercourse and never by self-perception” and “we oppose all efforts to validate transgender identification.” And so forth.
Let’s concentrate on two essential mistakes in that text.
First, yes, into the Genesis story, Jesus produces humans of male and female intercourse. Nevertheless the creation tale states absolutely nothing about gender. Notice the way the end regarding the quality talks about “God’s design for sex as decided by biological sex.” Where did that can come from? Continue reading