The political and religious landscape

 

Pennsylvania, USA. Sometime ago I underwent corrective surgery, (35 yrs ago), to bring my body into conformity with my brain. Not having been born each in alignment with the other, this was a necessary progression so as to be whole. That is what Harry Benjamin Syndrome (HBS) does describe, does it not? We deal with a need and not choice.

 

I do not mean to take issue with what Lisa said but I do find a contradiction in how I was treated and how those today seem to be [cf. note].

 

I too am a Catholic but in my day I applied to the church for my baptismal certificate to be “amended”. The priest was flabbergasted and asked why would I want to be a male since he assumed the woman in front of him was asking that her baptismal certificate reflect her intended sex. My aunt and I laughed later at his confusion and at first his not being aware that I was presenting in my correct sex.

 

I will not go into length on this issue but a few months later my baptismal certificate came back with my corrected name on it. It now simply says “Diane Lynn Kearny”.

 

How was this possible back then and not now? Simply put, Pope Paul VI had already made a declaration to a famous California surgeon that we as humans are of different parts and if it can be shown to the church that one of our physical parts was out of alignment then the church would not have any objection to that being addressed and corrected.

 

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But what has become the issue I have been told is the transgender movement and the confusion it generates. Before we simply were suffering and correcting a rare medical condition I know now to be HBS. But today some seem to be answering a mental drive to satisfy an urge and even a fetish with many of them going so far as to have surgery all the while publicly taking on the identity of transgender.

 

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So now rather than see our condition as a medical one as before the church is reluctant to take the word of some of those doctors and “therapists” who prefer to link all under one umbrella as if cause and effect are just a little bit different. Sorry, but that is not who we are! We are not transgender or any part of that “social construct” coined by a transvestite.

 

On the political scope I need to address another issue. I do not vote one way because I am what I am. I vote in support of many issues and even against some others. I never once in my life voted a straight ticket. I am opposed to radicalism in any of its forms and to be honest I support this republic and our constitution.

 

In that regard I must admit to being ignorant at one time in thinking that a man who was my congressman on Long Island, N.Y. would be opposed to my request of him. I was having a problem with legal documents after surgery and my lawyer suggested I talk with Norman Lent, my congressman.

 

Understand my reluctance: Norman Lent was a Republican Conservative and I just knew the door would be shut in my face. I just knew it! But instead I not only was greeted warmly but was given help by him that no other politician then or since has offered to me. If not for him I doubt I would have been able to marry my husband legally in the State of New York those many years ago.

 

I have learned not to vote for the party connection but the candidate and that has become my creed. Too many today are easily swayed into thinking that one issue is paramount and follow the hollow voices in promise of absurdity forgetting that not only does the physical body but politics as well come in differing parts.

 

I do agree with Lisa on the point made about some religious, many of whom seem to think that their religious position should give them a free pass to control our country [cf. note]. No, I will never vote for anyone who makes a promise to one group, religious or otherwise, and later changes it to suit another almost as if made as a whisper not to be overheard or compared.

 

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TS-Si.org welcomes responsible comment and dialogue. This column by Diane Lynn Kearny was stimulated, in part, by Lisa Jain Thompson's opinion column, Life in the Real World: Observations of a Post-Transsexual.

 

 

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