Tag Archives: Gender confusion

Diocese of Rupert’s Land ordains first transgender deacon

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From here:

As the first openly ordained transgender deacon in the Anglican Diocese of Rupert’s Land, Theo Robinson feels called by God to help heal the rift between LGBTTQ*people and the church.

“I want to show people who are afraid to go to church (because of their sexuality) they are welcome,” said Robinson, 40.

“I want to help heal the wounds of those who have been rejected.”

Robinson, who works in spiritual care at Misericordia Place, was ordained May 1 to serve as a transitional deacon — someone on the path to priesthood.

Theo Robinson was born Theresa Jennifer Robinson but now describes herself as a man in spite of the fact that she possesses no Y chromosome.

I don’t doubt her sincerity or wish her anything but God’s blessings. Nevertheless, I find myself wondering why an Anglican Diocese whose task it is to encourage parishioners to find their true identities in Christ, should choose someone so confused about her own identity to help them do it.

Anglican Church of Canada approves inclusive language Psalter

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The Anglican Church of Canada’s liturgical butchers have been labouring diligently on expunging all traces of Davidic toxic patriarchy from the psalms. Their efforts have been rewarded by the publishing of the Inclusive Language Liturgical Psalter whose crowning achievement is to use “alternative wordings and/or sentence structures to eliminate the use of predominantly masculine language.”

Thus, rather than Psalm 1 beginning:

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

We have the limp “they” and “their”:

Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on this law they meditate day and night.

God himself is not exempt from neutering. Psalm 23, which should begin:

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Has been emasculated into:

The Lord is my shepherd;  I shall not be in want.

You make me lie down in green pastures and lead me beside still waters.

You revive my soul and guide me along right pathways for your name’s sake

This was concocted in 2016 and, as usual with an alleged church desperate to fit in with what is left of the civilization it is supposed to be redeeming, is already woefully outdated. For example, in Psalm 139, we have the deeply problematic:

For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

If the church were truly woke, it would say “my begetter’s womb” in case the womb in question belongs to a they who has chosen to self-identify as a man.

Lexical misgendering

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The Oxford English Dictionary, having succumbed to contemporary gender voodoo, is including gender-neutral words in its latest edition.

You can now misgender someone and rest secure in the knowledge that you have not perpetrated a grammatical atrocity. In your gaol cell.

From here:

It’s a new issue that has proved a modern minefield – as the way we identify ourselves evolves and changes at a rapid rate.

But now The Oxford English Dictionary has introduced gender-neutral words to help us.

Editors said the latest additions were an ‘attempt to grapple’ with the sensitive topic.

These include ‘hir’ and zir’ as alternative pronouns to him, his or her, ‘peoplekind’ rather than mankind, and ‘Latin@’ as a gender-neutral term for someone of either sex from Latin America.

Meanwhile, the verb ‘misgender’ could apply to anyone who unwittingly or intentionally uses a pronoun that is not preferred by the person.

God is the only person not allowed to choose his gender

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From here:

God should not be referred to using a gender because ‘our father’ was not male or female, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Most Rev Justin Welby has warned human language is inadequate to describe the Christian deity and that despite the use of words such as ‘king’ and ‘lord’ – he is not male in the human sense.

[…..]

God is not a father in exactly the same way as a human being is a father. God is not male or female. God is not definable.

‘It is extraordinarily important as Christians that we remember that the definitive revelation of who God is was not in words, but in the word of God who we call Jesus Christ. We can’t pin God down.’

Justin Welby says he believes Jesus is God incarnate. God incarnate tells us to address Him in this manner: “Our Father, who art in heaven”. Not having the benefit of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s insight, Jesus omits mentioning how inadequate the language of His prayer is. Someone must have it wrong: I wonder who?

Could the Archbishop of Canterbury’s vision be clouded by contemporary gender befuddlement, viewing divine revelation through a faers darkly?

Ontario Elementary teachers receive inclusiveness training

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Elementary school teachers in Ontario are being offered Inclusiveness Training that focusses on all matters LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP . For those few of you who have no idea what that means – I’m sure it is very few – here goes: Lesbian, Gay, Genderqueer, Bisexual, Demisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Twospirit, Intersex, Queer, Questioning, Asexual, Allies, Pansexual, Polyamorous.

So you can rest assured that if junior enters elementary school in Ontario perfectly normal, he is liable to emerge as demisexual, or at the very least, polyamorous. I imagine the best you can hope for is asexual.

Diocese of Niagara hosting gender fluidity event

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I was in Hawaii over Christmas, mainly to meet some of my grandchildren who live on the other side of the world. We decided to meet halfway.

The oldest grandchild is 15 and, during a chat with her about how our generations view things differently, she exclaimed, “yes, but don’t you think we have made progress since you were young!” It brought tears to my eyes; tears of laughter. “No”, I said, “I think things are getting steadily worse. I don’t believe in progress.” She stared at me blankly.

It gave me a moment of déjà vu because I had said the same thing to someone when I was around 15. It took me another 15 years to come to my senses.

Here, then, is a prime example of progress:

An upcoming symposium aims to explore the fluidity of gender.

Award-winning author and storyteller Ivan Coyote will be at Mills Hardware Saturday night — joined by singer-songwriter Kate Reid — for a lively and entertaining exploration of gender identity and inclusion.

While the event is geared toward youth and their families, anyone is welcome.

“I think (this event) will be really uplifting for parents of trans kids, and people who are fighting any kind of battle in terms of being able to fit in their gender,” says Deirdre Pike, event MC and local LGBTQ advocate.

“People will come out and be entertained by storytelling and music, and won’t even realize they’re going home opened up, having expanded their understanding of gender exponentially.”

The event will also be filmed to be used as a future training tool for local agencies. The Anglican Diocese of Niagara is hosting the event, along with the Social Planning and Research Council and the Good Shepherd’s Core Collaborative Learning.

That two religious agencies are behind an LGBTQ event seems remarkable, but Pike says their leadership on these issues has been commendable.

“We talk a lot about the unsuspecting allies, or finding allies in unsuspected places. This is one of those cases,” she says, noting the diocese’s recent decision to allow same-sex marriage in the church.

This event is particularly important as the city prepares to roll out its transgender and gender nonconforming protocol, which the city pledged to implement as part of a human rights settlement last year after a transgender woman was denied access to an HSR washroom.

The protocol will focus on internal relations and customer service guidelines, including a commitment to ensure safe access to public bathrooms and change rooms.

If, after eating too much over Christmas, you are having trouble fitting into your gender or, if you want to be opened up without even knowing what has been done to you – just like the Manchurian Candidate, only, progressive or, if you are just one of the many mixed-up clergy in the Diocese of Niagara – then this is for you.

I love progress.

Alberta government issues thinly veiled threat to Christian schools

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Alberta’s NDP government has an anti-bullying policy in schools. To the NDP mind, a school that refuses to have gay straight alliance clubs or cross-gender lavatories is guilty of bullying – as defined by the Humpty Dumpty Theory of Language.

To discourage such defiant flouting of gender politics pieties, the Alberta government is bullying schools into compliance.

From here:

Education Minister David Eggen says he’s willing to strip two Christian schools of their public funding if they won’t abandon their Christian principles and allow clubs promoting homosexuality and/or transgender students in washrooms of the opposite sex.

These measures are part of the New Democratic government’s anti-bullying policies that single out sexual minorities for protection, though surveys indicate that physical appearance and grades are far more likely causes of school bullying.

Last month, Spruce Grove Baptist pastor Brian Coldwell, who is also chairman of an independent Christian school board with two small schools with 200 students, said neither cross-gendered washrooms nor gay straight alliances would be allowed in his schools.

Asked about Coldwell’s comments at a school opening where he was joined by Premier Rachel Notley, Eggen said, “It’s not acceptable, not just for the kids that are attending those schools, but it sends a negative message across the province, that I’m quite concerned about as well.” According to the Edmonton Journal, Eggen also said he “won’t rule out” defunding Coldwell’s schools.

A non-binary youth delegate to Synod

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When I was a teenager I rebelled against my parents, society and just about anything that bore an aura of respectability. This found expression in anarchism, atheism, Bob Dylan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Henry Miller and indulgence in the usual variety of teenage-angst anodynes on offer in the ‘60s.

Still, as silly as it all sounds now, I don’t think we were as dismally humourless as today’s youth; and we didn’t need safe spaces.

Eventually I grew up.

In order to rebel today, teenagers like to proclaim a sexual identity that is at odds with their biology. In keeping with its neurotic compulsion to appear modern, relevant and trendy, the Anglican Church of Canada encourages them to do so.

Which brings me to this:

Note: Jordan Sandrock, the subject of this article, identifies as neither male nor female and has asked to be referred to in this article as “they” rather than as “he” or “she.”

Also, the term “queer,” though considered derogatory by some, is widely used to denote non-heterosexual people, often by non-heterosexual people themselves.

Jordan Sandrock isn’t able to say what was going through their head when, after hearing the first pronouncement on the same-sex marriage vote at General Synod, they rushed out of the conference room where the vote was held and collapsed in tears on the floor of the corridor outside.

“It was just so emotionally overwhelming that I can’t really remember,” they say.

[….]

Sandrock is now going into their second year of a degree in religious studies at the University of Ottawa. Asked about their career goals, they don’t hesitate.

“I’m hoping to be a priest,” they say, smiling broadly.

Perhaps Jordan will eventually grow up. In the meantime, she seems to me to be one rather sweet but very mixed up kid.

Here they are explaining queer and feminist theology:

Why?

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Why, when a person who has X and Y chromosomes self-identifies as a woman, do we take him seriously in spite of the simpler explanation that he is self-deluding not self-identifying, yet, when a terrorist self-identifies as a Muslim, we insist that he is self-deluding not self-identifying, in spite of the simpler explanation that Islam is a fecund breeding ground for terrorists?

On the occasion of a Baptism and the Re-Naming of a Transgendered Person

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St. Alban’s in Ottawa used to house a congregation that, in 2008, aligned itself with ANiC. Negotiations with the Diocese of Ottawa resulted in the ejection of the resident congregation and the installation of a transplanted congregation, an oft repeated ACoC strategy to create the illusion that it needed the buildings. It’s the ACoC version of church planting: Potemkin Planting.

Since then, interesting things have been happening. For example, in September, a baptism service was accompanied by a Liturgy for the Re-Naming of a Transgendered Person.

Apparently, such renaming liturgies are not as uncommon as the naive might suspect. The House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, “a group of folks figuring out how to be a liturgical, Christo-centric, social justice-oriented, queer-inclusive, incarnational, contemplative, irreverent, ancient / future church”, has one. When I read the article below I assumed that a re-baptism had taken place – something that was considered by the CofE – but, it seems the liturgy is merely a renaming.

In the interest of complete inclusion, the originator of the renaming liturgy – Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber – also offers an annual liturgical blessing for bicycles.

Even in the face of all the evidence, some clerics are still genuinely shocked that a common secular view of the church is that it spends much of its time plumbing the depths of the absurd.

From here:

On the occasion of a Baptism, and the Re-Naming of a Transgendered Person

Eliot, you too will be anointed today, just as you were anointed at your own baptism many years ago.  You continue to bear the name of Christ, the anointed one, beloved child of God.  We re-affirm that today.  That has not changed.  But some things do change.  Often our faith journeys can take twists and turns as we live and grow into the people that God created us to be.  Today you take on a new name as a testimony to the person you have become and as a testimony to the God who welcomes us as his children, loves us through all the twists and turns of our life journeys, and promises to make all things new.
[…..]

The truth is, I may never be able to understand what it’s like to be a non-binary gendered trans person.  I don’t even know if I said that right.  But, at least in our better moments, by the grace of God, we are able to be generous by offering our support to a fellow traveller who bears the name of Christ on their faith journey.

Soon, we will turn to Davis and we will pledge to do all in our power to support him in his life in Christ.

Then not long after that we will turn to Eliot and pledge as follows:

“Eliot, we will walk with you.”