Note: This essay is based on the author’s talk entitled “Sex and Sanity: Man and Woman He Made Them” at the Napa Institute Summer Conference, July 25, 2024.
———
Last week, Elon Musk, known for his boldness and entrepreneurial genius, abruptly announced he is moving his businesses out of California to Texas. In an interview with psychologist Jordan Peterson, Musk explained why: California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a new bill that prohibits schools from telling parents when their own child identifies as “transgender.” For Musk, it was the “last straw,” saying he previously warned Newsom that, “If you sign legislation that…puts children in danger, I will move my companies out of California.” He is making good on that promise.
The most powerful moment of this interview, however, came moments later, when Musk spoke from the heart—not as the billionaire businessman—but as a father in deep pain.
Peterson asked Musk why he is such an outspoken foe of so-called “gender-affirming care.” Musk countered that “gender-affirming care” is “a terrible euphemism…it’s really … child mutilation and sterilization.” “It’s very possible,” Musk explained, “for adults to manipulate children who are having a natural identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender…and that they need to be the other gender…and that will solve their problems…Then they give them sterilizing drugs…called puberty blockers. Sterilizing drugs… so they can never have children…. It’s macabre. It’s evil.” Those were his words.
Then, pain etched on his face, he went on: “It happened to one of my older boys. I was essentially tricked into signing documents [giving permission for puberty blockers and hormones] for one of my older boys, Xavier…I was told Xavier might commit suicide.” He repeated again: “It’s incredibly evil.”
Then Musk spoke softly, haltingly—the way a person in pain speaks when they are just holding it all together—and said, “I lost my son, essentially. They call it deadnaming for a reason. It’s called deadnaming because your son is dead. My son Xavier is dead. Killed by the woke mind virus.”
“A woke mind virus.” It’s an apt description of the ‘transgender revolution.’ Pure insanity. The transgender revolution reveals a culture that has lost its grip on reality.
Elon Musk’s suffering, unfortunately, is not rare. The families who have gone through the exact same experience say that the pain of watching a child self-destruct, cheered on by gender evangelists (often other family members), is searing, raw, and unrelenting. The anger also runs deep. Anyone with a heart would feel great compassion for Musk, his son, and anyone who faces such pain, loss, and alienation because of a child’s so-called “transition.”
But zoom out from the personal tragedy for a minute and look at this story through a wider lens—and ask some questions.
First, what’s the heart of the problem here?
Taking our cues from legislation and public policy, we might think that these questions of sex and identity are merely medical questions, the types of disputes we need experts to sort out. Remember Matt Walsh’s famous question: “What is a woman?” Isn’t it a question of biology? A matter of evidence? 25 states so far have indeed sized up the issue of “gender transition” from a biological and medical perspective, passing laws that in varying degrees ban medical and/or surgical interventions in minors for “gender transition” purposes. These laws, based on the government’s duty to protect its citizens – particularly children – from harm, tackle limited, identifiable issues of informed consent, minors’ immaturity, and the evidence base—is it sufficient to justify experimental procedures with lifelong consequences for minors?
These are valid concerns. Everyone knows teenagers are too young to make life-altering decisions with permanent consequences. The mantra of “gender-affirming care” (“Let the child lead”) is pure nonsense. Every parent knows this intuitively unless ideology overrides their parental instincts. Musk himself points out the contradiction of prohibiting teenagers from getting a tattoo while permitting them to seek life-altering hormones and surgery. Deferring to a child’s every want and desire is the very definition of poor parenting—except, apparently, when it comes to sex and identity.
We should be grateful for those laws—and the courage of medical professionals who expose the harm of medicalized “gender” interventions and the lawyers who craft protective laws and defend them. Even so, those laws are not the answer. They can contain the damage, but not reverse the tide.
The heart of the problem is much deeper: it’s an anthropological problem.
When a teenage boy identifies as a woman, our objection cannot be that he’s simply too young and impressionable to decide for himself whether he is a man or a woman. It’s simply not true that, if he waits a few years until he’s more mature and then still claims a female identity, we can relax and say, “you know, he must be right.”
When an adolescent girl seeks a double mastectomy because she has convinced herself that she “feels like” a “man,” and she hates her female body because it doesn’t match her feelings, our best answer cannot be that “Honey, the evidence base is just inadequate right now. Let’s wait until the research definitively shows a lasting emotional benefit to amputating your healthy breasts.” It’s simply not true that a sound study showing some sort of psychological benefit to removing the healthy breasts of a teenager would somehow make it all OK.
This isn’t an age or maturity problem. It’s not an evidence problem either. It’s a deeper problem.
Young people like Xavier have been seduced by an anthropology—a belief system premised on the oldest lie known to man: “You decide. You decide what’s true for yourself.” You decide who you are. You decide what’s good or evil. You decide what makes you happy. You decide what to do with your body. (My body, my choice, incidentally, is the shared slogan of both the abortion movement and gender activists. Their movements are very intertwined, with Planned Parenthood now the second largest provider of cross-sex hormones for “gender transitions.”)
The whispered backdrop, the unstated premise of this refrain, is that “You know better than God what’s right for you.” You can disregard his moral precepts, his design for your bodies and relationships. Or even deny his existence, because you are the master of your universe. You decide.”
Many of you are familiar with the gender unicorn or gender bread person. These images sell children on a false anthropology, convincing them that there is no truth, no coherence to their creation as male or female or to the design of their bodies—that what’s most important is “my choice.” These images present the human person as a bundle of disconnected dimensions with little meaning—except for their feelings and choice of “identity.” The individual gets to decide his or her “authentic self,” regardless of the fact of the male or female body.
That’s a pretty heavy burden to lay on a child or teen. Imagine waking up every day, taking your emotional temperature, and trying to figure out if you feel more like a boy today or like a girl. (You’ll find plenty of videos of trans-affirming parents asking their children exactly that, as if each day might bring a new answer.) Imagine doing this if you’re only five years old.
A more recent image is the gender galaxy, which magnifies the lie. Children are told that “gender” is this amazing world that is theirs to imagine, a place to fashion themselves—and the world around them—after their own desires. Masters of their own universe, they can name themselves, like the stars in the sky. They can choose their identities, set embodiment goals, and change their bodies accordingly. It’s magical thinking. But children believe it.
I decide. This is the refrain, the narrative, if you will, of man’s rebellion against sex and sanity—of our rebellion against God himself.
How did we get here?
One of the seeming conundrums of the transgender issue is “why” so many parents—mature, well-educated, thinking adults—why have so many parents almost reflexively acquiesced to or even endorsed the claims of the transgender revolution? Why is a child’s claim to “be trans” even plausible to them? Why didn’t we hear a collective outcry, saying, “No! this is insane!” swelling up from parents across the land over the past decade? Yes, there were some. But more often thousands of parents, teachers, counselors and physicians simply accepted the precepts of gender ideology as true.
A few years ago, most Americans passively supported gender ideology as well, agreeing with the statement that a person’s identity can be different from sex. That statistic has flipped in the past two years, as about six in ten have moved to embrace reality: the person is immutably male or female. The same is true of self-described Catholics. But why, I wonder, isn’t that figure higher?
Consider the claims of gender ideology—and how they compare to the Christian understanding of the person. (As a side note, constraints permit only a summary comparison between the truth of the person and gender ideology. If you want more, I invite you to attend a fantastic conference—titled Man and Woman and the Order of Creation–to be held at Franciscan University on October 24-26, 2024, which will be livestreamed. The conference is the brainchild of Franciscan Professor and Thomistic scholar Deborah Savage, co-sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center.)
Let’s do a head-to-head comparison.
As Christians, we know we are created by a loving God, in his image and likeness, possessing an inherent dignity, with an eternal destiny. We are created male or female, equal in dignity but complementary. Our primary identity is as a son or daughter of the Lord—our identity is relational.
Gender ideology, in contrast, is atheistic—with no room or need for God. It claims that the person is self-creating. Dr. Norman Spack of Boston Children’s Hospital, who first used puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to “transition” identity-confused children in the U.S., spoke of the marvel of children “creating themselves.” Gender ideology claims that “who we are” is “whoever we say we are.” Identity is self-determined, even fluid, unbounded by the reality of the physical body. Without God, the person has no inherent dignity, so dignity becomes contingent, dependent on external validation or legal recognition.
Christianity teaches that we are a unity of body and soul, gifted with a human nature – a design for our good. Our bodies have meaning. They reveal something about who we are – that males and females are made one for another, oriented towards the gift of self in sexual union within marriage. Sex has a unitive and procreative meaning, and children are the fruit of that relationship, to be raised in a family—a communion of persons—that images the Trinity.
Gender ideology rejects the concept of human nature and posits a separation of mind and body. The mind is what matters; the body is merely a tool, a thing to be used, or a canvas for personal expression. Sex is reduced to a quest for pleasure, disconnected from reproduction, with no boundaries on who, how, or how many others we use, as long as there’s legal consent. Gender ideology redefines marriage as an arrangement to fulfill adult desires; “family” is a chosen association, for personal benefit. Importantly, where Christian anthropology recognizes that we are all sinful and broken, in need of grace and redemption on the path to eternal life, gender ideology’s adherents have no transcendent purpose. Life is merely a quest for power, the drive to defeat one’s oppressors while journeying toward a personal utopia.
Every significant truth about the human person, as understood by Christians, is contradicted or undermined by gender ideology. Gender ideology’s beliefs about the human person are the core of the sexual revolution. An individual doesn’t even need to consciously subscribe to every tenet of gender ideology to be influenced by it.
Msgr. James Shea, author of From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age, notes that every society rests on… “a set of assumptions and a way of looking at things that is largely taken for granted…” The “fundamental assumptions” of a society weave a “compelling narrative” into the culture—a narrative that shapes human decisions and gives individuals “a sense of meaning and direction.”
In the past, this narrative was the Christian vision of the world—a culture largely shaped by Christian beliefs and assumptions about how the world should work.
Not so today. The implicit assumptions woven into today’s culture, the “compelling narrative” that shapes people’s decisions and defines their purpose (sometimes without them realizing it), are no longer Christian. Our culture is being reshaped, rendering the claims of gender ideology our default narrative about what it means to be a human person and how to be happy.
Gender ideology—and the normalization of all its fruits, from casual sex to masturbation, to pornography, to contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and now transgender identification—is irreconcilable with the truth about the human person. This false anthropology is being “baked into” our assumptions, judgments, and relationships. Inevitably, it will make Christians less receptive to the truth.
In truth, gender ideology is a preposterous belief system.
It’s easy to understand how children can become convinced of a preposterous idea—that they are born in the wrong body or that they can change sex. Children and young people have little life experience. They lack perspective. They don’t know anything. And when a trusted adult assures them that they have the power to re-imagine themselves and become someone new—and promises that their adolescent angst, their mental health struggles, their insecurities, or peer difficulties will all disappear if they transition—that’s a pretty attractive package. It solves their problems. And it puts them in charge. “I decide.”
Children are children. Their world is saturated with gender ideology. We can expect confusion.
But here’s the question worth asking. Why would a genius like Elon Musk even consider it plausible that his child might be happier if he follows his feelings and decides he’s a girl? Yes, Musk was manipulated by the false suicide threat to consent to puberty blockers, but why was it even plausible to him that his son would be happier rejecting and destroying his sexed body?
It’s not just Musk. Dozens, hundreds of families have done the same.
And here’s the answer. The transgender deception is plausible when parents have already bought into its premises in their own lives.
Perhaps they have accepted the lies that they can live their lives as they choose, regardless of the moral law, and “it’s all good,” as long as they choose it. Or the lie that there is no natural order, no Creator’s design—particularly in matters of sex—that a person must live by to flourish. Or that God, and by extension the Church, has no say in their sex lives. They get to decide.
This theme is a continuous thread winding through the past decades of sexual anarchy. The truth is that when you reject God, his created order, his moral laws—and disregard even the logic of the body—when you reject the basic truth about the human person, then you’re making it up as you go along. Anything is plausible. Anything is possible, given the right technology.
Isn’t this the story of the sexual revolution? And the role of technology in supposedly freeing us of natural constraints and enabling us to fulfill our desires?
Sixty-five years ago, the birth control pill won approval from the FDA. The Pill, in my view, was the very first, widely accepted “transgender” intervention.
Why? Because it established the premises; it set the narrative. The Pill’s widespread use conditioned people to see God’s natural design for sex—the complementarity of male and female bodies, the purpose and fruits of sexual union (children)—as a barrier, an obstacle to the self-defined human happiness to which they feel entitled.
Married and singles alike embraced technology’s power to sever the natural link between sexual union and procreation, in pursuit of a social goal—sex with no consequences. It met their subjective criteria for personal happiness. They were convinced that they knew better than God what sex and sanity meant.
The transgender revolution differs only in magnitude, not in kind.
The Pill also implicitly taught women that their bodies and their fertility were also problems—additional obstacles to freedom. There must be something wrong with God’s design. The solution: to exercise the power of choice, discard God’s plan, and do it their way. Women were persuaded that their freedom “to decide” their futures depended on thwarting and altering God’s natural design. They needed to be able to have sex like a man, sex without consequences. What a bad idea.
Interestingly, Jack Turban, a Stanford psychiatrist and one of the most vocal champions of hormonal castration and gender surgeries for adolescents—recently defended the use of cross-sex hormones in adolescents by saying (paraphrasing): “It’s no different than putting these adolescents on the birth control pill. And probably safer.” The Pill disables the healthy body’s natural functions to achieve a social goal. We’ve already accepted that. Why shouldn’t we accept puberty blockers, which do the same thing?
Consider another aspect: once that link between sex and procreation was broken by technological manipulation, we—as a people—largely forgot what sex is for. We forgot that sex is about babies.
The consequences were predictable, as anyone who has read Humanae Vitae knows. When sex is neutered of its procreative potential, and its purpose reduced to personal pleasure, there’s no logical reason to limit sex to opposite-sex, married couples. There’s no reason why any non-normative sexual activity should be labeled deviant. If it brings the participants pleasure and complies with legal consent requirements, then why not? Homosexuality, polyamory, kinky sex, open marriages. It’s all being normalized now. Remember the mantra: “I decide. My choice.” There are no boundaries.
Activists have long pressured the psychiatric profession to stop giving psychiatric diagnoses for sexual fetishes or violent, degrading sexual activity (BDSM) between consenting adults. The latest edition of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases complied: as there’s no “public health” implication to an individual’s sexual activity, it should not be stigmatized or labeled. One of the few remaining categories that has not been normalized is pedophilia—but of course, there’s pressure to rename that (“minor-attracted persons”) and normalize it too.
So, where do we go from here?
First, a word of caution:
It is very possible that, in the short term, we may win the battle against medicalized gender experiments in minors, but lose the war against the bigger evil: the social, cultural, and political embrace of a false, degrading, and dangerous vision of the human person.
The consequences of embedding a false anthropology not only in our cultural soil but also in the human heart are far-reaching. They include:
- the coerced participation of medical and counseling professionals in “transgender” medicine
- the suppression of conscience rights for Catholic healthcare providers and educators
- restrictions on the religious liberty of Catholic employers, institutions, and individuals
- the denial of free speech
- the normalization of dehumanizing, “transhumanist” medical experiments to satisfy consumer desires
- the absolute decimation of parents’ rights and family integrity
- and the promotion of a sexualized, misogynistic, and inhuman culture
It’s a good thing to fight gender ideology on the level of medical evidence, exposing its harmful effects on identity-distressed minors, just as we highlight other human costs of the sexual revolution, for example, in our fight against abortion. But we must recognize that the entire body of “gender medicine” rests on a false premise: the belief that there is no human nature and that each person is free to self-determine an identity, in contradiction to the reality of sexual difference.
Early public arguments to advance “transgender medicine,” however, relied on a distorted appeal to Christian compassion. Dutch clinicians who performed hormonal and surgical interventions on adult “transsexuals,” as they were called, cloaked their actions in Christian compassion and the alleviation of suffering. This strategy enabled them to overcome the moral and medical misgivings of their peers and to open the flagship Amsterdam gender clinic in a Christian-affiliated hospital. Dr. Louis Gooren, a self-described homosexual and fallen-away Catholic, played a pivotal role in justifying the use of hormones in identity-distressed minors as an act of compassion. He popularized the idea that adults and “juvenile transsexuals,” as he called them, were “trapped” in the wrong body and needed medical and surgical interventions to liberate them, and invoked God as authority, saying: “God has given us the ability to repair a congenital heart defect. Why should we not intervene if body and mind are not in harmony?’”1
Today, gender medicine is marketed less by appealing to Christian compassion, and more as a bold “human rights” claim rooted in the false anthropology of gender ideology. This is dangerous ground. As the Venerable Jerome LeJeune cautioned, “Human nature exists…and whether we like it or not, we are obliged to take it into account.” And to the extent that men “deny eternal Wisdom, they [will end up] doing foolish things, however intelligent they may be.”
So, what should we do?
First, live with integrity. As Catholics, we need to examine our lives. Are we fully surrendered in our own lives and relationships to God’s plan, to his design for our bodies, and the gift of sexuality?
Second, don’t be discouraged: Remember St. Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness. My grace is sufficient for you.” And Pope St. John Paul II’s words of encouragement: “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son.”
Third, be courageous and be convinced. There’s no daylight between truth and charity. Stand up for the truth and share it with others. Invite—don’t impose. But be fully convinced that God’s plan is indeed the only way to eternal life.
Fourth, be kind, prudent, and patient. Evangelization is the art of presenting the right truth, at the right time, and in the right manner. (So, we don’t have to dump the entire Catechism on Elon Musk! Let’s take it slow.) There are millions of people like Elon for whom the glimmers of truth about the human person are breaking through, often because of great suffering. Reality (designed by God) is attractive. So be present and patient, recognizing that conversion—except for St. Paul- doesn’t happen all at once.
Finally, let’s use all the tools at our disposal. Certainly prayer, Scripture, and Catholic teaching. But also science, personal experiences, and genuine friendship. Let’s walk with others, with great patience and love, towards sex and sanity—and the peace of Christ.
Endnote:
1 Gooren, L. (2021). Interview. In A. Bakker (Ed.), The Dutch approach: Fifty years of transgender health care at the VU Amsterdam gender clinic. Los Angeles, CA: Boom
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Yes, God made us male and female, and imbedded that mark into our chromosomes. X & Y chromosomes for male, and Y & Y for female.
Anything else is a lie, which originates from the father of lies.
One important point to note – Neither lies nor pretenses, especially those encompassing all trans alphabet abominations, are neither recognized nor protected under the U.S. Constitution.
XY is male. Female is XX.
That’s what I said -X & Y male, Y & Y female.
There is not Y and Y pairing. The Y is the male chromosome. A child could not develop from such a pairing
As Jesus would have it we Must love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The only finger pointing we need to do is at our reflection in the mirror. It’s time the Catholic Church stopped getting into people’s sexual identities. Jesus follows are black and white, rich and poor, Queer, transgender and straight.
Love tells the truth though Miss Ellen. It’s a false compassion not to do that but we still love our neighbors & want what’s truly best for them. The truth shall set us free.
Yes, our faith does not reject Science in the way “transgenderism ” does.
Every era seems to suffer its own social delusions and junk science. This is our current delusion that has no scientific basis.
A few generations ago it was eugenics. That was embraced as a progressive, compassionate ideology also.
Simple typo but note X & X for female.
Paul- referring to transgender people (who are still God’s children) as “alphabet abominations” is frankly, uncatholic and unchristian of you. You are speaking about human beings. The same types of human beings you purport to care about when still residing inside a woman’s womb. You cannot refer to you yourself as pro-life if your pro-life views are not all encompassing and include the lives of people who are members of the lgbtq community. What is really an abomination is your lack of empathy, understanding, and your weird and hateful way of talking about other people. Do better.
Let me set you straight, We are all God’s children, there is no such reality as a “transgender person.” God created them male and female. Please don’t persist in promoting falsehoods. Thanks.
Deacon Ed- Please hone your reading comprehension skills before responding.
People who identify as transgender are still God’s children and no amount of bullying or hatred from you or anyone else will change that. All your blatant lack of empathy does is shine a light on the ugliness of your own heart and soul.
Rev James Martin of “New Ways to Hell Ministeries” is also one of God’s children. That does not change his scandalous behaviour (spreading images mocking the Blessed Virgin Mary, making Devils Signs before satanic rock concerts, promoting sexual relations which cry Vengeance…)
The horrors of the Victims of Rainbow ideology require empathy, but against the ideology only contempt.
Dear WAAGC: I refuse to respond to hateful comments. I stand by what I’ve said: there is no such reality as a “transgender person.” Charity presupposes truth. The most charitable stance toward those with disordered notions about their sexuality is to speak the truth to them. Going along with false notions is the consummate expression of a lack of charity.
We become children of God through our baptism. We separate ourselves from God and the Church when we live a life of sin that is contrary to our faith. There’s no such thing as LGBTQ or transgender catholics.
Sorry, but you are sadly mistaken. We are under no moral or spiritual obligation to affirm, support, and reward people’s sins. We have a responsibility to speak the truth without compromise. The LGBTLMNOP community is living in flagrant disobedience to God’s established order. They are the abominations, not God’s people.
J.M.J.
Thank you , Mary Rice Hasson, for this wonderful post that gets right to the heart of the matter.
The fact that God Created us , from The Beginning (Genesis) , male and female, as beloved sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, is both Life-affirming and Life-sustaining, and those who are attempting to substitute this Truth with a lie, deny the very essence of every beloved son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, father, mother, and thus our inherent Dignity as human persons.
Inside the Transgender Empire – Imprimis:
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/inside-the-transgender-empire/
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012
“As the family goes, so goes the Nation, and The World.” – Pope John Paul II
As The Veil is being lifted, A Great Apostasy is being exposed, due to the accommodation of the spirit of anti-Christ.
From Fr. Hardon Archives – The Influence of Marxism in the United States Today:
https://therealpresence.org/archives/Communism/Communism_002.htm
We can know through both Faith and reason, grounded in Faith, that Perfect Love does not divide, it multiplies , as in The Miracle Of The Loaves And Fishes.
The reason why the essence of Love, of Life, and of Marriage is under attack, is because the essence of God, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity , Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, and thus The Author Of Our Unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, And To The Pursuit Of Happiness, Is under attack.
Every sexual disorder must be seen in light of the physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual disorder that exists alongside it. Failure to respect the inherent Dignity of the essence of the human person as a beloved son or daughter, leads to the inability of God’s beloved to see themselves as God sees them , worthy of being treated with authentic Life-affirming and Life-sustaining Love, in private and in public.
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved. “Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.” “Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.” “For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
“Behold your Mother.” – Christ On The Cross
Dear Blessed Mother Mary, Mirror of Justice , Untier Of Knots, And Destroyer Of All Heresy, Who Through Your Fiat, Affirmed The Filioque, and thus the fact that There Is Only One Son Of God, One Word Of God Made Flesh, One Lamb Of God Who Can Taketh Away The Sins Of The World, Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ, thus there can only be, One Spirit Of Perfect Complementary Love Between The Father And The Son, Who Must Proceed From Both The Father And The Son, In The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Complementary Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity (Filioque), hear our Prayer that your Immaculate Heart Will Triumph soon for the sake of Christ, His Church, all who will come to believe, and all our beloved prodigal sons and daughters, who, hopefully, will soon return to The One Body Of Christ, which exists From The Father, Through, With, And In
His Only Son, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) Amen.
There is no such thing as “transgender people.” There are people with serious mental problems who mutilate themselves physically, chemically, or psychologically. You are not being charitable or loving in entertaining their destructive delusions. You are being callous, indifferent and cruel, just as you would be if you told a paranoid schizophrenic “people really are out to get you.”
Very simply:
1. Satan hates God
2. Satan hates God’s children
3. Government does the work of Satan
4. Parents should shield their children from government at all costs..
These points are too difficult for people who prefer to please the people of the secular world.
In reference to the classic example of madness, it I dress up in a grey overcoat and put my left hand into it and put on a bi corn hat saying: Not tonight, Josephine! I get sectioned! It’s as simple as that!
“Gender ideology is a false anthropology”
This an ironic statement, considering its not disputed amongst academic anthropology that a large number of indigenous cultures had at least three and sometimes five different genders accepted as the norm – in many cases for millennia. Eg. All native American tribes, Mexican, Hawaiian, Australian Aborigine, Russian, and many African. This is common accepted knowledge.
Of course, you’re referencing pagan cultures which also engaged in human sacrifice. Please, no more appeals to the absurd.
It is actually not common accepted knowledge because it is patently false. There are two genders, that’s it. Cultures have recognized ti’s basic biological fact for thousands of years.
An influential book by a so-called anthropologist is Margaret Mead “Coming of Age in Samoa” (1928) which, like the Kinsey Reports, has been used by social radicals to validate promiscuity and such. Mead claimed to have discovered unrestricted sexual license on Samoa. Only much too late was this thesis disproved by another anthropologist, Derek Freeman, in his “Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth” (1983). Freeman, was with the Australian National University for forty years, and demonstrates that while the Samoans were devoted polytheists, they also highly valued virginity.
It also seems that Mead’s fantasy was projected from her own life. She was married and divorced three times, had several other affairs, and was bisexual as were the fictional run-of-the-mill Samoans in her constructed account. Reported by researcher Ben Wiker (“Anthropology Afoul of the Facts,” National Catholic Register, May 19, 2002).
I’ve read about that, thank you Mr. Peter. Projection’s something that seems to come up frequently in these sorts of things.
Thanks for confirmation that someone sometimes reads this stuff.
Some additional info and sources on the fraudulent Kinsey Report. The Kinsey Report (1948, 1953) pretended to be a statistically valid survey of sexual practices in the West, and then promoted mainstream casualness and pornography under the cover of scientific respectability. The report was later revealed to be based on non-scientific research of a very non-random [!] survey, including willing prison inmates with a disproportionate share of abnormal personalities (Judith Reisman and Edward Eichel, “Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The Indoctrination of People,” 1990).
From Reisman, the Kinsey findings are based on eighteen thousand “sex histories,” all of whom were self-selected volunteers and a quarter to half of whom were prison inmates, and 1,400 of whom were sex offenders, apparently even including nine sex offenders who engaged in direct experimentation on children aged two months to fifteen years. Prostitutes and cohabiting females were classified as married, leading to the claim that a quarter of married women committed adultery.
Janice Shaw adds further that Kinsey “was promiscuously bisexual, sado-masochistic, and a decadent voyeur who enjoyed filming his wife having sex with his staff” (see Janice Shaw Crouse, “Kinsey’s Kids,” at http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/crouse200311140923.asp).
We await, now, Cardinal Hollerich’s “sociological-scientific foundation” for overturning natural law and human sexual morality, unquestioned until his eminence happened on the scene as the big wheel for the 2023/2024 Synod on [the back of?] Synodality, and until another red-hat Cardinal Fernandez with his 5,000-word hat-trick for blessing irregular couples–and the entire derailment one “couple” at a time.
Total nonsense. I don’t care what you learned in Anthropology 101 at your local community college. Everything you have just stated about the field is ridiculous and false.
The whole “Gender Theory” ideology was invented by Dr. John Money, a depraved pedophile who experimented on children (the Reimer twins). This should have delegitimized this sickening ideology from the get go.
Hello,
Just wanted to add another perspective here. One of the reasons I think many people feel like they are the “wrong” gender is an overly narrow or negative view of their own gender. If someone hears over and over again that women are weak, cowardly, and useless, they may reasonably think, “But I’m NOT weak, cowardly, and useless, so does that mean I’m more like a man?”
Worse is the internalized misogyny. I can’t speak to how this works for men as much, but for women, if you constantly hear how much men despise women, you may come to believe that becoming masculine is in fact the only way anyone will ever love you. There are not enough examples of women AS WOMEN being respected and valued. I don’t think gender dysphoria can be adequately addressed without reassuring people that their own gender isn’t inherently defective and unwanted.
I agree. Mrs Hasson is on the money here. But could have added that misogyny plays a role here. Ironically and tragically, much of that is directed at girls by other girls.
This essay is long and deep but the author is impressively lucid. Have read only the last section so far – So where do we go from here . . .
Haven’t met the word “polyvalent” once yet and don’t expect to.
Jesus loves everybody. Who am I to judge another? God alone knows our hearts, hears our words and understands our actions.
What sheer nonsense, Ellen. You cannot pass but a few minutes in your day without making judgments about every encounter – and that includes about people.
I would re-read Mrs. Hasson’s advice at the end of her column. Your responses here do not engage, they vilify. As a layman (who agrees fully with the Pope’s condemnation of gender ideology), I look for a less judgmental approach from ordained ministers.
As our Creator, God knows our correct DNA also.
Non-rational animals, plants and minerals are not able to judge, to evaluate, to reason, to learn, to remember and to reflect. Rational animals, e.g., humans, do reason, evaluate, and judge. In this sense, ‘judge’ means to discern, discriminate, categorize and to determine the goodness or morality of acts we observe.
The judging we individual persons CANNOT/should not do is to repay another person’s words and deeds with overt acts of punishment or vengeance. (The STATE, OTOH, may justifiably engage in war or mete out punishment.) We are to we leave to God thos acts of punishment or vengeance which repays thoughts of the heart, words, and deeds.
All humans are able to judge, and we do that innumerable times each day. I judge, for example, that a car will soon hit mine if one of us does not move out of the way in which both are heading.
You claim you are not one to judge, perhaps channeling Francis’ once spoken words. I suspect you would RATHER not. Perhaps you think it wrong to conclude (judge) some acts as wrong because of misguided notions of kindness, indifference, or false charity which is no charity at all.
The RCC advises spiritual works or mercy which includes instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, and admonishing sinners. How can you admonish a sinner unless you evaluate (judge) that person’s action to be wanting in some manner? I would guess you are human, and if you are Catholic, you do yourself and your neighbor a small injustice if you refuse to use your God-given powers and charity to help yourself and your neighbor out of the chasm of sin.
“Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female…?” — Jesus (Matt 19:4)
Ellen. This is my first reply to you. I cannot speak to the “Deacon’s” portrayal of you, but I can tell you both my experience with “Queers” has been less than encouraging. Perhaps my ignorance got in the way. Then, I got my “boots on the ground”.
We live in a large apartment complex. We know many friendly neighbors. Then a “queer” couple, two men, (not really sure about homosexuality), moved into the apartment above ours. My Christian neighbors went nuts. The new tenants were shunned. Then, I asked my wife “how do we deal with this perceived dilemma”? They were Hispanic with poco English. Should we say bienvenido? Maybe not! We continued with our dogma of dysphora. We finally met them at a cookout party. Then I took my boots off. We are now friends. But, we still don’t know how a Catholic couple should “deal” with them. There might be others who are shunned. We are not good evangelists. Some jerk once said “put them on a isand. They can’t reproduce”.
We know that God will show us the way.
Very simply:
1. Satan hates God
2. Satan hates God’s children
3. Government does the work of Satan
4. Parents should shield their children from government at all costs…
Deacon Ed- you sure seem to know a lot about Satan’s inner most thoughts and feelings. One wonders, how did you happen to come by this first-hand knowledge of Satan’s most intimate thoughts? And why are your posts more akin to unhinged rantings devoid of intellectual substance than thoughtful and empathetic commentary? I apologize, but I cannot take anyone who spews the sort of strangeness you do seriously.
We are all God’s children: your spurious accusations against Deacon Ed – who condems an evil ideology and not it’s butchered child victims – are as absurd as James Martin’s still wearing of a clerical collar.
Mr.- sorry (not sorry) but I think that bullying, disparaging, degrading, and humiliating others because you refuse to empathize with them or try to understand where they are coming from is disgusting behavior. It is not how we are called to conduct ourselves as Catholics.
The totally human problem is that disgusting behavior is often circular….
Why, for example, should the federal government try to mandate (with punishments) that the national population and world population very suddenly genuflect before pronouns that don’t correspond to biological facts? Specifically, why is the evidence against transgender activism (!) disregarded by the so-called scientific community and fellow-traveler bureaucrats?
“Bullying, disparaging, degrading” stuff comes in more than one flavor. Yes, to “empathize” is always in short supply, fair enough, but what about this and similar findings…
The authors of an initial 2019 study which claimed that so-called gender-transition surgery may improve the long-term mental health of recipients issued a CORRECTION only a year after publication:
“the results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care.” Also, “Individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence who had received gender-affirming surgery were more likely to be treated for anxiety disorders compared with individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence who had not received gender-affirming surgery.”
Here’s the link: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/08/04/researchers-reverse-gender-surgery-offers-no-advantage-to-mental-health/
I will offer to you my empathy. I have no doubts that people who think they are “trapped in the wrong body” suffer. I definitely have compassion for them and I can relate to them. In fact, a very significant proportion of adolescents, especially girls, have disgust for their own changing body. There are different reasons for that disgust. It can be a pain in breasts while they are growing or disgust with the periods which can be very painful and perceived as “dirty”. Or it can be also sexual abuse or non-sexual abuse at home or elsewhere, a psychological trauma, lack of love received from parents/ their psychological disorder and so on. Those possibilities must be addressed in depth before one begins thinking of taking drugs or cutting their breasts off (for example).
I saw young people cutting and burning themselves (self-harm which mostly come with a borderline personality disorder or complex PTSD), starving themselves, trying to commit suicide out of self-hatred. “I am trapped in an alien body”, body dysmorphia belongs to that realm of self-disgust. That self-hatred in the majority of cases could be traced back to a trauma. This is why I insist on a long treatment with a psychologist/psychiatrist BEFORE doing anything drastic. I am driven by compassion; I do not want young people to be mutilated. I regard it as a true compassion for another human being.
Now, if there is a huge data on a disproportionately big percentage of abuse in the families (compared to the controls) among those who feel “trapped in an alien body” than those who do not does it not make sense to address this problem psychologically/psychoanalytically first? But they do not. Instead the system ushers young people towards self-mutilation after a very brief pseudo-assessment offering them “a quick” (and horrendous) fix. That means that those who do that to young people do not have true (not self-seeking) compassion and empathy. They do not seek the true good of those people.
You may notice that I have not used the word “God” anywhere in my argument. It is not needed. One should simply have some knowledge of human psychology or a common sense to agree with my argument.
However, “the God context” is needed to understand the following: nowadays to harm means to care and to propose a mutilation of a child is to have compassion. To try to prevent mutilation means to have no empathy. This is an anti-world’s values = lies contrary to Christian values so you cannot expect to find a fake empathy here.
It s an act of Love to care enough about the well being of your beloved to tell them the Truth about the physical, psychological ,emotional, and spiritual harmful nature of a false ideology that has led to the denial of the essence of every beloved son and daughter.
It is a failure to Love that has led to the engaging in of acts that deny the inherent Dignity of our beloved sons and daughters.
Dear WAAGC: yours is a classic case of psychological projection.
Deacon Ed- I am not the one disparaging people who are Gods children because I am unable to empathize with them or the problems they face in life. That award goes to you. You should not feel proud of yourself.
Again, I refuse to respond to hate speech.
You should apologize to Deacon Peitler for your series of attacks on his character. For your talk about empathy and thoughtfulness, there is an absence of of both in your posts. I recently you find an Adoration Chapel and spend time talking to Jesus Christ our Savior about what you have written and let Him guide you.
Regarding intellectual substance in relation to the demonic: A newly published book compiles Fulton Sheen’s speech and writing: “On the Demonic.” Sheen posits that only the good recognize its absence. God acknowledged the demonic evil in Paradise before Adam and Eve fatefully suffered its effects. The demonic always pulls away from the cross. It is objectively signified by love of nudity, by violence, and by a divisive mentality.
If you are philosophically educated and so inclined, D.C. Schindler’s “Freedom from Reality” explains the metaphysical, ontological, and Lockean meanings of modern liberty’s diabolical nature.
Deacon Ed recognizes the diabolical. He understands that Satan is the antithesis of God. God is all good, and evil is the privation or lack of good where it should be, where God first put it. Education aside, reason suggests that faith in God— efforts to seek, know, and serve Him are strengthened by gifts of the Holy Spirit–one of which is knowledge, another understanding, another wisdom. All who follow God are His children, as you suggest. Jesus had much more to say about how God’s children should be like the innocent small child and why.
This covers the deacon’s first two points. Schindler’s books can tell you more about the deacon’s next two points. The deacon asserts definite truth.
This is a first-class essay from a first-class writer.
I don’t see much discussion here about her answer to the question in the title.
>”it’s time the Catholic Church stopped getting into people’s identities?”
The church doesn’t. The Church is called to proclaim the Truth. Sexual acts between two men or two woman is an
abomination in the eyes of God (Levitucus 18:22). No practicing homosexual can enter the Kingdom of God (Corinthians 6:9-11). God made them male and female (Genesis 1:27).
Anyone is welcome to hear that. Don’t push identities that are not of God and the Catholic faith upon the Church.
This is a hard one for me. My first introduction to the LGBT community was as a Hospital Corpsman [1966-70]. Those kids were scared and they either came to me or the Chaplin. Later on my youngest son, Joe, has Autism as a young adult when in crowds he wants to hold my hand. I feared for both our lives on more than one occasion. There is a lot of hate in this word. Moving on as a Pharmacist in a hospital outpatient clinic we dispensed drugs for men going through transition to women. I had to counsel these patients. One thing was obvious to me, these guys were also scared to death of this transition. My reaction – did God put these guys in this body for a reason? To test me, or to test them? The way I see it we are all going to have to justify our lives at the final judgment hopefully based on Matthew 25:31-46 We have to get to know these people to witness their humanity. Finally I have 10 grand children, one is Gay and his family knew from day one that he was different than other kids. I have in-laws that are Gay and better Christians than my neighbors.
None of these people I have known that deviated from our conception of the straight and narrow were flamboyant. They just want to lead a quiet life.
Child or adolescent transition is absolutely wrong.
Do you truly believe that the atrocious display of gay cross dressers at the Olympics opening ceremony ‘just want to lead a quiet life’?
Queer demanded social recognition to be more queer once the legal, cultural, and religious institutions began to grant more rights so gays could live just like their typical neighbors. They wanted to marry. So western society granted them that. Then began more public displays of queerness, more raucous cries for more civil recognition, more confusion about ‘gender,’ men in women sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms; and now we are up to surgical and chemical mutilations of nature. Now parents are not to be told what their children do while teachers and guidance counselors teach them that trans is quite the IN-RAGE fashion now. All this has progressed to shows on stage, globally, instantaneously, with some reports of exposed genitalia (blamed on wardrobe) and all this accompanied by denials at any intended mockery or intended offense. Right. Tell me again how gays just want to lead a quiet life and how they are “better Christians” than your neighbors. Your neighbors CANNOT be Christian if gays are considered better than those identifying as disciples of Christ.
To be fair, there is a difference between LGBTQ-whatever ideology and activism and those who just want to live a quite life and despise that ideology. Some of the latter were not in a favor of “gay marriage” saying that it is political tool.
And who would display or act upon their ideology if not those who subscribe or experience or choose the LGBTQ identity? Now let’s be fair. If some despise the LGBTQ ideology, who do some quietly adopt the G or the L or the Q or some combination of those in their behavior? Is what we do under veil not someday to be revealed? Does not my sin affect you? If not, why does the Church claim that Adam’s sin affects us all?
“Moving on as a Pharmacist in a hospital outpatient clinic we dispensed drugs for men going through transition to women. I had to counsel these patients. One thing was obvious to me, these guys were also scared to death of this transition.”
If you are not a clinical psychologist you are not in position to counsel those people. This was precisely my point in my comment above: people must not go for “transition” unless they spent at least two years working with a psychologist/analyst/psychiatrist about their “being trapped in a wrong body”. And that psychologist must not be a part of the system which ushers people towards self-mutilation. If those people did that then some of them who were determined even after years of psycho-work would not be “scared to death”.
“My reaction – did God put these guys in this body for a reason?”
He did not. Various disorders and perversions are a natural fruit of the fall. This world is fallen, why are you surprised?
I recently watched an interview, a feminist against a biological male who “transitioned”. A feminist refused to recognize that person as a woman. The transition then said “but I have been living as a woman for more than a decade…” The feminist then asked “What is this to live as a woman?” Her opponent could not answer.
Indeed, there is not such a thing as “to live as a woman”. There is simply a woman living, a born woman who is living. Being a biological woman makes her life “a life of a woman” no matter what she is doing. If she is a captain of a ship, she is still a woman, if she is a policeman, soldier, whoever she is a woman. If she has an attraction to women, she is still a woman.
Those poor confused men should have been scared to death of “transitioning”. For goodness sakes who wouldn’t be? Castration can’t be much fun. Nor is lifelong medicalization.
You are mutilating a healthy body to conform with a mental illness.
I believe James Myres was counseling transitioners about the drugs they would be taking and what to expect, not the reasons for the transition.
The undisputed reality of intersex people, those born with formns of both male and female genitalia, is telling. Doctors usually assign gender based on what they view to be the more prominent presence either male or female anatomy. Very often, they choose wrongly, indicating the psyche absolutely plays a role in gender identity. God gave us a variety of sexual identities. None are “abominations.”