Subtitle: Be afraid! Be very afraid!
On the one hand, I'd like to be somewhat respectful of the man, even though he never has displayed any respect towards us. But it's hard to win a war of words and concepts while being disrespectful.
On the other hand, this guy just really ticks me off.
Pope Benny is at it again. Having in the past identified transpeople as a larger danger than deforestation of the planet, he apparently decided he should be more specific. So this year's Christmas address was dedicated to transphobia and homophobia. Catholic online interpreted the speech as transphobically as they could manage. It reminded us of the Christmas speech of 2008.
The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being - of what being human really means - is being called into question.
And guess who is at the center of calling "what it means to be human" into question? If you picked transpeople, you win a cookie. By the way, it is also the case that simultaneously, we are no longer individual people, but rather a movement (see the icon that Catholic Online has been so kind to create for us.
Bernheim, by the way, was only speaking out against same-sex marriage, which is currently being addressed in France. But the Pope found hidden messages in his words apparently. There must be a secret decoder ring that comes with the smock and the funny hat.
The pope goes on, speaking of the Rabbi:
He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: "one is not born a woman, one becomes so" (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient). These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term "gender" as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society.
But the pope has humanity's back. He'll just declare gender theory invalid. He's the pope. He can do things like that.
The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, which serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God.
Did you get that? The pope doesn't have to prove that gender theory is false…because he has declared that to be obvious. Were you aware that your genitals were the defining element of what makes you a human being?
I didn't think you did. But now you know.
Did you notice how Benny has decided what it is that transpeople think? That's a common feature of all religious analysis of transpeople.Without ever having met one of us, our religious detractors know exactly what we think and how we think.
This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: "male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female - hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will.
Your words Pope Benny. Not mine.
Most of us transpeople believe in the concepts of man and woman, thank you very much. We very much believe those constructs exist. We just disagree with how the nature of being a man or a woman is defined.
And we think it is very presumptuous of you to pretend to be God yourself and tell us what God thinks or what God plans or why He does what He does.
If there is a God, I'm more than willing to let that God judge my life. That would be His job…not yours.
The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him.
Oh, woe is us. Transpeople have not only destroyed the concept of what it means to be human, we have also destroyed the family…and think of the children!
Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.
Sorry for destroying human dignity in the process of existing.
Clean-up on aisle 5.
Do you get what is being called for here? To protect humanity itself, transpeople need to be destroyed…wiped from the face of the planet. The very concept that we exist needs to be erased from human consciousness.
I've been writing since Human Rights Day (December 10) about the human rights that most of you enjoy that we, as transpeople, do not. The lack of concern has been staggering.
How would you feel, do you think, if the Pope excommunicated you from the human race? How would you react?
Would you just shut up and try to be invisible?
My voice, my right. My voice counts.
First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.
--Nicholas Klein, trade unionist, 1914
It appears that we may be in the "attack and burn" phase.