>I've been trying to find where God revealed that he doesn't want people to have sex change operations
I doubt you have. Changing one's outward physical gender doesn't cancel out the Biblical condemnations against homosexuality or transvestism. If you are genetically a male or female, you still are a male or female no matter if your genitals are changed and you take hormones of the opposite sex.
Hmmm - starting here, I think it's pretty obvious what phrases in the Bible are being referred to:
Deuteronomy 22:5
22:5 The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
and Leviticus 18:22:
18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
Hmmm - seems like a fairly simple set of proscriptions, doesn't it? More less, it's the biology is destiny argument. You are born male or female, and you shall always be one or the other.
Starting with the basic biological expression issue, there are problems here. There are men whose physiques are relatively feminine, there are equally women who have relatively masculine builds. Quite unsurprising really, since humanity comes in all shapes and sizes, it seems quite silly to expect that there is only two 'real' morphologies. If we focus on genital expression, we run into another problem - the intersexed - people whose bodies are not expressly either male or female.
Diving a little deeper with a metaphorical microscope, we dive down into the chromosomes. After all, the chromosomes are "XX" for female, and "XY" for male - right? Yes, in simple terms that's true enough. But then we have to account for a number of unusual chromosomal combinations XXY, but a variety of other factors described here
Hmmm ... we have a problem here. Nature itself presents a conundrum to any absolute definition of Man / Woman, doesn't it? We can define "Male/Female" to some extent, and recognize that there are those in the population who are neither.
Well, perhaps, the biology-is-destiny model isn't going to work so well. After all, it leaves those who are intersexed in a rather odd place in terms of scriptural salvation, doesn't it? {and further, we can hardly accuse someone who is intersexed of having violated Deuteronomy, no matter what they wear, can we?, and goodness knows how God would look upon someone having sexual relations with someone who is intersexed - did they lie with a man or a woman? both at the same time?}
Fine, let's look at it as a social role issue. Clearly, nature (or creation if you prefer), is clearly very diverse. Looking across my office at the plant on my bookshelf, each leaf is a similar shape, but they all differ from each other somewhat. I've just finished exploring (albeit superficially) the morphological diversity of humanity that renders even the polar notion of male/female physical gender somewhat suspect. Clearly, there are exceptions.
If physical morphology is so highly variable, it seems to me that the mind of a person is equally variable. There mere variety of different personality types that you can meet in life makes it very clear that humanity is amazingly diverse in its mental expression as it is physically. I choose not to speculate on the causes here, but suffice it to say that it is entirely conceivable to me that there would be "feminine minds" in male bodies, and "masculine minds" in female bodies. I know women who are as competitive as most men are supposed to be, and I know men that are every bit as "passive" as women are "supposed" to be. Few people are archetypally masculine or feminine - most of us embody a blend of behaviours. Is it reasonable to expect that there will be a few extreme cases where people's mental state is at utter odds with their physical morphology? Absolutely - nature has repeatedly demonstrated its diversity in physical form, it would be naive indeed to assume that such diversity does not extend into the mind as well.
So, once again, I must return to an age-old question that is rendered even more perplexing by the very existence of cross-gender identified people. What makes a man a man, or a woman a woman?
Is it physical attributes such as genetics? Is it all "in our heads"? The fact is we don't know. What we do know is that there is a vast array of behaviours possible, and within the context of social roles, may be perfectly acceptable. For example, the formal military dress of a number of countries involves men wearing skirts - not kilts, but skirts {and let's not forget the Scots and their Kilts - I defy you to call a Scotsman in formal Kilt a transvestite!}. To "western" sensibilities, this is a form of cross-dressing, and yet I dare say that the members of those armies would argue differently.
So, returning to the case of the Transsexual mentioned above, can we honestly say that she had broken the biblical proscriptions? We know nothing of her sex life, so I will simply leave the Leviticus 18:22 issue as unprovable. Since we have a rather significant problem defining any concrete sense the notion of "man" or "woman" that doesn't exclude a sizable population, we have to take her at her word that she is a woman. If we assert a biology-is-destiny view of things, we wind up ignoring both mental and physical variance.
From the transsexual's point of view, she may well argue to having been in violation of Deuteronomy for much of her life before she transitioned to live as a woman. From that perspective, she has actually moved out of a state of sinfulness.
The other point that is perhaps important to recognize is that transsexuality is about gender identity, not sexual identity. So, to assume that proscriptions about homosexuality apply to transsexuals is similarly suspect reasoning.
Isn't it fun when people try to apply black-and-white reasoning to the murky realities of the world?
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