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This is an issue that concerns me personally. I wonder why the Church has such great difficulties with the subject of transsexuality?
No one chooses to be transsexual voluntarily. No one chooses to be beaten, or killed by family, friends and/or rejected. No one chooses voluntarily to be expelled and excommunicated from a church that one loves with all one’s heart.
I also wonder if this has always been the case in the history of the Church? Can someone help me answer my questions?
Gerlinde wrote:
I wonder why the Church has such great difficulties with the subject of transsexuality?
I think they (the top leadership) just don’t understand. I think some of them try. It is difficult for someone who is not transsexual (or for someone who is not gay) to understand the complexities.
Gerlinde wrote:I also wonder if this has always been the case in the history of the Church? Can someone help me answer my questions?
I have studied early church history to some extent and general history. Things like homosexuality and and transsexuality simply weren’t openly discussed in those times so it’s very difficult to assess how the early church handled the situations.To be more concise I won’t preface every sentence in this post with “some people,” “I think,” or “probably not the case, but…” ( 
I think there are many factors that contribute. When I say “people” below I’m referring to all people, not just church leaders:
People have a difficult time with empathy/viewing the world from the perspective of others.
- People assume that all of their behaviors are a result of choices they’ve made.
- People imagine a universal ideal that they then apply to everyone.
Tying that together and using church leaders as the context…
Church leaders believe they are the gatekeepers to
theuniversal ideal… and the ideal just so happens to fit them like a glove. Church leaders likely aren’t transsexual and they likely believe they’ve made deliberate choices to avoid being transsexual. Church leaders may also believe that everyone else can make the same “choices” that they’ve made to avoid being transsexual.
That’s just a guess… and you could say the same for any number of subjects. It all kinda falls apart with several incorrect assumptions being made:
There’s an assumption that being cis hetero is the ideal and everyone must conform to that standard.
There’s an assumption that people have 100% choice in all of their behaviors and preferences.
There’s an assumption that everyone is equal, that what one can do all can do.
I can’t speak much to church history on the subject. I assume the current position is mostly rooted in conservatism and tradition. New and better attitudes are hard for people to learn.
I used to believe and perpetuate the orthodox mindset. One memory I live with is a lesson I taught in PH (more than a decade ago) that covered the church’s position on gay marriage. I didn’t know it at the time, but there was a person in the quorum that was gay. It’s a tough memory to relive in my current skin but I remind myself that at the time I was doing the best with the light and knowledge I had. The same could be said of leaders today, they’re doing the best with what they’ve got.
A few things give me hope. The veil was taken from our minds, and the eyes of our understanding were opened.
Bednar gave a talk years ago about the sudden illumination of turning on a light switch vs. the gradual illumination from a sunrise. When an individual in the church changes it can be like turning on a light switch for the individual but in terms of the church as a whole it is more like a gradual sunrise – it gets brighter with each individuals that changes.
Gerlinde wrote:
I wonder why the Church has such great difficulties with the subject of transsexuality?
The church is no different from general society, I suppose. We want people to fit into very specific categories: male or female,
active or inactive, black or white, etc. Transsexual is an issue that is relatively new. (Or is it?) I have seen some changes in
individual members in my ward to openly talk about what you are experiencing. To me, that’s the first step. Total acceptance
will come slowly over time. (hopefully)
This is probably pretty obvious, but it has not been posted about yet. Our church has always been a literal community-building church – from the roots in New England among the frontiers, to Nauvoo, to Utah (and the surrounding area). In a thousand different ways, the church requested conformity to the idea of raising the next generation (from polygamy focusing on increasing the next generation, to the different programs designed to retain and support parents with families).
I think the biggest issue with non-traditional sexuality here is that it goes counter to a foundational principle that ideal communities are built from generations of parents with a male and a female parent and their children. This is rooted in the DNA of family farms – more children means a higher success for having more crops with a father to assist/oversee/provide grunt labor and a mother to assist/oversee/provide executive functioning to feed and clothe family members. Even post World-War 2, these gender assigned roles play out over and over again.
This perception is flawed in many of ways, a few of which I can include below:
1.
Households historically were never that secluded– it was very, very common to have live-in hired help ranging from single aunts/single uncles/grandparents and extended family who stayed there for periods of time, actual non-family (mostly single) hired help, and day laborers on the farm. In fact, a measure of wealth was precisely what could be outsourced to others from maids, nannies, cooks, field workers, household and business management. 2.
That the only divinely sanctioned way to contribute to building families and communities was to get married, raise children, support grandchildren– this is more or less championed from over the pulpit and is a way of building the community. But expanding the mission statement from a literal aspect to a non-literal aspect doesn’t necessarily mean that the family is under attack. However, church communities won’t be as inclusive of other types of sexuality until the people in the church can make a paradigm shift from having the literal expectation to a more figurative expectation. In fact, I think the best way to include others is to stop telling them what is expected of them and start asking questions about what they can contribute. This is slow to happen and has its own pitfalls however, 3.
Shifting balance of individual needs vs community needs– In the last 20 years, our social/governmental systems have gotten better at asking and assessing the needs of the individuals and the legal idea of accommodating those needs. In addition, we see more patient/student and other individual centered systems emerging. As the media, transportation and the emergence of social media have occurred, more people can shop for a community that they feel is worth their time – with younger generations more clearly stating that the religious community is not worth their time. This provides the foundation for the conflict of “eternal truth” of community conformity vs individual needs with more leverage now available to the individual. It was only a few years ago that the psychological community understood being transsexual / transgender well enough to stop classifying it as a mental disorder. That means even the “experts” couldn’t wrap their minds around it and saw it as something that could be “solved”. Now, the “disorder” is present only when there is severe disruption / distress (“dysphoria”) tied to the situation.
If even the most educated people in the world in the general field were dealing with it incorrectly until very recently, it is no surprise church leaders are struggling to accept radical changes in understanding – especially at their ages.
What is changing and will change it? Open discussion, especially when leaders become aware of people close to them who are transgender or have friends who are. Exposure to reality that is close and personal is key, and that is happening now. (For example, two of the current Q12 [Christopherson and Gong] have immediate family members [brother and son], with whom they have loving, respectful relationships, who are openly gay.)
First of all, I would like to thank all those who have responded here. I now understand a little more why the Church has problems with the subject. I still have one question:
If science accepts transsexuality and no longer tries to heal it, as they have done it with the issue of homosexuality for many decades; why does the Church not accept these scientific knowledge? Why are church leaders so stubborn in my eyes?
Gerlinde wrote:
If science accepts transsexuality and no longer tries to heal it, as they have done it with the issue of homosexuality for many decades; why does the Church not accept these scientific knowledge? Why are church leaders so stubborn in my eyes?
The same reason there are church members who believe the earth was created in six 24-hour periods and/or is only 6000 years old. And the same reason there are anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.
Gerlinde wrote:
If science accepts transsexuality and no longer tries to heal it, as they have done it with the issue of homosexuality for many decades; why does the Church not accept these scientific knowledge? Why are church leaders so stubborn in my eyes?
It’s because of their faith. They have faith in the inspired prophets, the inspired nature of scripture, and the inspiration that associates with tradition developed by “inspired leaders”. This creates a kind of blindness to science. It seems that only after repeated concerns directed to the church by society, personal experiences of its leaders with transsexualism, and experiences with good members of the church struggling with the objectionable doctrine, that the leaders eventually start revising policy and even doctrine.
Take, for example, the priesthood ban. It went from being an inspired DOCTRINE to being a historical artifact that “no one knows where it came from”. That was the way the priesthood ban faded away from inspired doctrine to something we don’t practice anymore.
It takes time — a lot of time. Time for the past prophets’ doctrine to be forgotten, time for a new generation to be raised with exposure to science and social pressure, and time for a new consciousness to emerge in the church.
Gerlinde wrote:
First of all, I would like to thank all those who have responded here. I now understand a little more why the Church has problems with the subject.I still have one question:
If science accepts transsexuality and no longer tries to heal it, as they have done it with the issue of homosexuality for many decades; why does the Church not accept these scientific knowledge? Why are church leaders so stubborn in my eyes?
If you grew up in a political atmosphere where you were told as a child that a specific and certain ethnicity was from the devil and needed to be destroyed, you’d probably believe it the rest of your life, even if people changed and the political climate was better.
Likewise, if you grew up being told homosexuality is a sin and any alteration to your body or gender identity is also bad (not just from Christianity but from the societal norms… remember when couples slept in different beds on tv shows? now they sleep in the same bed, the scandals!), they attribute their societal norms as god’s law. They are only human, as the church leaders graciously remind us.
I think it will take another 10-20 years before a shift occurs in the church leadership. More and more younger people who grew up in societally open minded cultures probably beginning with millennial’s parents in the late 60s and fresher will need to have power in the church (and for that matter, the government) for the law to “change” and decide the LGBT community isn’t some terrible decease. Notice how darker skinned people still are discriminated against even though we decided they were human beings like 50 years ago? It will take time. All we can do is be patient, be friends and vote when we do have the power to change leadership. With the church, we just smile and decide if we really need 80-90 year old men telling us what is morally right according to their 1920-1940 version of society is.
So, they are only stubborn because it’s what they know. They may not even be as malicious as I thought they are. They are just convinced and see no reason to change. Let the younger ones outlive the older ones and change will happen. It happened with blacks, with women and with other silly things in the past. This too shall pass one day as well.
grobert93 wrote:
I think it will take another 10-20 years before a shift occurs in the church leadership.
Thread tangent. This comment made me curious so I whipped up a quick spreadsheet. Assuming all current leaders live to be 95, this is roughly how things would play out (of course some will live longer, some shorter):
Tenure as prophet:
RMN: 2018 – 2020
DHO: 2020 – 2027
JRH: 2027 – 2036
DFU: 2036 -2036
DAB: 2036 – 2047
Stevenson: 2047 – 2050
Soares: 2050 – 2054
1) People can surprise you
2) Shifts aren’t dependent on just one person, the people and events surrounding a person have a great influence on the direction things go.
nibbler wrote:
grobert93 wrote:
I think it will take another 10-20 years before a shift occurs in the church leadership.
Thread tangent. This comment made me curious so I whipped up a quick spreadsheet. Assuming all current leaders live to be 95, this is roughly how things would play out (of course some will live longer, some shorter):
Tenure as prophet:
RMN: 2018 – 2020
DHO: 2020 – 2027
JRH: 2027 – 2036
DFU: 2036 -2036
DAB: 2036 – 2047
Stevenson: 2047 – 2050
Soares: 2050 – 2054
1) People can surprise you
2) Shifts aren’t dependent on just one person, the people and events surrounding a person have a great influence on the direction things go.
Thank you for noting this; I had actually mistyped and meant 20-30 years, but it seems with some basic math that it could take longer. I personally used to love JRH and DFU, though not as much now that my views have adjusted.
I do agree, people can and will surprise us. That is why we need to have hope that it won’t take until 2050 for basic human rights to be respected in the church.
The church leaders had had so much time to increase their knowledge. They have had so much time to pray and get an answer from God. But neither on the subject of transsexuality nor on the subject of homosexuality, they have done the right thing. Their refusal costs lives! And it destroys families.
A Utah friend, Lori, committed suicide because her LDS family did not accept that she was transsexual and lesbian. Her partner wrote to me in an email that she was not allowed to attend the funeral or stand on her grave, even though Lori has legally changed her gender. And that her family was not talking about Lori, but about “Lenny,” so they denied Lori’s identity.
Lori could still have lived had her not been met with so much incomprehension and prejudice by her family and church.
Gerlinde wrote:
The church leaders had had so much time to increase their knowledge. They have had so much time to pray and get an answer from God. But neither on the subject of transsexuality nor on the subject of homosexuality, they have done the right thing.Their refusal costs lives! And it destroys families.
A Utah friend, Lori, committed suicide because her LDS family did not accept that she was transsexual and lesbian. Her partner wrote to me in an email that she was not allowed to attend the funeral or stand on her grave, even though Lori has legally changed her gender. And that her family was not talking about Lori, but about “Lenny,” so they denied Lori’s identity.
Lori could still have lived had her not been met with so much incomprehension and prejudice by her family and church.
In fairness, things like this do not only happen within the church. There are many similar stories in American society in general. While we’ve come a long way in my lifetime (I’m 60) the idea that these are all choices (homosexuality and transsexuality) is still very common. Outside the US homosexuality is still illegal in many places, punishable by death in some of those places.
Please don’t take this to mean I am making excuses for the church, I am not, and I disagree with the church’s policies on the matters. But the church is not alone, nor is Lori in the story – there are unfortunately many families outside the church just like Lori’s. And the church has recently made some moves in the right direction, although they are very small steps. Five years ago Lori would have been excommunicated but that is not the current policy. I know it’s frustrating for those of us who want change, but change like this does not come quickly. Let us revel in our small victories and look to the next one.
I agree that there have been changes in the Church, and that these small steps were in the right direction. But I would like to point out that every day on which the Church refuses to acknowledge scientific facts and make corresponding changes in church policy; people die or suffer from it.
And one more thing: No one chooses to be gay or transsexual! This has also accepted medicine and psychology, and changed its attitude.
There is something I do not understand: on the one hand, the Church demands that its homosexual members be celibate; on the other hand, it is doing everything it can to prevent marriage for homosexuals.
Is there no separation of church and state in the USA (as in Germany)?
Marriage is primarily a state matter. In Germany you can marry in church, but must have married in the registry office before. So different from the US.
And one more thing: Why are child rapists protected in the Church? I raise the issue because it concerns me.
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