"Birds, Bees, and the Bible - What About Transgender Persons?"

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on February 15, 2009

Texts — Mark 1:40-45 and Numbers 15:32-36

Mark

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ 41Moved with pity Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ 42Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. 43After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, 44saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ 45But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

Numbers

When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. 33Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole congregation. 34They put him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him outside the camp.’ 36The whole congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

How old were you when you had your first introductory lesson on the birds and the bees — whether the information was completely accurate or not.  If you learned about the birds and the bees before you were 10, raise your hand. (About 1/3 of the congregation raised their hands.) If you learned about the birds and bees from one of your parents, raise your hand. (About ½ of the congregation raised their hands.)

Over the years, I asked that question to many teenager, members of our Initiation to Adulthood Group, and in virtually every case — I can’t think of an exception, but maybe there was one or two — they say they did NOT learn about the birds and the bees from their parents. Most of them are horrified by the thought of having such a conversation with their parents. Or, at least, they are horrified by the thought of admitting they’ve had such a conversation. Those are two different things, I realize.

I learned how babies are made when I was younger than 10, in the backyard, after a neighborhood football game. One of the older kids asked us if we knew the “facts of life.”  The information he had wasn’t entirely correct, but calling them facts made an impression. After this backyard revelation, one of my friends, Jimmy McNab, said: “Dad? Maybe.  Mom?  Never.”

Fortunately, our education about sex didn’t stop at age 10. Gradually, through school, or books, or parents, or older kids, most of us have gained sophistication in this area, but it’s still, amazingly, a fairly murky, somewhat taboo subject.

Now to the Bible — speaking of taboos. Some people say that sex is supposed to happen only between a male and a female, because that’s what the Bible says: “God created [human beings], male and female, and told them to multiply.” And there are passages that explicitly state that a man lying with another man is taboo.

Some people say that sex is supposed to happen only between a male and a female who are married. There’s a passage that says if a young unmarried woman can’t prove that she’s a virgin, she should be put to death.

People have a variety of opinions on these matters, including how to deal with Biblical passages like these. But most of us recognize that human sexuality is more complicated than that and most of us would agree that attitudes about what is acceptable and what is taboo have evolved a lot.

For one thing, we know that not everyone is born attracted to the opposite sex. Some people are born attracted to the same sex.  It’s not the way they decided to be. It’s the way they are. First Church was, I think, the 82^nd congregation in the UCC to become an open and affirming church. That means that we don’t put down same-sex sex attraction as something that’s wrong with people. 

But our education goes beyond that. I remember the first time I met a transgender person. I was in Greece at the time.  (In Greece the assumptions about sexual orientation and gender identity and roles are a little different than in the United States.) One evening, I was introduced to a group of people, including a tall woman whose name was “Stig.” She was Swedish, actually. We were standing around in a circle, and after several minutes I said to myself, “Stig is a man.” The only category I had at my disposal at the time was that Stig was a “cross-dresser.”

But now I’ve learned that even the distinction “male” and “female” isn’t as clear cut as I once thought it was.  For example, when a baby is born, the doctor looks to see if it’s a boy or a girl, right?  You look at “the pelvic anatomy.” But sometimes the doctor can’t tell.  Sometimes the anatomy is ambiguous. Sometimes the doctor and family make a decision to do a surgical procedure to get the anatomy to look more conventional.  But those procedures are being done less and less because the matter of gender identity goes deeper than anatomy.  Sometimes the surgeon and parents make the wrong decision.

What gives a person a certain sex, or gender identity, is apparently very complex. Someone can have aspects of both sexes’ anatomy. Gender and sex seem to be more on a continuum rather than just A or B. But when I met Stig, I was thinking in terms of A and B.  And I don’t remember asking myself or wondering why a person who was anatomically A would feel moved to live in the world in the gender role B. But now, at this stage of my education, I think I understand more..

I know this sounds strange, but our anatomy and our gender identity are not the same thing. They don’t always go together the same way. Some people have male anatomy and male hormones, but they feel in their minds that they are women, sort of trapped in a male body. People can have female anatomy and female hormones, and feel that they are men, trapped in a woman’s body.

Imagine what must it be like for a person, especially a child or a teenager who doesn’t fit the prescribed categories that most people fit — heterosexual male and heterosexual female? Imagine how painful it must be to feel that you have to hide who you are. I can’t think of anything more painful than that.

The Bible’s simplistic view of human sexuality is not very helpful when it comes to sorting all of this out. There are many “facts of life” that the Bible doesn’t know about, and that we don’t know about.

The Bible is helpful in the sense that it calls us to live with compassion — especially toward the people who carry the heaviest burdens. This is what the healing of the leper is about.  In the Bible, lepers represent outcasts. Lepers represent stigma, people whose presence makes other people afraid.

We like to be compassionate toward people who don’t really need our compassion. I would like to be compassionate toward Gweneth Paltrow, for example.  It would be easy to include her the circle of people I care about. Jesus tells us to include people who tend to be kept out of the circle, or locked in the closet, out of sight.

We’re complicated creatures. And our social world, our affections and fears are powerful and complicated and problematic. Most churches won’t touch this stuff.  Most churches like to stay on safer topics, like things we all have in common. But one of the “facts of life” is that there are differences. And we need to recognize those differences, because not recognizing them makes some burdens even heavier.  And they are already pretty heavy.