GLBT Rights and Christianity

[Alpha]

While the tone is getting tetchy to some extent, what on earth do any of the few last posts have to with GLBT* issues in relation to Christianity?

Order, you weren't asked for your personal convictions. I gather what LH is getting at are wider, institutional beliefs and practices, and how these are manifested. Discrimination against gay people--even of you don't practice it or see it--happens. How do I know? Look at teen suicide. Look at the number of kids who are essentially disowned by their families when they come out. Look at the fact that they cannot marry in most places (and how civil unions do not have the same rights as marriage). Look at the number of people who hold positions of responsibility who still think homosexuality is a choice, homosexual sex a sin, homosexual relationships somehow gross or unusual. How many people in congress think that heterosexual sex is sinful?

There are hate groups for everything, of course. But you cannot sit there and argue that discrimination against gays is not worth mentioning (or is just as bad as anti-whitemiddleclassmaleism) when it's so clearly, incredibly, sadly embedded into society. Where gay kids grow up thinking something is wrong with them.

[lovehearty42]

While the tone is getting tetchy to some extent, what on earth do any of the few last posts have to with GLBT* issues in relation to Christianity?

Mine had nothing to do with it. In fact, my last post was pure, unadulterated piss-off-ed-ness. So, even though I'm the OP, I have been a very bad OP in the fact that I have not encouraged people to stay on topic.

As far as Order is concerned, he's confusing the fact that I'm posting in this forum in response to or in concert with other topics of this nature. He seems to think that being trans is the only defining facet of my identity, which is patently false. If being trans were the only facet of my identity, I wouldn't be on a page for fans of a certain video game. I think I found this page because I was looking for good spots to grind at in FFV:A, and one of the Google links led here. Furthermore, I think what Order fails to realize is that being trans isn't something one does in a vacuum. Even if it is only one facet of my identity, it is something that affects every aspect of my public life. Everything from background checks, to paper trails, to why my license has an "M" on it. When I transitioned, I didn't have an option to move to a completely different state. I stayed at the same job when I transitioned, and for about seven months after. That point in time in my life created a wonderful place of growth where it concerned my friends (at the time, my family wasn't talking to me). At my job, however, people saw me transition. People saw it as their prerogative to ask me morbid questions about my genitals, or to tell me who I really was or was not, or to explain to me how horrible my decision was because I didn't fit their definition of beauty. I had leaders in various congregations tell me that I was questioning God's sovereignty by suggesting that God made a mistake (though I never made such a claim). So, this isn't the defining facet of my identity: this is the facet of my identity by which I am defined by others.

Now, I'm going to block him, and if this conversation can continue without someone who takes things out of context and looks for reasons to talk down to people, that'd be cool. If not, then a moderator can just lock the thread.