OnAJourney

My thanks go to Giant for her responses. I would pose the question to Funky: "What have I to repent about?" Admitting to being transgendered is not the same as having surgery to correct the situation. (Historically, only a small percentage of transgender individuals have had surgery to correct (not to mutilate) their genitalia.) Not every transgender person wants or needs surgery. However, the definition of being transgender includes an issue with their genitalia. That is the definition of being transgender. As I asked previously, where do you draw the line between corrective surgery and genital mutilation? There are many who suffer from malformations of the genitalia that require (normal) surgery. Is that mutilation? I agree from the vantage point of a common (I hate the term normal, there are no normal people) male, losing one's genitalia is akin to losing one's life. But from the point of view of a transgender individual, losing one's outward projecting genitalia, whether it is between the legs or sitting on the chest wall, is similar to having a troublesome wart removed. This is a transgender thread. I would not be posting to this thread if I wanted to talk about my marriage or my grandchildren. I like to stay on topic, and would not be here if I wasn't transgender. No one can change a mind that is closed. And no one can open that mind but the individual. I am not saying that anyone posting recently has a closed mind, but I can see the trenches dug and the battle lines already forming.

giantCplus is correct. When I first joined this group I chastised the moderators for their bias. I received one response from them and noted that the moderators’ statements appeared to be less biased afterward. So I suppose my message was heard.Now to answer giantCplus' question. Yes there are transgendered people who still read the thread. I am transgendered. I am also an active member of the Church, a college graduate, been married more than 30 years, have four grown children, three grandchildren, have taught college and am a professional Failure Analyst. (The last is like a physicist, mathematician, chemist, and materials scientist rolled into one.) I would rather be known for those accomplishments rather than for my transgendered status, or my eye color for that matter. I have always been transgendered from my earliest memories even though I had no concept of it. I knew from an early age I should have been born a girl. Transgendered people are all around, but they are hidden, as I was, because of people’s reaction similar to the comments that have appeared in some of the messages posted. After all, why would someone go to great lengths just to be shunned and lied about? Why not just go with the flow? (Why didn’t Joseph Smith go with the flow?) The short version of the answer is because they cannot, just as Joseph Smith could not deny what he had experienced. I wrote a treatise a few minutes ago to post, then decided this was enough for now. My continued presence at lds.net will depend on the responses that are generated by this post. I am like the majority of the population, I do not stay where my presence is not welcomed (or at least tolerated if not welcomed). I will be reading but future posting will depend on the members. I am a teacher and will willing share what I know and have learned, both within the Gospel and outside of it.

So right you are. I appreciate your sentiments. We should allow everyone to have all the rights and privileges we allow ourselves. However, excluding individuals that are different from ourselves is an early survival tatic. It is a a survival mechanism to ensure survival of a group by rejecting others. King Benjamin said: "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." (Mosiah 3:19) These "instincts" that were required by historical circumstances (as well as in some areas today) need to be overcome to "putteth off the natural man."

Where do we draw the line between what is physical and what is not? I do not think any of us believes that a person born with Down's disease had it in the preexistance. But they have it now, with all of the loss of mental capacity. Although we can look for the third 21st chromosome and we know that their brain development was not right because of the etra chromosome, they are still mentally deficient (and I do not mean that in a mean way). There are other things that can go wrong in the brain. We see many of these in Stroke victims. when one or more areas of the brain lose their blood syppy and die. We know that things can go wrong with the brain during development as in trisomy 21 (Down's Syndrome). And as some have already said the life of a homosexual or transsexual is not one that a person would willingly have, just because he/she felt like it on day. I am convinced that homosexuals and transsexuals did not choose the way they feel. Just as with the thousands of common people (I hate the term normal psople) never consciously thought about it. It just happened.

We could carry this attitude to an extreme. I have a grandson who was born with two club feet. Should his parents have left him that way and not undergone the two years it took to straighten his feet. Or should I have died of appendicitis at age twelve? Of course not! those are things that are commonplace to fix through medical help.But, as sientists are beginning to believe homosexuality and transgendered states are induced in utero by hormones that don't quite reach a high enough concentration at a bunch of critical times during early development. The first of these critical times occurs before the woman even knows she is pregnant. I believe that God wants us to do the bst we can given the resources at our disposal to improove the quality of our lives and thosee around us. The medical and psychological industry we have today is much better than it was 100 years ago.

[mod comments removed] As one who had been in the depths of despair and suicidal, (I am now not, so don't call the police to help me) even a small negative comment can make the difference between life and death for that person. And it doesn't have to be the person that is chatting with you. It can be another person who is just browsing through the chat space.