Zobel said:

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Disease and poison are good metaphors for things that take a healthy thing and decay over time. Some values are bad for society. There's nothing wrong with talking about societal decay - but this is an inherently value driven discussion.

But I didn't say anything about anyone's values. Body dysmorphia is a mental illness. It is something that is not present in normal, healthy people. People who suffer from that may have good values, they may be Christians! They might also have terrible values. That's a different discussion.

Body dysmorphia is not a "value". It's not a moral code or philosophy, any more than bulimia or schizophrenia or depression are. It is absurd to structure the discussion in this way. It is also absurd to say that acknowledging this is tantamount to hatred.

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Let's say body dysmorphia is "just" a mental illness. Mental illness would be a medical condition to be treated medically. The treatments are very different for each condition you listed because the symptoms, pathophysiology, and long term effects are different. Pretending you can just shove body dysmorphia into a corner and shut it up in the people who have this condition is not medically sound.

Zobel said:

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What value are we talking about right now? What value was referred to as a dumpster fire??


If society was treating bulimia and depression the way we are treating gender dysmorphia, the same dumpster fire critique would be leveled.

Quote:

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I am telling you, that most of these people hate you because of the way you talk about them

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I'm glad we have finally agreed on where the actual hate is.

Affirming a destructive mental illness is not love. Acknowledging it as such is not hate. Mentally ill people do not behave rationally, and I agree that hatred is often a reaction. I'd chalk that up as a secondary effect of the mental illness.

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So if a trans person doesn't particularly care for being treated as trash by folks like you that's their fault?

Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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Disease and poison are good metaphors for things that take a healthy thing and decay over time. Some values are bad for society. There's nothing wrong with talking about societal decay - but this is an inherently value driven discussion.

But I didn't say anything about anyone's values. Body dysmorphia is a mental illness. It is something that is not present in normal, healthy people. People who suffer from that may have good values, they may be Christians! They might also have terrible values. That's a different discussion.

Body dysmorphia is not a "value". It's not a moral code or philosophy, any more than bulimia or schizophrenia or depression are. It is absurd to structure the discussion in this way. It is also absurd to say that acknowledging this is tantamount to hatred.

---

Let's say body dysmorphia is "just" a mental illness. Mental illness would be a medical condition to be treated medically. The treatments are very different for each condition you listed because the symptoms, pathophysiology, and long term effects are different. Pretending you can just shove body dysmorphia into a corner and shut it up in the people who have this condition is not medically sound.

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This is a bad faith argument.

Nice straw man. Who has advocated for the mentally ill to be shoved into a corner and shut up?

Another straw man. Who has advocated for treating the mentally ill like trash?

Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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What value are we talking about right now? What value was referred to as a dumpster fire??


If society was treating bulimia and depression the way we are treating gender dysmorphia, the same dumpster fire critique would be leveled.

Quote:

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I am telling you, that most of these people hate you because of the way you talk about them

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I'm glad we have finally agreed on where the actual hate is.

Affirming a destructive mental illness is not love. Acknowledging it as such is not hate. Mentally ill people do not behave rationally, and I agree that hatred is often a reaction. I'd chalk that up as a secondary effect of the mental illness.

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So if a trans person doesn't particularly care for being treated as trash by folks like you that's their fault?

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The Catholic faith has taught me that every human is created in the image and likeness of God, in other words anything but trash.

Zobel said:

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I don't see how this has anything to do with my message. You're talking about values and insults and I don't know what all. It seems more like what I said was poorly received by you.

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I'm arguing against the presentation and packaging of your argument only. That is why you can't see what my post has to do with your message. I made a comment about a term that Quo used and, as far as I can tell, you took that as an opportunity to try to win an argument against me on a point that I'm not defending. Its weird.

Let me state this as clearly as I can. For this thread - I have zero interest in debating whether or not body dysmorphia is good or bad. Or whether it should be affirmed or treat as an illness. Zero interest. What I am saying is that the way Christians talk about these people has the affect of turning them off from Christianity. \

You can defend terms like dumpster fire, poisonous, diseased, and whatever you want. But if the Christian goal is to help these people with 'mental illness', I'm saying that you all are failing spectacularly. Maybe consider a change in tactic?

jkag89 said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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What value are we talking about right now? What value was referred to as a dumpster fire??


If society was treating bulimia and depression the way we are treating gender dysmorphia, the same dumpster fire critique would be leveled.

Quote:

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I am telling you, that most of these people hate you because of the way you talk about them

---

I'm glad we have finally agreed on where the actual hate is.

Affirming a destructive mental illness is not love. Acknowledging it as such is not hate. Mentally ill people do not behave rationally, and I agree that hatred is often a reaction. I'd chalk that up as a secondary effect of the mental illness.

---

So if a trans person doesn't particularly care for being treated as trash by folks like you that's their fault?

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The Catholic faith has taught me that every human is created in the image and likeness of God, in other words anything but trash.

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Okay, but how does that translate to behavior?

Zobel said:

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Another straw man. Who has advocated for treating the mentally ill like trash?

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That's the result of the rhetoric and behavior of treating it as just a variant of "mental illness."

Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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Another straw man. Who has advocated for treating the mentally ill like trash?

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That's the result of the rhetoric and behavior of treating it as just a variant of "mental illness."

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It's actually not because we prefer they spend years with a therapist working through it, given that most identify with their biological sex ultimately. The ones that don't we have a conversation about later. Either way, you're not here for a debate. This is just rage posting for dopamine hits.

The bigger issue here appears to be reading comprehension. The term dumpster fire was never directed toward a person.

Zobel said:

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Nice straw man. Who has advocated for the mentally ill to be shoved into a corner and shut up?

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"Zero tolerance" was highly upvoted earlier this thread. Along with posts calling for transgender people to not be allowed around kids, calling any acceptance of them an example of a "dumpster fire of a society," among others.

AGC said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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Another straw man. Who has advocated for treating the mentally ill like trash?

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That's the result of the rhetoric and behavior of treating it as just a variant of "mental illness."

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It's actually not because we prefer they spend years with a therapist working through it, given that most identify with their biological sex ultimately. The ones that don't we have a conversation about later. Either way, you're not here for a debate. This is just rage posting for dopamine hits.

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They do spend years in therapy and undergoing medical evaluation. Most don't change their identity unless you have some new high-quality research. And what would that conversation look like for those who don't fall in-line?

Sapper Redux said:

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jkag89 said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Zobel said:

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What value are we talking about right now? What value was referred to as a dumpster fire??


If society was treating bulimia and depression the way we are treating gender dysmorphia, the same dumpster fire critique would be leveled.

Quote:

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I am telling you, that most of these people hate you because of the way you talk about them

---

I'm glad we have finally agreed on where the actual hate is.

Affirming a destructive mental illness is not love. Acknowledging it as such is not hate. Mentally ill people do not behave rationally, and I agree that hatred is often a reaction. I'd chalk that up as a secondary effect of the mental illness.

---

So if a trans person doesn't particularly care for being treated as trash by folks like you that's their fault?

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The Catholic faith has taught me that every human is created in the image and likeness of God, in other words anything but trash.

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Okay, but how does that translate to behavior?

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I'm human, I fail. Just because you believe that it is my faith that is the stumbling block in treating those of the LGBTQ+ as such does not make it so.

Zobel said:

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The bigger issue here appears to be reading comprehension. The term dumpster fire was never directed toward a person.

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Thanks for that correction that has no bearing on my commentary. Did you find spelling mistakes in my posts also?

it seems to be your primary point, that someone called someone dumpster fire. when we say that didnt happen, you say its not relevant?

Some mental conditions should invalidate you from being considered fit to teach children. Do you agree with that statement?

schmendeler said:

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NoahAg said:

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schmendeler said:

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I disagree with this premise/framing, but what if being trans is a mental illness, and the only treatment is for them to transition? It seems like the religious response is for them to just suck it up, which pretty clearly leads to increased depression and or suicide. I don't see much compassion given that reality.

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Now apply that logic to anorexia:

90 lbs anorexic: "Look at me! I'm disgusting and fat!"
Your reasoning: "Oh, you're right, have this celery stick and run 10 miles. I'll affirm your transitioning."

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We are trying to avoid death, not increase it.

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How does that make sense given the explosion of people now claiming to be trans since the acceptance movement kicked off

schmendeler said:

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I disagree with this premise/framing, but what if being trans is a mental illness, and the only treatment is for them to transition? It seems like the religious response is for them to just suck it up, which pretty clearly leads to increased depression and or suicide. I don't see much compassion given that reality.

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This argument seems like holding people hostage by threatening self harm. Would be the same as if I had to start sleeping around on my wife because the only other option was for me to kill myself. The same argument is used when saying women will use a rusty hanger in an alley if they're not allowed legalized abortion. What if they just didn't do this things?

schmendeler said:

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Quo Vadis? said:

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schmendeler said:

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NoahAg said:

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schmendeler said:

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I disagree with this premise/framing, but what if being trans is a mental illness, and the only treatment is for them to transition? It seems like the religious response is for them to just suck it up, which pretty clearly leads to increased depression and or suicide. I don't see much compassion given that reality.

---

Now apply that logic to anorexia:

90 lbs anorexic: "Look at me! I'm disgusting and fat!"
Your reasoning: "Oh, you're right, have this celery stick and run 10 miles. I'll affirm your transitioning."

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We are trying to avoid death, not increase it.

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How does that make sense given the explosion of people now claiming to be trans since the acceptance movement kicked off

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I suspect the vast majority of the people are genuine and they represent a relatively stable fraction of the population that has always been trans but were never allowed to express it.

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Why?

End of the day to bring this back to the topic of a Christian school, some people are just not qualified to be an instructor due to a difference in value system. Some people may not like it, but that in and of itself is not hateful. And my job as a father is pretty simple in the eyes of God:

Ephesians 6:4
4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Proverbs 22:6
6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

On the flip side, I for one am more than happy to open our church doors to anyone coming from any background. We are all fallen people and need Jesus. I would imagine every Christian on this thread would agree. And for what it's worth, I truly am sorry for the hateful Christians that are out there.

10andBOUNCE said:

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End of the day to bring this back to the topic of a Christian school, some people are just not qualified to be an instructor due to a difference in value system. Some people may not like it, but that in and of itself is not hateful. And my job as a father is pretty simple in the eyes of God:

Ephesians 6:4
4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Proverbs 22:6
6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

On the flip side, I for one am more than happy to open our church doors to anyone coming from any background. We are all fallen people and need Jesus. I would imagine every Christian on this thread would agree. And for what it's worth, I truly am sorry for the hateful Christians that are out there.

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Code of Conduct clauses.

Zobel said:

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it seems to be your primary point, that someone called someone dumpster fire. when we say that didnt happen, you say its not relevant?

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I feel like I've made my point clearly, but maybe I haven't. Our own personal intentions and meaning is perfectly clear in our own minds when we post, but they don't always translate. I'll attempt one last time with a different tone. Ignore everything I've already posted in this thread and please let me start over. Here goes. . . .

First - It is my understanding that Christians believe they are called to love everyone, that all of mankind is special and important and that we are all made in God's image. While Christians do not believe it is correct to affirm transgenderism, they do feel it is correct to love and support and accept (not affirm) people struggling with gender / body dysphoria. If it is a mental illness, then these people should be treated with love and compassion and with the best of intentions toward helping these people.

Next - It is my claim that many persons who experience gender dysphoria do not feel loved and supported by Christian communities. Moreso than other groups of people, surveys show that this is a group of people leaving religion at extremely high rates. Many stating a feeling of rejection by the community as the primary purpose.

Ergo - I am recommending that Christians consider the possibility that they have a marketing problem. I recognize there is a difference between rejecting the affirmation of transgender ideology and rejecting transgendered people. But, I'm not your target audience here. If it is your intention to love these people, accept (not affirm) them, help them, and bring them back to God, then, if I were in charge of the Christian marketing department, I would be considering different strategies as the current one does not seem to be yielding results. If your target audience (trans people) cannot differentiate a vehement attack by you against transgender ideology from a personal attack against them, then there is a problem of communication. The message is being lost.

And yes, I think language is a part of the marketing problem. While terms like poison and disease may be accurate in your mind as a description for how feelings of gender dysphoria negatively affect a person, I think it is important to understand how the terms feel to your target audience. In particular, I imagine a religious child struggling with this condition. I child who believes they are made special by God, in God's image, but also made with this God-given identity and condition which is described by their religious community as a poison and a threat to society. So we have a child being told by their religious community that they are made by their Creator with this poisonous mental illness and that they must reject their identity impulses while a secular community tells them 'hey, you're fine and we love you just as you are'.

You can take all the exceptions with parts and pieces of what I've posted above. You can say that Christians are all loving and perfect towards trans people. And you can say that the liberals are the villains for indulging this ideology. Whatever objections you have to what I've posted does nothing to change what the perception actually is within these communities. And, as the saying goes 'perception is reality'.

So, all I wish to say in this thread is that if Christians are actually serious about their love and acceptance (not affirmation) and desire to support and help people with this condition - it seems to me that you might consider a change in strategy. Telling them the ideology represented by their gender identity dysphoria is poisonous and wicked and leading toward societal decline and dumpster-firedom seems not to be working well.

Lastly, none of this is meant to be directed at you specifically. Or at Quo. Or anyone else. Please read it as a general concern about the relationship status between Christianity and Trans persons.

kurt vonnegut said:

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Zobel said:

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it seems to be your primary point, that someone called someone dumpster fire. when we say that didnt happen, you say its not relevant?

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I feel like I've made my point clearly, but maybe I haven't. Our own personal intentions and meaning is perfectly clear in our own minds when we post, but they don't always translate. I'll attempt one last time with a different tone. Ignore everything I've already posted in this thread and please let me start over. Here goes. . . .

First - It is my understanding that Christians believe they are called to love everyone, that all of mankind is special and important and that we are all made in God's image. While Christians do not believe it is correct to affirm transgenderism, they do feel it is correct to love and support and accept (not affirm) people struggling with gender / body dysphoria. If it is a mental illness, then these people should be treated with love and compassion and with the best of intentions toward helping these people.

Next - It is my claim that many persons who experience gender dysphoria do not feel loved and supported by Christian communities. Moreso than other groups of people, surveys show that this is a group of people leaving religion at extremely high rates. Many stating a feeling of rejection by the community as the primary purpose.

Ergo - I am recommending that Christians consider the possibility that they have a marketing problem. I recognize there is a difference between rejecting the affirmation of transgender ideology and rejecting transgendered people. But, I'm not your target audience here. If it is your intention to love these people, accept (not affirm) them, help them, and bring them back to God, then, if I were in charge of the Christian marketing department, I would be considering different strategies as the current one does not seem to be yielding results. If your target audience (trans people) cannot differentiate a vehement attack by you against transgender ideology from a personal attack against them, then there is a problem of communication. The message is being lost.

And yes, I think language is a part of the marketing problem. While terms like poison and disease may be accurate in your mind as a description for how feelings of gender dysphoria negatively affect a person, I think it is important to understand how the terms feel to your target audience. In particular, I imagine a religious child struggling with this condition. I child who believes they are made special by God, in God's image, but also made with this God-given identity and condition which is described by their religious community as a poison and a threat to society. So we have a child being told by their religious community that they are made by their Creator with this poisonous mental illness and that they must reject their identity impulses while a secular community tells them 'hey, you're fine and we love you just as you are'.

You can take all the exceptions with parts and pieces of what I've posted above. You can say that Christians are all loving and perfect towards trans people. And you can say that the liberals are the villains for indulging this ideology. Whatever objections you have to what I've posted does nothing to change what the perception actually is within these communities. And, as the saying goes 'perception is reality'.

So, all I wish to say in this thread is that if Christians are actually serious about their love and acceptance (not affirmation) and desire to support and help people with this condition - it seems to me that you might consider a change in strategy. Telling them the ideology represented by their gender identity dysphoria is poisonous and wicked and leading toward societal decline and dumpster-firedom seems not to be working well.

Lastly, none of this is meant to be directed at you specifically. Or at Quo. Or anyone else. Please read it as a general concern about the relationship status between Christianity and Trans persons.

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Dialogue is the problem but I think your paradigm is outdated. You accept modern framing of sexuality and transgenderism ('god-given' identity) but reject the modern engagement in a culture lacking transcendence: people don't care about the message, just the messenger. What that means is, no matter how Christians phrase what they believe, it won't be heard in the current sphere.

I'll post a quote and the source of a recent article I read:

Quote:

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The problem that we face today is that many influential people will be unwilling to speak to anyone who holds historic Christian views on sex and gender. There are many people who think "If you have 10 people and 1 nazi sitting at a dinner table and willingly eating together, you have 11 Nazis,"12 and that Christian views on many issues are as evil as Nazism. These sorts of people will not give you a fair hearing, nor will they engage in a good faith dialogue with you so long as you hold to the historic Christian ethic on sex, gender, abortion, the exclusive truth of the Gospel, and many other issues. This fact has enormous ramifications for how we think about transmitting the gospel to a post-Christian culture.

Once a person has made accepting certain views (and not associating with anyone who strongly opposes those views) a prerequisite for open dialogue, then what they have effectively said is that you must accept, adopt, and stay within the conversational boundaries that they have set in order to be given a hearing. This effect of this is to make the adoption of THEIR conversational boundaries by all parties a prerequisite for having any conversation at all. The person who does this is holding the conversation hostage until you pay the ransom of agreeing to their conversational boundaries at all times. The move here is to use the threat of refusal to engage as a way to hold the conversation hostage until one's own conversational boundaries effectively govern all acceptable social discourse. In this way, a relatively small minority can get a critical mass of people to accept and enforce conversational boundaries that would not have gained traction otherwise. This is attempting to win a debate by shutting out intellectual competition.

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This is what is happening. You can argue about wording all you want but that's not where the Christian message is lost today, outside of holdouts who were classical liberals. Sapper's posting is a good example of this.

Our message isn't lost because we can an idea a dumpster fire: it's lost precisely because we're Christians.

https://americanreformer.org/2024/08/the-keller-approach/

Genuine question: how would you do it?

In my limited experience, it is impossible. This is the problem with making sinful thoughts and feelings part of our IDENTITY. If I tell someone their actions are wrong, but they believe their actions are who they ARE, in what way can you not be a hateful bigot?

You don't find a womanizer that identifies as a womanizer. He's a man that likes to womanize. It's a subtle difference, but it makes it easier to tell this man he is not terrible, but his actions are. I see no way to do this with most anyone in the LGBTQ movement because they claim "born this way" and identify with their action far more than most others we would disagree with. As long as it is a part of one's identity it will be taken as hate, no matter how mildly it is worded.

ETA: it goes both ways. Christians often take an attack on Christianity as a personal attack. People attacking or disagreeing with Christianity will be happy to be your friend if you renounce your faith. So it's not YOU the Christian. It's the action of following God

Kurt we start from a very different point.

We believe you are not the thoughts in your mind, nor are they impenetrable to others (such as God and other spirits). You're not a computer running a program or black box that contains all information within it. The idea of 'being yourself' is radically different, identity is not something you choose or distill. It's given.

We are also embodied as Christ was embodied: the physical world informs us about ourselves and we interact with it. Gender dysphoria is a denial of that and a preferencing of the mind. It assumes all discomfort is to be feared and dispensed of, that it does not exist naturally in the world.

Edit: there is some irony in asking if we know how a gender dysphoric person feels, when a gender dysphoric person does not know how being the other sex feels. They cannot experience life as someone who's never struggled with it, nor have they gone through the developmental phases we have. It is a basic fact.

PabloSerna said:

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For Catholics citing Dignitas Infinitas as teaching against transgender persons.

Pope Francis wrote:

"Gender ideology is something other than homosexual or transsexual people. Gender ideology makes everyone equal without respect for personal history. I understand the concern about that paragraph in Dignitas Infinita, but it refers not to transgender people but to gender ideology, which nullifies differences. Transgender people must be accepted and integrated into society."

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Much like with homosexuality it's the act, not the inclination. Dignitas Infinitas is 100% against the transgender ideology

Reminder that he also likened this school of thought to nuclear war