"M," "F," or "U?"

A door is a hole in a wall with a cover. (Snerd's words for the birds)

USA based Christian Week carried a story about the issuing of a gender-neutral health card to a baby in BC, in Canada. It seems that the parent believes it to be inappropriate for officialdom to pronounce on the gender of a child before the child is old enough for gender preference to be evident.

The article opened the door for all kinds of “gender-secure” (cis-gender) persons to weigh in; one terse comment on the Facebook reprint of the article was a simple: “Crapp.” And Franklin Graham weighed in with a complete non sequitur on the subject:

Graham argued in his response that the only way for a person to ever be complete is by "trusting Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as our Lord and Savior."

"The Bible says we can be 'complete in Him.' He fills the void in our hearts, and can give us the 'peace of God which surpasses all understanding,'" he stated.

Is it possible that trans-gendered persons’ “void” has more to do with their struggle to find a place in their day-to-day where they can live with dignity and acceptance? Is it that that separates them from “the peace of God?” Or is Graham saying that the “born again in Jesus” transaction will reorganize one’s biological/psychological construction? In other words, is Graham denying that there’s such a thing as gender ambiguity in the born-again Christian world?

Suppose that instead of being born with male genitalia but with strong female identification, the difference in a given child is a thalidomide-caused birth defect: a child born with flippers instead of arms and hands. Are we to believe that there is acceptance and “peace” for such a person as he/she grows to adulthood simply by virtue of being “born again?” Will arms appear miraculously? Or is it through the consistent, loving, accepting support and creativity of the able-bodied that a debilitating deficit can be made almost bearable?

We’ve seen how badly reactionary, conservative society needs to see differences put out of sight, swept under the carpet, denied and condemned if necessary. That people are same-sex oriented or have ambiguous gender identification is seen as something invented, by certain loud voices, at least. A conniving movement designed to undermine a particular version of the status quo. It’s probably not a denial of the existence of biological, psychological differences that’s the problem currently for the doctrinaire stance of Graham and his kind, it’s more likely the fact that the differences no longer remain hidden that Graham is actually lamenting. Join our community and we’ll help you keep your variant proclivities secret, maybe even hidden from yourself, just like in the olden days.

The reactions to events like the issuing of a health card or birth certificate with a “U” instead of an “F” or an “M” differ for reasons that can probably be understood given some consideration. For instance, in religious circles—be they Muslim, Christian or Jewish—tensions develop between the more-charismatic and more-humanistic worldviews. For Graham (at least in Graham’s rhetoric) the answer for everything seems to me to be the charismatic transaction, the miraculous transformation. At least in the pronouncement quoted above. Christian humanistic thinking might well be inclined to say something like, “charismatic transformation is certainly possible, but to make it the “everything” of Christian life and faith produces people like Franklin Graham whose pronouncements tend toward the exact opposite of Gospel intent, the triumph of doctrine over relationship.

There is, of course, a large cohort of persons who don’t arrive at reactionary conclusions through organized religion necessarily. The preservation of religious faith is not the only imperative driving reactionary responses. It seems to be a characteristic of the human condition that what we are, now, defines what is right, and so change is always potentially, personally threatening. I saw a man in the stands (on TV) at a Blue Jays game the other day whose T-shirt read, “VETERANS BEFORE REFUGEES.” Nothing I know of prevents generosity of spirit and practical assistance to both groups, but the sentiment on the man’s T-shirt pits the military (which is status quo) against refugee assistance (which introduces change).

If I were allowed to wax prophetic for a moment, I would say that gay marriage, equal rights and opportunity for trans-gendered people, ever-increasing globalization, wars and the refugee crises they create will all be significant, every-day realities in our future. Such trends don’t reverse in response to cries of protest against them, loud and angry as they may be. Denial or avoidance are futile. The determination to live according to one’s ethics and morality in this different future world is the beginning of wisdom for the coming age. The future world is not likely to be perfect by any means, but acknowledging that there is better even if there can never be perfect provides an outlook for all of us that has integrity.

So a child in Canada is issued a health card with a “U” typed in where “M” or “F” were previously the only alternatives. I can’t think of any way in which that scrapes skin off my nose.

Can you?