Sometimes you have to speak your mind, while you are still allowed to have one.
I mentioned a few posts back that I really hadn't had a good day. Figured I would talk about it now. If you don't wish to read further, I don't mind at all, just want to get this out and written down so I might be able to comprehend it better.
You may have read about issues that came up regarding my daughter recently. Well, during that incident, they needed to do x rays, and of course, that means a pregnancy test in case she was "with child" before they could do all the other diagnostic things they needed to do. She hadn't had a period in a few months as she had been on the depo shot recently but wasn't able to get one due to a fuck up with her health insurance. Once it was determined she wasn't pregnant, they did all her tests and she ended up being fine after a few weeks of PT.
The doctors were concerned about the lack of period, and that once it came, she was in agony for an entire week. Further testing came back that she doesn't produce eggs very often, and that she is quite unlikely to have babies on her own. As one could imagine, she is NOT taking this well at all, especially since she's had two close friends announce their own pregnancies within the last week or so. I can only imagine her emotions as she congratulates them, knowing it might never happen for her, even though she should have a good 15-20 year window of opportunity.
In a way, I feel like a shitheel too, because it has always been a joke between us that I don't want grandkids for a very long time. Things like, "better lock your door or I'm going to go in and tie up your fallopian tubes while you're sleeping!" and her retorts of, "I KNOW I'm ovulating, parental unit! I bet there are boys up the street awaking to the smell of my musk right now!" Yes, she definitely has my sense of humor. Going to be hard to joke about something like this in the future, though I know she knows we love her very much, and will support her. I am not upset that I'll probably never be a grandparent, as that should be her choice, and I would never push her either way, but it does suck that she doesn't have a complete set of options at her disposal.
Where this really hurts me though is this needless bull-fuckery going on in Indiana and in other states where religious assholes are trying to "Defend their freedoms" by denying others theirs. The main argument I'm hearing is that marriage is supposed to be mainly for procreation, and that can only be done of course by a man and a woman. It's the normal course of human nature! How fucking pompous of them to define what a marriage is and even more so, that a woman's value seems to be tied into pumping out babies. This isn't just about not serving gay people pizza at their wedding reception, there are bigger issues that come into play about whether religious beliefs and laws are the supreme law of the land that could supersede what the governments are trying to enforce.
My understanding as a former catholic school attendee, is that, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" where you follow the authority which has hold of you on this earthly domain. Furthermore, the compassion and social justice work that Jesus did makes it even more likely to me that he would have reached out to those oppressed and embraced them, In a way, I see a striking resemblance here to what Jesus himself did to his own religion at the time, and rebelled against the ingrained dogma and corruptions that the Jewish temple had sown. This time it's the flock themselves that need to tell its leaders exactly what they are doing wrong.
Why Conservative Christians would have hated Jesus
If the gays, or women, having rights offends you so much, just let them wallow in their own filth and deal with the wrathful god when their life is over. It shouldn't be YOUR concern what is happening to THEIR soul. It is between them and whatever supernatural entity. If they are given their own choice to make decisions, then they deserve the afterlife they've got coming to them. As Jesus put it in John, ""My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But now as it is, my kingdom is not from the world." Hence, don't worry about having black and whites only water fountains .. whoops I meant, bakeries for straight people and "separate but equal" bakeries for gays. There I go again, stirring it up. Sorry, I cannot window dress bigotry as anything more than the shit sandwich it actually is!
What if God was one of us? Just a slob like all of us?
How this ties into transgender issues seems more than natural to me ... Our bodies often betray us as to how we wish to be and how we truly feel. When a religion tries to regulate normality, there are many who don't fit their cookie-cutter definitions. God created us in his image, most religions will parrot back to us. If we don't conform to that standard, is it OUR FAULT we are how we are made? Religion states that we are to blame. Why though? Not sure you've noticed but there are way too many fucked up people in this world .. either God better make a new template, or accept that perhaps "God" is just as flawed as we are. Perhaps we are the first draft of a term paper that God needs to hand in to Diety School on Monday and we are in the process of being spell checked? Why does it seem that for every rule in our real world pertaining to science, nature etc ..., there is never an absolute rock solid exception of that rule? Even those laws considered immutable, there is probably an exception we just haven't learned about. I wonder why?
Maybe here is a new thought .. GOD LOVES DIVERSITY! God loves to color outside the lines with every crayon in her arsenal. There is wonder in everything from the tiniest one celled organism up through the entire known universe, just waiting to be observed and wondered about. When you think about it that way, why should we define anything as "against God's will" when we see that vast enormity of life's playground unfold for us in unlimited glory!?!
Now here is where you come in. Tell me I'm a atheistic asshole with a liberal agenda and how dare I post this on Easter Sunday. Tell me I am not wrong, but misguided. Tell me that I'm perfectly justified in feeling this way. Tell me how you feel about what is going on and why it's a good thing or why it's the end of civilization as we know it. Tell me something!
Thank you for this post.
ReplyDeleteYour post is perfectly right, other than where you imply you could only be a grandparent via childbirth. I'm guessing you didn't mean to slight adoption as a viable alternative.
ReplyDeleteThat would be an option, but once again, there are rules as to what is considered a normal home, so she would have to deal with an adoption agency which would determine the "morals" among other things that determine whom is fit to be an adoptive parent(s) .. something that a "normal married (man and woman) couple" conceiving naturally wouldn't have to deal with.
Deletefirst may i thankyou for a thought provoking caption and post.
ReplyDeleteI am very sorry to read of your daughters issues but do not despair just yet. there are many ways to help nature along when and if the time is right for her. there are fertility drugs and technichs to aid things. And then I F treatment. i thank that for two wonderful nieces and as Ambyr mentions adoption what a beautiful gift to give any child. i can't say i'm an expert on the above but maybe routes to persue.
its a hard life being a libreral isnt it since by definition we have to defend the rights even of those against us,
and its easy to use that as they argue we are the bigots against them.
No easy answer save stand up for what you belive, speak out when you can. and suport groups and politians with your own creedo. Abit hard from the UK to know the situation but the Church appears from here to be a radical right wing, are there more liberal humanistic churches?
Do we have to become radical liberals and play thier game I hope not but we should be pro active.
She was told that she might be able to do it that way in the future, but there was no guarantee it would work and it can be quite costly to do so, since I'm not sure if health insurance covers fertility procedures.
DeleteAs for adoption, see my reply above. That also happens a lot to gay couples, regardless of their financial means. In Boston, the Catholic Church pulled out of Catholic Charities Adoptive Services due to a law that said that gay couples had to be considered as adoptive families. They had been contracted through the state but didn't want to comply with the law, which was backed by then-governor and recent Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.
Dee,
ReplyDeleteI don’t know what to say about your daughter. I’m sorry that an option for her is now an incredibly difficult if not outright impossible option. I can’t imagine going through something like that as either the person themselves, or the parent of said person. I hope that she has a long happy full life. With or without children.
I have a couple who are both good friends of mine. I learned almost a year after they got married (had known them for almost a decade before), that she had a condition which made it almost impossible for her to carry a child to term. I won’t go into her specific problem, but it was something that they both simply had to accept… there was very little chance for them to ever have a child.
Today they are the proud parents of not one, but two children. So at the very least keep in mind that “quite unlikely to have babies on her own” is not the same thing as “unable to have babies”. If that’s her choice, then I hope she successfully gets pregnant.
As for the gay bashing (yeah, I call it as I see it too). It’s just fucked up. You are more than perfectly justified in sharing your opinion ESPECIALLY on Easter Sunday. I’m not Christian or an Athiest. I’m firmly in the agnostic category (forever a fence sitter am I). Even without a firm faith or belief structure of my own, I love seeing people celebrate their religion. It’s generally Good, charitable, Good, loving, Good, kind, and did I mention Good? I think it’s Good so long as they don’t want to force others to live as they do. I don’t even mind them proselytizing. I mean, if they consider their life and their faith and their belief to be good, why wouldn’t they try to convert others. It’s a wonderful thing when someone learns about your religion/faith and not only accepts it but chooses to live by its tenants as well. But that discussion should end if and when the person they are proselytizing to states that they don’t want to live as they do. When any people/person/faith/religion starts to FORCE others, then it is the very opposite of Good. It’s Bad. It’s Evil.
And by ‘force’ I don’t just mean physically or legally forcing someone to live by their rules. I mean forcing others through shunning, humiliation, shaming, and other nonchalant bigoted/sexist/racist remarks and actions.
I find it ironic that most of the people that believe in setting up the United States of America as a firmly Christian nation with laws that follow Christ’s teachings are also so firmly against Muslim nations and even ISIL. ISIL is an organization that has a strong faith and belief structure and are forcing others to live by the way they interpret their religion. Just like those Christian bastards are trying to do over here.
Fuck Them.
The only solace I can take is that I’ve found the vast majority of Christians are good decent people. No, they don’t believe in people living outside of their religion, but they also don’t believe in discriminating against anybody on the basis of what any religion says. It’s their leaders that are starting up a new Crusade.
I think one of the most meaningful relationships I had was with an incredibly devout Christian. He knew that I didn’t have faith in his or any other God, that I believed in equality for all with no variation on sexual, gender, or racial issues, and that I firmly believed in a clear and distinct separation of Church and State. Yet while I would see him proselytizing to others, he never tried to ‘convert’ me. When I outright asked him why he said something along the lines of “Why would I or God try to convert you? You are a Good person living a Good life. Our attentions are needed for people who require help”.
That’s deep. Help people who need help. If you can help them with your religion, then so be it. If you can’t, then still help them out however they need it.
The people, in general, are decent enough when they aren't following dogmatic crap that went out of style hundreds of years ago. I just don't think that you should be modeling your current existence based on a book written 5000, 2000, 1200 or 60 years ago. While history does repeat itself, time moves on and you cannot replicate the past.
DeleteI am probably agnostic in theory. I have done much research on the "lost" gospels and into the "Q" or Quelle . which seems to be a lost book that was the other major source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and focused on direct quotes from Jesus and his teachings.
Christianity itself is an interesting topic, because Jesus was a Jew who preached Jewish apocalyptic teachings to other Jews. After his death, the following (mostly due to Paul) became ABOUT Jesus more so than what he spoke, and was geared more towards the gentiles, aka non-Jews. The Catholics seem to view the book more as a set of morality tales, while the more conservative Protestants see the book as the inerrant words of God, which makes no sense on a real level, since there are many contradictions among the Gospels, and old and new testament.
Can i just say as a transgender woman who wishes more than anything in the world to be able ti give birth to my own children that this is beautiful and glad i had the chance to read it, my heart goes out to you and your daughter and i feel your pain as much as someone like me can, i hope things work out for both of you
ReplyDeleteJust a quick response because I missed this when you posted: I am a Christian. I am totally in your corner!
ReplyDeleteI do not think that the shitty fundamentalist bullshit that uses the Bible to denigrate and exclude and judge speaks for Christianity and I worry about the Indiana decision. In the USA it looks as though shitty people will use religion as a fig leaf (ha) to cover their naked bigotry and, elsewhere, that decision will make more people view God-fearing folk less generously and with greater suspicion. My own brother and his wife talk some shit about LGBTQ folk, my favourite is that "God doesn't make mistakes" - which they use to justify a mistrust and dislike of trans* folk - but, here's the thing, if God makes no mistakes then God created trans* folk. They were created, I feel, to test everyone else - to seek out their compassion and understanding.
Alas, the world does not like being challenged and tested. We prefer rugged individualism and 'merit' so we throw the challenge back on those who would present it for daring to be different. Ugh.
Semi-political rant out of the way, you have my sympathy, such as it is, for what's been sent back about your daughter. And my support (as far as you require it) for your approach. As a Christian I pray it is all for the best (whatever that may be) and that it works as it should for you all.
Thank you for sharing. I wish I could say more or do more, but I cannot, I can but stand in support and solidarity, and that is all.
Joanna