All Dressed Up

Have you heard about Mike Penner? He’s a sports writer for the L.A. Times and recently came out as transgendered. After I read the article, I read most of the comments left by other readers. What stuck me the most were the comments from Christians who either condemned him to Hell or vowed to pray for God to save him from this terrible affliction. Even amongst those comments, one, in particular, stayed with me. It was a woman who said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that she would pray that he’d come to his senses and be a man again as God intended him to be in the first place because God doesn’t make mistakes!

Before I delve into why this person’s comment bothered me, let me give you a little back-story. I’m a Christian. Morally and ethically, I’m very conservative, but I guess I’m what you’d call a liberal Christian. I believe there is such a thing as being born gay. I believe there are transgendered people. I believe that each and every one of us is entitled to, and receives, God’s perfect love. I believe He loves us exactly the way we are.

This begs the question, why did God create homosexuality or gender dysphoria? Why not? Who says we all have to be hetero and biological male or female? Who says God didn’t plan on there being a “third sex?” Are intersexed individuals an affront to God, too? Who are any of us to question the Creator’s grand design? I believe that He has a plan for each and every one of us. Some of us may need to transition from male to female. Some of us may love a member of the same sex. Some of us are color blind. Some of us are really very bad at math. We’re all different and yet some of these differences are acceptable to us and some are seen as abominations. Why? Who gets to make that call?

If the commenter is right, then God doesn’t make mistakes. Mike Penner was born a man, and is now becoming a woman. That was God’s plan for him. It wasn’t that God made a mistake and made Mike a man instead of a woman. Nor, is it a mistake for Mike to shed his maleness and embrace the female that he is. It just is.

Sometimes, I’m embarrassed to call myself a Christian. In my experience, Christians are the most insufferable, judgmental and venomous people I know. They are able to twist the context of any Bible passage to fit their agenda and then tell you that God is on their side of the argument. What happened to love? You know, charity? Peace? Acceptance? Tolerance? God sent his Son to teach us these things and what have we done? We’ve perverted the message and killed the messenger.

Filed under: uncategorized on April 26th, 2007