In the ‘water is wet’ category, Francis has railed against the concept of people being transgender. Here we go again with the whole “oh, it’s just a lifestyle choice” nonsense.
Pope Francis is getting criticism for speaking out against the idea that gender can be chosen.
“Today, in schools they are teaching this to children — to children! — that everyone can choose their gender,” the pope said in a meeting with Catholic bishops in Poland last week, the Associated Press reports. The Vatican released a transcript of his remarks today.
He quoted his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who retired in 2013 but still lives at the Vatican: “Speaking with Pope Benedict, who is well and has a clear mind, he was telling me: ‘Holiness, this is the epoch of sin against God the Creator, he’s intelligent! God created man and woman, God created the world this way, this way, this way, and we are doing the opposite.’”
Pope Francis has previously denounced the idea of gender mutability, saying that “gender theory … does not recognize the order of creation” and calling for “valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity,” as “it is not a healthy attitude which would seek to cancel out sexual difference.”
[…]
Criticism of the pope came from Kelsey Louie, CEO of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, who said he was “saddened and disturbed” by the remarks. In an emailed statement, Louie continued, “Our children deserve to know that of course they have the right to choose, and GMHC applauds all schools that teach students not to oppress who they are, but instead live the life as the gender they most identify with.” He noted that in light of the mass shooting at the Pulse LGBT nightclub in Orlando, “what we need now is for our world leaders to spread messages of tolerance and acceptance.”
The Advocate has the full story.
I hate the way everyone assumes Francis is such a sweet saintly pedobear pope. It’s only because he’s compared to pope Vader.
They’re all horrible liars and manipulators. Political scum of the most distilled form, managers of a mega-corporation built on no value at all.
Marcus:
Yep. I am continually blown away by the amount of people who fell, and keep falling for Francis’s nice guy act.
Yeah, we all know how he feels about choice. Pope Frantic chose to personally give absolution to people who threw political prisoners to their deaths from helicopters -- political prisoners who chose democracy over fascism. And he chose to cover up the kidnappings of children, those of the “disappeared”.
Hundreds, if not thousands.
There was a blurb on the local news this morning about how the pope was supporting the idea of women being allowed to become deacons in the church. NOT priests. And the local news team was gushing about how great and progressive he is. I wanted to smack them.
Johnson catman @ 4:
Yeah, that’s mentioned in the Advocate article, too. Smoke and mirrors, all of it. I’ve been telling people for decades on end, that the Catholic church excels at misdirection, and people fucking prove that every day.
… in schools they are teaching this to children — to children! — that everyone can choose their gender…
Not if the schools are teaching what anybody who’s looked into transgenderism and the testimonies of individual transgender people knows.
If people could “choose” their psychological gender, I suspect a large number would decide to accept the anatomical cards they’ve been dealt, instead of fighting with virtually all of society over superstressful identity issues beyond their
choicecontrol.Perhaps Big Franky is (partially) factually right in that some schools may teach such distortions -- but he remains totally morally wrong.
Well, I taught sex ed and I faithfully answered the kids’ questions about trans people. I most certainly didn’t teach them it was a choice, but you know what? Even if it was a choice*, it wouldn’t be anybody else’s business.Because choosing your gender still wouldn’t be a moral choice because it doesn’t affect anybody else directly.
*Yeah, I’d totally choose an existence where my risk of being assaulted, murdered and raped would skyrocket
Francis doesn’t use the words ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ or ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ in a way that shows he understands ‘gender theory’.
Okay, a few things should be said here. For Caine, #5:
I’d have to have skipped this comment entirely (or maybe be a Catholic pope) not to see what you did there.
Here’s the thing: gender has multiple definitions, and colloquially each definition is used just as authoritatively for “gender” as each other definition.
One authoritative definition of gender as it is used frequently, casually, and colloquially is equal to what we would assign as the definition to the phrase “Gender Expression”.
People can and do choose gender expression. No matter what our gender identities, we still get to choose to shave our legs or not, get tattoos and determine their type, style, and gender content, and make thousands of other choices a day that constitute gender expression.
Schools can and do teach that this is a choice, and they better teach fucking choice. To that extent, it’s not that the pope is wrong, it’s that the pope is only correct for one -- not all -- of the definitions of gender, and thus whether or not the pope is correct is ridiculously arguable: his statement ultimately contains no factual content at all because as soon as one gender definition proves the statement true or false, someone with a different moral opinion about the statement will choose a different gender definition, and prove the statement false or true.
It’s possible chigau is correct, but it’s also possible the man understands it and is simply mendacious as hell.
……………………….more to come
So if there’s no factual content, what then is the non-factual content of the statement? left0ver1under comes close in #3.
“granting absolution” is pro-choice. But this appears to make his judgements relevant to morality, when, in fact, that’s not the issue at all.
Remember that the pope is (re-) quoted by Caine saying:
This statement has the same problem as the statement regarding teaching gender choice to children. It’s certainly true and it’s certainly false: due to the differing ways that people authoritatively assert humanity has been “created,” the statement has no factual content whatsoever.
But there is content here: content of moral opinion.
The statement makes it clear that the pope is relying on Christianity and Christian hypotheses of “creation,” when making that statement.
The implied statement, then, is that being non-Christian is evil, because you can’t possibly state up or down, yes or no that “the order of creation” is “not recognized” unless you limit yourself to a single “order of creation”.
What the pope is really saying is that gender theorizing is not limited to recognizing/following the Christian “order of creation”. The fact that my theories of gender are limited always by my best understanding of AN understanding of the creation of humanity is not good enough.
Therefore, the moral and opinion content of his statement is that when choosing one’s understanding of whatever the hell is contained in the story of “the order of creation,” choosing something that isn’t Christian is immoral.
Though the most obvious conflict is with PZ’s research, there’s nothing in the statement that makes me think that Pope Jr would find less conflict with Iskcon Educational Services.
What we have here is not an anti-trans* statement. What we have here is a statement of naked Christian supremacy that happens to be worded in such a way to make non-trans* folk think of trans* people.
What is interesting and revealing to me as a trans* person is the non-trans* privilege that causes a statement of naked Xian privilege which, by force of logic and other easily available evidence,
1. can only be interpreted as condemning all non-Christians and “impure” Christians
and
2. can only be interpreted as targeting educators
to be
3. insulting only to and specifically, intentionally toward
4. trans people.
There’s no one in this discussion to whom I would say, “I don’t love you”. And, yes, I fully admit ignorance as to exactly who is trans* in this discussion, but I do know some are non-trans*.
I’m not thinking less of you.
I’m just thinking less of the world that makes these events so likely even when smart, thoughtful people get together to try to advance morality.
Just.
Yuck.
No, being catholic is a choice…..
CC @ 11:
Oh, I wish that were so. Most people, like myself, are born into Catholicism, there’s zero choice involved. It doesn’t matter if you walk away or not, you’ll be considered and counted catholic for your lifetime. It’s one of the reasons why the number of catholics is considerably inflated over the actuality. In some parts of the world, you can go through the requisite paperwork to have yourself stricken from the rolls, but here in uStates, that’s damn near impossible, and even in the places where it was easier to do, the catholic church found ways to obstruct further losses.
I was being more rhetorical, but you make good points.
In the EU, they made it easy(er) to get off the church rolls. In Germany, the government slapped down the catholic church pretty hard back in the late 90s. Because Germany allows you to tithe directly through your payroll taxes, the gov took the enrollment away from the church and controls it entirely based on the tax filing forms (for tithing purposes only).
At least that was my understanding of it when I lived there.
Some of my friends got a symbolic de-baptism. They blew hairdryers at each other. I’ve always wondered if this could be performed en masse at a registry (I think ‘Murica has the DMV as an equivalent) as a deconvert protest of some kind.