Thank you, trudy b, for your response. There was no "Catholic bashing" intended-just pointing out that priests, like all religious leaders, have the capacity to fall far short of their ideals (and doctrinal teachings). There are saints and psychos in every religious tradition.

Excellent point, thisislissa, about the surgery possibly being unnecessary. I believe that issue was brought up in the documentary I saw. As long they're functional, the nature of one's genitals may not matter. Again, I think it's best to wait until a child has matured sufficiently to weigh the risks of infection/loss of sensation/post-surgical appearance and let them judge for themselves what, if any interventions, are necessary.

" I take offense that out decision to have surgery on our child and raise him male was mutilating our child."

Let's see, you acquiesced to the amputation of part of someone else's body, irrevocably destroying functionality without any acute medical need. Puberty is probably the very earliest your child needed surgical intervention, so your actions are in fact tantamount to mutilation.

"We didn't decide because it was the easy way out(putting a child thru surgery is never easy), we thought about nothing but our child’s well being even when we had some doctors pressing us to have surgery right away because they are surgeons and that is what they do. "

Except it IS the easy way out. Physically forcing the child to one side of the sex binary and conforming to social expectations is exactly the spineless, 'safe' thing to do, especially when grotesque self-interested doctors are being your cheerleaders (even if you realised their motives).

"Our child is now a happy and healthy 4 ½ year old boy (of that we have no doubt) who has a normal and functioning penis (which he likes). "

Oh what a picture perfect story which just happens to entirely validate your actions. Nothing problematic or suspicious about that...

"I am not saying which is right or wrong but until you are in a position to have to make a decision like this and hope to good it is the right one, you should keep you opinions to yourself or at least think about it more than making off the cuff statements you have no idea what you are talking about."

Typical attempt to pull parental rank. In my experience anyone who moans that people should "keep you [sic] opinions to yourself" is either:

a) exactly the sort of conformist coward who would have surgery forced on child for the sake of 'normalcy'

or

b) someone hearing remarks which strike uncomfortably close to your insecurities and doubts

Again there was likely no need to surgically intervene on your child until years from now (if ever). Your letter is a shallow, self-serving rationalisation. The only way this grotesque medical intervention on intersexed childen will end is when intersexed people and their allies loudly and unabashedly call this violation for what it is.

To all the windbag naysayers on this thread who claim they "know for a fact blah blah blah" that a Catholic priest could NEVER have given such advice as author Callahan claims--I say you're all full of bullshit.

Why are you all so certain? Have you read the book? Have you done any research into the author's claims? No you haven't, so put a sock in it.

Callahan is a PhD at a major university, he certainly wouldn't make something up like that.

I think the more conservative Salon trolls just can't handle Callahan's findings, so they have to sling the mud any way they can.

The articles on Salon are good reading (I can't say the same of the letters section).

Some are so sure what a priest (or nun) would or would not do. Some are twisted. I know it. What would be inconceivable is that any group with a large number of individuals would not have at least some members who are warped. The real shame is on the church for turning a blind eye and allowing unconscionable behavior to go on and on.

First of all: in Darwinian terms, anomalies of gender do not occur "for" any purpose whatsoever, but are the outcomes of gene activation sequences that do not follow the statistically "usual" or "normal" patterns. They represent possibilities in the expression of the human genome that are less common. However, they are not acting out some teleological purpose for the species. They are the route less taken, but taken by some.

Secondly, once one understands these natural possibilities for a continuum of gender, the idea that the government, using its legal apparatus, should insist on classifying everyone as belonging to one or the other of the two most common gender categories becomes an absurdity. Gender is certainly among the most personal features of our identity. Living as we do in a society that early on made an explicit commitment to Liberty, the reservation of explicitly enumerated behaviors and non-enumerated behaviors from the realm of government action or interference, the right of free association and the formation of partnerships based at least partially on gender identity, should not be infringed.

Fixing your son's hypospadias is NOT an amputation, it is a repair that restores normal urinary function. As strongly as I feel about a child's right to choose, what you did MAINTAINS all of his options. It sounds as if you are an informed, loving parent.

Please don't let Ms.Anthropia's attack bother you--she obviously doesn't know what hypospadias is.

which is most beneficial to intersex childre. The path. lab is not relevant and, if he's an immunologist, he might have time to consider the rapid spread of so-called "swine flu" which threatens to be a pandemic in the later monts of the year. Your high-and-mighty air is quie funny, particularly as your letter is devoid of facts. In this regard you're like Ms. Anthropia who extrapolates bits from the letters of others, as a padding for her own measly epistles and then berates the writers. Ms.Anthropia is honest enough to admit that she hates people and hence the screen name but her curdled colloquys lack any real insight.

There are also those who think the story of the priest (real or false) as the whole purpose of the article,so that they can air their own thoughts on sacerdotal wrongdoing.

Two writers have the relevant and first-hand experience to write authentically on intersex; one is the writer who was born with this condition and the other is the mother of a child

whose hormonal algebra got somewhat confused on the birth-journey. They are the only ones who know what they're talking about and they could do without the hectoring of Ms. Anthropia, the indifference of another who wants it all to be about trans-gender, and other nincompoops unwothy of any farther comment.