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Old 21st January 2019, 04:56 PM   #1
Magrat
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Request for Information

I'm looking for specific information from those of religious persuasions relating to a book I am working on about transgender issues. I am looking for the following:
  1. What religious beliefs do you hold?
  2. What does your religion teach about transgender people (if anything)? Is it separate from LGB issues or included in?
  3. What scriptural backing does that teaching have? (chapter and verse in the bible, for instance)
  4. What are your personal beliefs? If it differs from the teaching of your religion, why?
  5. How many trans people do you know?

I'm not looking to start a debate, just gathering information. please respond in dm if you wish. thank you for participating.
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Old 21st January 2019, 05:10 PM   #2
Thor 2
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1. None although I'm sitting on the fence about The Tooth Fairy.
2. N/A
3. N/A
4. I'm cool with trans guys. Don't bother me at all.
5. Non. Although I think I met one or two in Thailand.
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Old 21st January 2019, 05:47 PM   #3
P.J. Denyer
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1. None, but raised vaguely Anglican and went to a CofE School
2. I don't remember the subject ever coming up. My time in a religious environment was mid 70's to mid 80's, the CofE at that time was relatively socially liberal at the grass roots level.
3. N/A
4. I'm very much of the "People should be allowed to do what they need to inorder to lead happy and healthy lives, unless it actively stops others from doing so" school of thought with a side order of "Other people's sexuality is not my business", so it differs from a lot of Christianity but less so from my experience if the CofE growing up.
5. None at the moment (so far as I'm aware), but I move in a pretty small circle these days. There was my old Tae Kwondo instructor a few years back.
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Old 21st January 2019, 06:30 PM   #4
Magrat
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Originally Posted by Thor 2 View Post
1. None although I'm sitting on the fence about The Tooth Fairy.
2. N/A
3. N/A
4. I'm cool with trans guys. Don't bother me at all.
5. Non. Although I think I met one or two in Thailand.
trans guys meaning specifically men? or meaning any trans person?
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Old 21st January 2019, 08:06 PM   #5
abaddon
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Originally Posted by Magrat View Post
I'm looking for specific information from those of religious persuasions relating to a book I am working on about transgender issues. I am looking for the following:
  1. What religious beliefs do you hold?
  2. What does your religion teach about transgender people (if anything)? Is it separate from LGB issues or included in?
  3. What scriptural backing does that teaching have? (chapter and verse in the bible, for instance)
  4. What are your personal beliefs? If it differs from the teaching of your religion, why?
  5. How many trans people do you know?

I'm not looking to start a debate, just gathering information. please respond in dm if you wish. thank you for participating.
1. None, but raised RCC.
2. In theory, all damned to hell, in practice an edge condition conveniently brushed under the rug.
3. None that I know of unless one squints really hard. It is simply not something the bible authors were equipped to handle.
4. Such bigots can all go die in a fire for all I care.
5. My eldest is trans and I volunteer for the trans community so hatloads. Not a fair or representative sample of the general populace.
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Old 21st January 2019, 09:01 PM   #6
attempt5001
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Originally Posted by Magrat View Post
I'm looking for specific information from those of religious persuasions relating to a book I am working on about transgender issues. I am looking for the following:
  1. What religious beliefs do you hold?
  2. What does your religion teach about transgender people (if anything)? Is it separate from LGB issues or included in?
  3. What scriptural backing does that teaching have? (chapter and verse in the bible, for instance)
  4. What are your personal beliefs? If it differs from the teaching of your religion, why?
  5. How many trans people do you know?

I'm not looking to start a debate, just gathering information. please respond in dm if you wish. thank you for participating.
1. Christian (though not currently part of a church and reconsidering how I think about faith at present).
2. I've never heard any formal teaching about it. The congregation I was last a part of would have widely varying opinions. If pressed, I suspect the official response of the leaders would be akin to that on LGB; that homosexual acts are "sinful", but no more so than any other "sinful" act, so the response to a transgendered person would be compassion and kindness with a hope for change. However they might acknowledge that there is a difference between trans and homosexuality and just go with, "we're not sure on this, so let's just be kind". Not totally sure.
3. I think the lack of explicit scripture on the matter might result in the latter response I mentioned above.
4. I think Jesus spent a lot of time with (and genuinely enjoyed the company of) people who were looked down upon by the mainstream of his time. I think he treated them the way he would like to be treated and that's an example I'd like to emulate as best I can.
5. None that I know of except a neighbour's child with a male phenotype who identifies as a girl (aged ~5 I think).

Good luck with your book.
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Old 21st January 2019, 09:26 PM   #7
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Pretty much all N/A, but I had a couple of trans co-workers. That I knew of.
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Old 21st January 2019, 09:56 PM   #8
Thor 2
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Originally Posted by Magrat View Post
trans guys meaning specifically men? or meaning any trans person?

When you're really hip like me you use the term "guys" to refer to men or women. Any trans person is OK by me.
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Old 21st January 2019, 10:57 PM   #9
8enotto
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Fuzzy memory kicked in and there is some OT section talk of proper choices for sex. Talks of men with animals, other men and women not his own wife.
I do not own a bible to look it up. My father found it decades ago and mentioned the book/verse in a not nice letter to my mother during the divorce.
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Old 21st January 2019, 11:05 PM   #10
arthwollipot
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Originally Posted by 8enotto View Post
Fuzzy memory kicked in and there is some OT section talk of proper choices for sex. Talks of men with animals, other men and women not his own wife.
I do not own a bible to look it up. My father found it decades ago and mentioned the book/verse in a not nice letter to my mother during the divorce.
I recommend The Brick Testament as a handy reference work. All you are looking for in this post is there.
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Old 22nd January 2019, 07:05 AM   #11
JayUtah
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1. None, but I'll answer as best I can for Mormonism (which permeates the air where I live) until some real Mormons come along.
2. Mormonism teaches that changing your physical gender is against God's plan, which appears to be heavily dependent on marriage and child-rearing. It tends to lump atypical gender identity and sexual attraction or behavior into the same category of sin.
3. None that I'm aware of, but Mormon leaders claim to speak directly for God and so don't need footnotes.
4. My personal belief is that gender identity, and all the behavior that goes with it, is an intriguing facet of sexual behavior among the human species, and that our understanding of that behavior is constantly expanding and becoming more nuanced. The Mormon religion's approach to sexuality seems to depend on how old one is. Older Mormons naturally seem to tend toward pretending it's still 1959, while the younger generation are more tolerant toward different expressions of sexual identity and behavior, and are generally far less dogmatic than their elders.
5. I've known one trans man and two trans women, though not all at the same time.

Last edited by JayUtah; 22nd January 2019 at 07:34 AM.
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Old 22nd January 2019, 07:31 AM   #12
MRC_Hans
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1 - None (atheist)
2 - N/A
3 - N/A
4 - People can do what they want as long as they don't hurt others. I'm a little fed up with having to hear so much about it - its their business, not mine.
5 - To my knowledge, none. Have met the occasional one over time in various contexts.

Hans
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Old 22nd January 2019, 07:40 AM   #13
Crossbow
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1. While I do not believe that there is some sort of god, or gods, and I do not act as if there is any sort of god, or gods. However, I cannot say for sure that there is not any sort of god, or gods, out there in the universe.

Therefore, I am an agnostic who is essentially an atheist.

2. My religious belief does not teach me anything about transgender people.

3. There is no scriptural backing for my religious belief.

4. See Answer "1." for my religious belief. Since my religion does not have any teachings, therefore I am unable to answer this question.

5. I know three transgender people right now, and I have known several others in the past.
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Old 22nd January 2019, 09:04 AM   #14
Pooneil
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  1. What religious beliefs do you hold?

    Former Episcopalian now atheist.

  2. What does your religion teach about transgender people (if anything)? Is it separate from LGB issues or included in?

    There is a national "epistle" but no one unified teaching from the Episcopal church as every diocese is quasi-independent. The Diocese of Texas, which only covers part of Texas, was taking a stand against homosexual priests when I left the church. But there were homosexual deacons, lay clergy, wardens and teachers in the churches I've attended. The music directors were IME the most likely position to be gay. There were also gay priests, but they tend to be officially silent about it and the pretence was that they were just single. I never met a trans person in any official position or as a parishioner, to my knowledge.

    More to the point. I am unsure of any specific recent teachings about transgender as I have left the church, but it was largely considered in the same category as homosexual when I was still attending.

    Sex is not a widely spoken about topic, in my experience, as one tends to assume that everyone else does it. As long as it is kept private, no one cares.

    The National Church, hold a more broad based view and many dioceses allow openly homosexual priests. I was unaware of any trans priests. Some part of the resistance in Texas is traditional social bigotry, some part is the general reluctance of people to discuss sex and religion.

  3. What scriptural backing does that teaching have? (chapter and verse in the bible, for instance)

    The Episcopal church looks to the Bible for inspiration but prefers the mosaic approach that includes historic traditions including their own version of Catholic reason. As opposed to a chapter and verse reading.

  4. What are your personal beliefs? If it differs from the teaching of your religion, why?

    Sexuality like all aspects of humanity is a spectrum. It seems to be a bimodal, multidimensional distribution, if you get my drift. I have no idea how the variances are distributed or even if that can be determined. Each person's location in the distribution is not fixed over time. While nature plays a significant part, family and societal upbringing is also consequential. There is no way to tell what, exactly, is nature vs nurture. Nor is that kind determination particularly important for daily living.

    I really don't want to know what others, gay, trans or straight, do in their own bedrooms. Nor to tell them about my activities.

    I tend to take a similar approach of mosaic and reason without specifically looking to the Bible for a foundation.

  5. How many trans people do you know?

    I know or have known four or five. All casually. Mostly in places like skeptics groups.

Last edited by Pooneil; 22nd January 2019 at 09:59 AM.
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Old 22nd January 2019, 09:44 AM   #15
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I'd like to know more about the thesis of the book and how this inquiry informs it.
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Old 22nd January 2019, 03:35 PM   #16
Magrat
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Originally Posted by arthwollipot View Post
I recommend The Brick Testament as a handy reference work. All you are looking for in this post is there.
thank you!

and to every who has replied, thank you for your time. very informative
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Old 22nd January 2019, 03:45 PM   #17
Magrat
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Originally Posted by theprestige View Post
I'd like to know more about the thesis of the book and how this inquiry informs it.
The book covers many different facets of transgender experience including historical, cross cultural, and psychological aspects (as in, how have trans people been understood in ancient times; what is it like to be trans in china; gender dysphoria as a psychological diagnosis and issues around depression, self harm, and suicidal ideation); the experience of trans people in america today (as in, trans youth make up a disproportionate amount of the homeless); survival sex for lgbtq+ youth; drug and alcohol abuse; and the application of religious belief in the transgender context.

this thread specifically stems from a report I read that suggested the more trans people one knew, the more positively one views trans people; furthermore that the less religious one is, the more trans people one is likely to know. I was curious to see informally if this held and to question those who do apply various religions to their view of transgender what specific materials they use to form their beliefs.

the study I referred to can be seen here
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Old 22nd January 2019, 03:53 PM   #18
Magrat
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Originally Posted by Pooneil View Post

The Episcopal church looks to the Bible for inspiration but prefers the mosaic approach that includes historic traditions including their own version of Catholic reason. As opposed to a chapter and verse reading.
I don't understand this, could you please clarify? By 'tradition' do you mean 'this is what we have always done' or is it written material as with judaism?
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