There is such thing as a "sex" of male or female that most of us qualify as, even if you want to use semantics to claim there isn't. Please.

and I know this is bullshit.

Kindly to provide the name of the priest who agreed somehow that in this person's case suicide might be a viable alternative, and not a sin.

I do not believe in any way that any priest would ever agree with such a proposition. Not only not Catholic am I, but an athiest. And yet I have more respect for the Catholic (and Anglican) priethood than to ever believe any member would counsel suicide.

it's a pretty clear distinction.

This is so interesting and has so many implications for religion/theology (as well as public policy, civil rights, etc.) If God made human beings intersex then God's will regarding human sexual behavior is suddenly a lot more difficult to discern. . .

an endless pointless stream of cultural detritus must be generated to 'prove" that "everyone is bi" or in this case "intersex" or something and, or course, anyone who objects is insecure about his own sexuality, or, at best, the place of men in the brave new world.

Toad Squat.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Rogers' insistence on contrasting intersexed people and transsexuals seems potentially quite flawed. I doubt transsexuals are any more 100% male or female in psychology than the rest of us, just heavily skewed in a direction opposite their genetic sex. In that sense their brain rather than external phenotype are intersexed. Rogers seems so worried about people lumping sexuality, sex and gender together that he may go to far and make them artificially discrete.

The biological imperative to survive by 1) reproduction and 2) social acceptance, is awfully damned powerful.

But today I make the same argument made by those who champion birth control, since by all accounts our world is currently struggling to support more humans than has ever been in existence on the planet... World population has more than doubled in my lifetime alone, and to begin with there were more than enough humans to perpetuate the species. It might be a good idea to start looking past our notions of what's required to be a valuable human being.

Reproduction, while a foundational force, is obviously not the main benefit to human life at this point. In fact, as far as the planet is concerned, we're approaching the status of being more like a deadly virus.

Socially, we're at the point of self destruction if we don't get wise to more compassionate and flexible approaches to our fellow human beings. No joke if you look at national and religious extremists, some with histories of fighting and grudge holding for thousands of years, now having nuclear weapons.

So from a very objective point of view, Mr. Callahan makes an awfully good point - at least in the U.S. we'd be wise to become more inclusive in society and expand our definition of what it is to be human... not just male or female and heterosexual.

From a spiritual point of view, if one believes in a Creator - God or Allah or Yaweh or any other powerful creative and spiritual being - It's impossible for anything in the universe to have been created outside the spiritual and natural order. What's been lacking in the natural order is our acceptance of those who are more than physically unique than we're accustomed to.

We have no right to try and trump the Creator's card by passing judgment and excluding those with whom we are not personally familiar.

As global communication and travel continues, I imagine we're only going to continue struggling with this lesson until we learn it.

"I read the first paragraph and I know this is bullshit.

Kindly to provide the name of the priest who agreed somehow that in this person's case suicide might be a viable alternative, and not a sin.

I do not believe in any way that any priest would ever agree with such a proposition. Not only not Catholic am I, but an athiest. And yet I have more respect for the Catholic (and Anglican) priethood than to ever believe any member would counsel suicide."

I agree. I am Catholic, and this anecdote sounds like bullshit. No Catholic Priest who adheres to Catholic doctrine would ever, ever say such a thing. I think Gerald N. Callahan should either back it up, or stop repeating it.

she defines male and female homosexuality as a "preference" not an orientation. I suspect her whole view, now.

Correction to my above post - should have read "he" - not "she" - ironic mistake, in this context, no?

Regarding the Priest anecdote in the first paragraph, I had the exact same reaction as greglaw and Steele The First. I absolutely do not believe that a Priest would ever say that God makes an exception on suicide. Suicide is the worst sin against God. Secondly, what is said between a Priest and the confessor is strictly confidential, so how would G. Callahan know what Ms. Stevens had been told?

and other sex-genetic anomalies are just part of a happy rainbow continuum of sexuality?

Horse shit. Sometimes there's a glitch in our genes: a cleft palate here, a flipper baby there. They are deviations from the norm and we should want to correct/prevent them.

And no, I'm not talking about homosexuality. But this type of transgender chromosomal mash-up needs to be recognized for the disorder that it is.

The first paragraph of this article absolutely shocked me, which is obviously the point. But it got me thinking about how parents should confront this situation. It seems overly optimistic to imagine that no surgical intervention would be a good idea. The author's point of view forgets the cruelty of children and the pressure brought to bear on them from their peers to FIT IN. Even if a child somehow avoids the embarrassment of showering with peers in primary and secondary school, they will still feel like freaks.

In a paternalistic society like our own, males are prized above females. Since a baby displays little gender identification at birth, an argument could be made that parents of a baby with "hermaphroditic" genitalia might do well to raise that child as a boy, being careful to alter as little as possible of the child's anatomy. Even if parents insisted on surgical intervention while the child is a baby and before the "seat" of sexuality (perhaps in the DNA?) is discovered, it seems as though keeping male genitals intact allows for the possibility of transgender surgery at a later date with better reconstructive results.