So, Sir Pink and I survived yet another large holiday cookout/get together with my family. No relatives were injured in the making of this event and my darling chivalrous hubby wasn’t (as has happened several times before) put in a position of feeling he had to step in and protect me from an ideological attack from any of my many relatives who take a rather narrow conservative view of most religious, social and political stuff. Good thing, too, because Sir Pink left his charger and lance at home hundreds of miles away.

But the lack of personal involvement in heated debates doesn’t mean I didn’t hear my fair share, including one of my uncles, who is a reverand and who likes to preach that homosexuality is a special kind of sin that puts you in immediate damnation because it’s a sin against the Holy Ghost. For those of you not familiar with this conept of blasphemy agaisnt the Holy spirit, here you go…from Matthew chapter 12 (in Jesus’s own words):

31 Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. 32 “And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the {age} to come.

I know, pretty heady stuff to know that there is a sin that even Jesus says cannot be forgiven. But before I go on too much longer, let me tell you that my uncle is full of it. I’ll encourage the good Deacon to post some other day on what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit really is. Not that it will change my uncle’s mind of course.

Anyhoo, my uncle’s twisted logic on this is that God determines what gender you are at birth, and thus what sexual orientation (since its only supposed to be boys on girls, dontcha know), and therefore to go against that is to fundementally reject God’s design for you. And that is supposedly a sin against the Holy Spirit and a form of blasphemy. I haven’t heard anyone else make this silly argument, but in the interests of not causing family warfare, I have stopped telling my uncle that.

So at the Memorial Day park gathering, what better way to celebrate fallen soldiers than to reiterate his argument to the huddled, beer-besotten masses (well, the half dozen people sitting near him anyway) his view on this subject, with the added notation that people who undergo sex change operations are doubly guilty of blaspheming against the Holy Ghost because they have rejected not only their assigned sexual preference but assigned gender as well.

Again: total bull. But at the risk of making anyone mad around here, I will agree with my uncle on one point. Transgender stuff creeps me out big time. Gay and lesbian sex? Doesn’t really raise my hairs. Cross-dressing? Cool, if that’s your thing. Sex change? Makes me break out in goosebumps just thinking about it and not the good kind of goosebumps either.

I don’t think it’s some unforgivable sin, mind you. I just don’t get it. If you tell me you are only attracted to your own gender, I get that. It’s a personal lifestyle choice. But to say God gave you the wrong body? C’mon! Get real!

My personal take is that if you think you’re a woman trapped in a man’s body or the other way around, I think you need to get some counseling, not surgery. Advances in surgery that allows “gender reassignment” make sense for the poor little babies born with both sets of gender equipment or none at all. That’s a genetic mashup and God gave us the brains to take that on, so we should. But to argue as a person with fully functioning natural parts that you got the wrong set is plain nutty. Is that insensitive of me? Maybe so but it’s how I feel.

I remember a guy friend in college joking with me that he felt like he was a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. I think he was sweet on me and was trying to turn it into some sort of come hither line, but if so it didn’t work. He probably would have loved to try on a woman’s body just long enough to enjoy some lesbian action but he was joking, and I’m sure many other men have made similar jokes.

And yet…I read a year or two ago about a man who did indeed get a sex change operation to become a woman, but who continued to have sex with women. A guy who really thought he was a lesbian trapped in a man’s body! And this goes to show how we misuse medical technology, usually to try to look better when we shouldn’t be trying to…but sometimes to just change what God gave us just because we aren’t satisfied with our private parts. It’s something that also bugs me when women go for fertility drugs and in vitro because they so desparately want kids, and then they end up with 6 or 7 or 8 of them and start crying for help to pay for and raise their ungainly gaggle of little’uns. Medical science isn’t a toy, and sometimes, nature (and God) know best.

So what’s next as medical technology advances? Species reassignment? Always wanted to be a wolf or a bear or a horse? Here’s your chance! I’m a gay tiger trapped in a female human body. Let me out! I want to hook up with Siegfried or Roy.

Whether you believe in God or not, sometimes I think we just need to accept what is set before us. Or in this case accept what we are set inside of…our very own bodies.