Just Another Image

Transsexuals are an abomination. They mock God, for we are made in his image and transsexuals pervert this.

If you saw Bones last night, something like this was said by the preacher’s wife – the same preacher that became a post-op MtF transsexual in Thailand and was declared dead in order to separate herself from her old life.

I have said before that I sometimes have difficulty understanding transsexuality, although I have recently had a few revelations on that front. But understanding transsexuality isn’t what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the declaration that transsexuality is an abomination because they pervert the image of God.

Brennan made a good point that we change the image of God all the time – through make-up, hair cuts, plastic surgery, body modification, accidents that cause scarification or amputation, fluctuation of weight. One might even argue that clothes are changing our image from the way God created us by covering ourselves. Booth, in trying to maintain the preacher’s wife’s cooperation by getting on her good side, replied that this is an enhancement of God’s creation, not a change. But Brennan is still right that these <i>are</i> deliberate changes that silently state that God’s image isn’t good enough.

Or a simpler explanation would be that a transitioning or post-op transsexual is simply shifting the reflection of God’s image, not perverting it. Man and women he created them, in his image he created them. So changing oneself from a biological male into a woman isn’t becoming something other than God’s image, for a woman is as much God’s image as a man.

There are other questions to be asked on this subject: Would God make that kind of mistake? Is it a mistake? What makes someone a man or a woman? And although I have some answers, I’ll have to share them later.

(For clarification, I am an atheist who enjoys returning to, analyzing, and challenging my conservative/fundamentalists roots.)