Sexuality at Risk
Help! I am confused and I need answers now. I wondered why popular musician Lee Luxion in speaking to CNN Journalist Lauren Booker on April 13, 2016 said she prefers to be called “they” and not male or female. Why would she say that she “might wake up as a man or as a woman, sometimes as both and sometimes as neither. How I express it is usually how I dress, how I do my hair. But then my mannerisms change. The way I speak might change a little, too. There shouldn't be a sense of what's normal and what is not,” Luxion said. “And (with) more representation of transgender or gender-fluid or non-binary individuals, the more likely it is that we are going to feel safe to also be that publicly.”
I am still trying to figure out why noted photographer Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert told Emanuella Grinberg of CNN on March 09, 2016 that gender is not about male or female but it is a “spectrum”. He said: “I realized that there’s no fixed aspect of my gender and my sexuality that I could define as ‘me’, but that it is fluid,” he said. “You can drift. You’re not trapped at any one point even if you, as I do, define yourself for example as a man.” I am still confused and need answers.
I observed that within the United States’ school system, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education on May 13, 2016 under Title 1X in reference to transgender students, further created confusion for me. The Departments defined transgender as: “those individuals whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth”. The Departments added that “transgender individuals may undergo gender transition at any stage of their lives, and gender transition can happen swiftly or over a long duration of time.” They emphasized that: “when a student or the student’s parent or guardian, as appropriate, notifies that school administration that the student will assert a gender identity that differs from previous representations or records, that school will begin treating the student consistent with the student’s identity. Under Title 1X, there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.”
I am still confused because as I understand it, the directive suggests that a student whose birth certificate identifies him as male, can walk into a Principal’s office and say to him/her that he believes he is now female. The Principal, without medical evidence, is required to adjust to the student’s subjective expression or have his/her educational institution lose Federal funding.
Finally, I thought that the late Paula Ettelbrick could help me. She did not. Ettelbrick was the lawyer and Chair of International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission. In The Weekly Standard, on August 4, 2003 she is quoted as saying: “Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender and seeking state approval for doing so. Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and radically reordering society’s view of reality.”
For Ettelbrick and her political organization, the ultimate target is to transform ‘the very fabric of society’ – the family. My confusion however, was put to rest when I read that the All–wise, All-knowing God designed mankind, male and female (Genesis 1:27). Anyone seeking to provide “true alternatives to marriage”, may be in a futile fight against the Creator of sexuality.
Senior contributor for the Federalist Stella Morabito said, “To be human is to be male or female. Our sex is not a body part. It is inscribed into the DNA of every cell in our bodies. As society and its laws cover up these facts, we stray closer to a society that can decline to recognize the full humanity of any human being. This is not a good place to be.” Profound.
I am still trying to figure out why noted photographer Joseph Wolfgang Ohlert told Emanuella Grinberg of CNN on March 09, 2016 that gender is not about male or female but it is a “spectrum”. He said: “I realized that there’s no fixed aspect of my gender and my sexuality that I could define as ‘me’, but that it is fluid,” he said. “You can drift. You’re not trapped at any one point even if you, as I do, define yourself for example as a man.” I am still confused and need answers.
I observed that within the United States’ school system, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Education on May 13, 2016 under Title 1X in reference to transgender students, further created confusion for me. The Departments defined transgender as: “those individuals whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth”. The Departments added that “transgender individuals may undergo gender transition at any stage of their lives, and gender transition can happen swiftly or over a long duration of time.” They emphasized that: “when a student or the student’s parent or guardian, as appropriate, notifies that school administration that the student will assert a gender identity that differs from previous representations or records, that school will begin treating the student consistent with the student’s identity. Under Title 1X, there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.”
I am still confused because as I understand it, the directive suggests that a student whose birth certificate identifies him as male, can walk into a Principal’s office and say to him/her that he believes he is now female. The Principal, without medical evidence, is required to adjust to the student’s subjective expression or have his/her educational institution lose Federal funding.
Finally, I thought that the late Paula Ettelbrick could help me. She did not. Ettelbrick was the lawyer and Chair of International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission. In The Weekly Standard, on August 4, 2003 she is quoted as saying: “Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender and seeking state approval for doing so. Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and radically reordering society’s view of reality.”
For Ettelbrick and her political organization, the ultimate target is to transform ‘the very fabric of society’ – the family. My confusion however, was put to rest when I read that the All–wise, All-knowing God designed mankind, male and female (Genesis 1:27). Anyone seeking to provide “true alternatives to marriage”, may be in a futile fight against the Creator of sexuality.
Senior contributor for the Federalist Stella Morabito said, “To be human is to be male or female. Our sex is not a body part. It is inscribed into the DNA of every cell in our bodies. As society and its laws cover up these facts, we stray closer to a society that can decline to recognize the full humanity of any human being. This is not a good place to be.” Profound.