By Thomas Horn
RNU News Sr. Reporter
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Cloning and alternative conception and gestation methods are being developed that will satisfy legal requirements of genetic reproduction by sex-altered couples.
RNU.com – (Raiders News Update) - Last week The Observer reported that "Britain's 5,000 transsexuals who have gone through a full medical sex change are to be given the legal right to marry and have the gender changed on their birth certificate."
This week the Vatican condemned homosexual marriage and warned Catholic politicians not to vote in favor of legalizing homosexual, bisexual and transgender unions.
The Vatican document stated: "When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral."
The directum went on to say that there are "absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family." It goes on to say: "Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law."
On Transsexuals specifically, the Vatican said they suffer from "mental pathologies" and will be ineligible for admission to Roman Catholic religious orders and should be expelled if they have already entered the priesthood or religious life. In a "sub secretum" (under secrecy) document to church leaders the Vatican also concludes that 'sex-change' procedures "do not change a person's gender in the eyes of the church." The document orders bishops "never to alter the sex listed in parish baptismal records" and also confirms that "Catholics who have undergone 'sex-change' procedures are not eligible to marry, be ordained to the priesthood or enter religious life."
Religious organizations such as the Presbyterian and the United Church of Christ have gone the other direction, allowing ministers in their denominations to perform homosexual unions and to have transsexual surgical operations and the benefits of domestic partnership ceremonies.
The struggle over homosexual, bisexual and transsexuals and how different religious bodies view them has generated serious debate among scholars recently, but primarily over this wider issue of gender definition.
Until now, people submitting to sex-reassignment remained legally defined as a man or woman regardless of physical alteration. Legal definitions regarding gender were based on existing reproductive limitations. Sex-change operations did not acquire necessary internal organs for procreation during the procedure, so individuals continued to be defined by the gender of birth.
Times have changed. The catch phrase has gone from
"sex reassignment surgery" to "gender reassignment surgery." The language is
intentional. The goal is to change state and federal definitions of male
and female to existing physical characteristics, rather than
gender at time of birth.
The nightmare grows
To complicate matters, cloning and alternative conception and gestation methods are being developed that will satisfy legal requirements of genetic reproduction by sex-altered couples.
"Over the next 20 years the problem will escalate beyond transexuality," says Thomas Horn of Raiders News Update. "Through transgenics, humans whose genetic structure has been altered through introducing animal or plant DNA into their genome will make it impossible to define with clarity what it means to be human at all, let alone male or female."
Across Europe where the scientific community has aggressively moved into the mostly unregulated field of transgenics, concerns are being voiced by researchers themselves over breaching the species barrier.
"The technology is an affront to God," Horn continues. "The Bible tells us that God requires humans, animals, and plants to reproduce after their own kind. Biblically speaking, species integrity, including the idea of male and female, is required by God. Transsexual alterations, transgenics, cloning, where's it going to stop? I'm afraid we're opening a Pandora's box to a molecular biological nightmare. Gender definition will be small potatoes compared to the ethical problems we're brewing up for the near future."
According to Horn, that is the bigger issue and should frighten the heck out of everybody. "For humanists, altering the species is evolution in reverse and a violation of nature. For those who subscribe to the science of catastrophe, it's Jurassic Park. For believers in God it is an assault on His creative genius."
Transexuality - a crude and early form of altering a human - underscores the need for Christians to debate the ethics of science when and if it violates Biblical Law. The European Court should be condemned for their decision and the Catholic Church applauded for addressing the issue and for providing conservative guidelines for clergy to use when handling these difficult questions.
© 2003 RaidersNewsUpdate.com
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