Majority of American Catholics support transgender rights

If your stated statistics are correct, please explain why every time the legality of same sex marriage appears on a ballot, it is defeated. Why did the NY legislature ensure that the question would never appear on a ballot?

"93 percent of American Catholics believed that transgender people deserve the same legal rights and protections as other Americans"

And the other 7% want them rounded up and thrown into camps? What a tedious poll. It tells us absolutely nothing.

Oh well, if the majority of American Catholics think its right then lets change Church teaching.....After all, the majority of American Catholics go to Mass every Sunday, right? Someone needs to tell everyone that the Church is your democracy, I mean a democracy. Actually why don't you just take it over and make yourself Queen Pope. Would that be what the majority of American Catholics want?

If someone is a baptized Catholic and if that person never attends Mass, is that person a Catholic because of baptism? Perhaps the poll would be legitimate if the question were first asked, "Do you attend Mass regularly?"

Jamie - I think you should be completely honest and mention that people who approve of same-sex marriage and transgender lifestyle have abandoned the duty-based ethic of scripture and tradition for a fulfillment-based ethic that borders on hedonism.That would put the opinions you mention in their proper context: people who have rejected Christianity, but stilllike to call themselves Christians.

What are transgender rights?

If the stats are valid representations is says something important to me -- Catholicism and its values of inclusion, love, acceptance and respect for all and all things is catching on. It just isn't coming from the top down, quite the contrary. The Spirit is moving. We must help the clergy and hierarchy grow in Christ. Stay on the course NCR, brothers and sisters....

Most Germans and even some wealthy Jews supported Hitler's rise to power, and then most Germans supported him for the next 10 years. But that didn't make them morally correct. If your numbers are even close, then we have a moral crises among Catholics because they don't follow the teachings of the Christ, the Apostles and the Early Church Fathers. All you have to do is look at the Didache, an early church document many attribute to the Apostles, and see that homosexuality and these other issues are wrong. Why is it that people want to make it a church or belief system to fit our needs instead of conforming ourselves to God's Will. In scripture, which is God's Word: marriage is between a man and a woman, not homosexuals or lesbians or transgenders or transexuals. By changing your sex you are telling God that He made a mistake and by trying to change it, you are trying to play God. You must remember, God is God and you are not!!!

In the past 7 years I have become much more serious about cultivating an adult Catholic faith. This has included completing the Spiritual Exercises in Daily life, regular spiritual direction, and very active commitment with several parish ministries.

Concurrently, I have been learning how to understand the older brother I grew up with as my adult sister. When I found out that my brother would become my sister, I was not good at accepting this. I didn't want "Jacob" to be "Diane" because I was afraid of the violence and hatred trans folks were subjected to. That it would be better for her to hide who she is, so that I wouldn't have to feel the pain of seeing my sibling so atrociously rejected...There have been several hate murders of trans women in the area I live this year. Allowing my fear to guide me was a cop-out, an inauthentic response to my sibling's humanity.

What has allowed me to overcome this fear is my deepening Catholic spirituality. Jesus' incessant command is "be not afraid." The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius help us get rid of our "disordered attachments"--things that are keeping us from perceiving how God is working in our lives. I began to realize that the fear that I had for the discrimination my sister would face was just such a "disordered attachment." Instead of seeking to understand my new relationship with my sister and how God was present in that, my energy was going into feeding my attachment to that fear.

The parable of the Prodigal Son has helped me get rid of this attachment. I began in the position of the other brother. I was focusing on fear, on what was proper, on what it is appropriate to do, rather on the reality of my sister's amazingly increased life (as my brother, she suffered horrifically with mental illness--as my sister, she transformed into a wonderful new person, with her illness much less debilitating). Looking at the situation with new eyes, I see that I lost a very sick brother whose personality was all but buried, like Lazarus, and I have gained a dynamic, energetic sister who serves the sick and poor each day.

At its best, Catholic spirituality and practice teaches us to forgive, and forgive, and forgive, and forgive, and to never avoid “sinners”—Samaritans, lepers, those possessed by demons, adulteresses then; LGBT, HIV+ individuals, people with mental illnesses, and prostitutes now. I do not necessarily dismiss the Magisterium’s teachings, and I do seek to come to a fuller understanding of them. But even a wholehearted embrace of them though should lead to a pastoral practice of care--rather than rejection and insult--for LGBT people. The Prodigal Son wasn’t perfect, and my sister isn’t perfect (and I'm not perfect), but the right response is the embrace of the father, not the rejection of the brother. I'm glad to join the 93% of my fellow Catholics.

This is not surprising. Up until the time leading up to the year 2000, transsexuals could still get their church records changed in regards to name and sex. And many, many older Catholics remember the teachings of Jesus with which they were raised. You know, the ones about love and inclusion. The last decade has seen a bizarre turn around from Rome, and it is leaving many lay people feeling somewhat disconnected since nowhere except for a single line in deut. does it say anything about transgender people being wrong in any way. Oh, and there's that little part about the Bible being very clear in all three time periods (OT, Word of Jesus, After Risen) that God instructs us to accept transsexuals & that they will have a special place in his Kingdom. The fairly lengthy passages even cross-reference each other just in case we fallible people refuse to understand God's will. But I fear that there is just too much at stake politically for the true teachings of Jesus, the ones about loving and giving and helping others, to hold sway much longer.

I am American and Catholic. I have one transsexual relative. It was confusing at first but after ten years I have seen her life transformed for the better.

I have no problem with my religion and transsexual people. Our family is not always open-minded so I was happy to read this article. She works at Starbucks. That is the only thing I'd like to see change because she is wasted there.

There is a difference between repsecting contitutional rights of all and affirming gay marriage.

"Add this latest statistic to the "discrepancy between hierarchical teaching and lay conviction" file..."

I believe you mean "lay ignorance of Catholic teaching, thanks to their corrupt shepherds, lay heresy encouraged by their corrupt shepherds, and lay disobedience encouraged by their corrupt shepherds." Not to mention, encouraged by such apostate publications as this one.

What the heck does equal rights mean in this context? That's the rub. People can answer that question affirmatively yet mean totally different things by that question. Ask Pope Benedict if he supports equal rights for so-called transgender people and he would say yes. Of course, his sense of what that means is going to be different from Jamie Manson's.

Mark Twain once said that there were "lies, damn lies, and statistics." I'd change the quote a bit: "there are lies, damn lies, and surveys."

What does "equal rights? mean? When the homosexual agenda was sold to Americans in the 1980s, it was about not being arrested for sodomy. Subsequently, it became not being "discriminated" against in job employment, even if that meant that the hiring institution had to forego its moral convictions in order to comply with the new social order. Then the goal posts moved again, to "equal rights" means the right to ersatz marriage. Is the next step the right to children? And, as regards "transgender" rights, let's ask Americans straightforward:
1. Do you support men using women's bathrooms (because they think they are women?)
2. Do you support offices looking like La Cage Aux Folles, because men want to dress like women?
3 Do you support everything becoming unisex because sex is now a state of mind?
I suggest if you asked the questions bluntly, the results would not be as "supportive" as Ms. Manson wants to pretend.

Just a story: In a very small village, a small shop owner and her wife were very happy when their first son, a boy, was born. Years later, they understood that something was wrong with him, and they went to see a doctor. The doctor concluded that he was a hermaphrodite, but that the dominant sex was the female one. The operation was done. The girl, now an adult, use to serve the customers, and no one remembers anymore the change. How can't everybody react like that?

Sinful behavior is never a RIGHT and someone always is done an injustice when it occurs. Sodomy is sinful behavior and those afflicted with AIDS testify to this sinful behavior....both those who are infected through their own disordered behavior and those who are innocently infected by the sinful behavior of others. It is a mark of a sick and value-less society when they are too blinded by their myopic view of the good and the just to recognize either.

only people who actually call for my camera are transgender folk in Mexico, based in Ciudad Juarez. Otherwise I sneak around doing my little tourist thing, but these friends put so much time into their looks, that they make me take their picture, leaving no option to refuse.

Just put up another few hundred of them at flickr.com/photos/charlesjscanlon

go to the gallery, and look for the little square at the top of the right column with the caption la Lucy en Palomas

only glamour shots I do. rest is street, and church

what else you going to do, read Dolan's latest self-glorifying hermetic lie?

Transgendered person are mentally ill and need to be treated as such.

I am a cradle Catholic from the United States, can you please tell me why I have NEVER been interviewed, polled, or been asked my opinion on any of these matters? I must be part of the 7% that disagrees. In other words, I could go out on my street and do a poll and come up with those warped numbers. I cry foul!

The clear implication is that the Church does not support equal rights for certain eprsons--or that "rights" include same-gender marriage. When voters get to vote on seame-gender marriage they do not pass it. They do not have much problem with civil unions. Why is this woman writing in a Catholic paper as if she is Catholic? She is not.

To God be the GLORY.

Theology of the Body is a vision of human sexuality by which “the communion between a man and a woman can be perceived as an image of the divine communion between the divine persons.

How does the above statement fit into the action of a body that is mutilated and still has the DNA of male or female? Transgender confusion and the encouragement of dismissing the way we are created is as disturbing as helping a anorectic starve themselves. No one would encourage a young lady to stop eating, just as no one should encourage a transsexual to mutilate their bodies into something they are not. A male with a vagina and breasts is still a male. The real question is how do we encourage them to live with the body God created, and not try to play God by changing God's creation.

What exactly are the rights sought by the Transgender folks?

I am a former Catholic (raised Catholic, attended Catholic schools through High School), currently worshiping in an ELCA Lutheran Church. I'm also a transsexual. I lived 49 years of my life in my birth gender, and transitioned to female in 2007. It was a difficult road, though one that was better than the alternative of debilitating dysphoria induced depression. For those who claim transexuality to be a “mental disorder,” I suggest that you do your research. It is a birth condition that results in sexually dimorphic portions of the brain developing in gender contrast to the body. Since we are unable to change the brain, the medically recommended treatment is gender transition. The process of doing so is long and carefully planned to prevent inappropriate transition. As a result of this carefully considered process, the success rate of transition above 95%. Acceptance of transition won’t make anyone who isn’t transgendered want to transition. It may however halt the unnecessary suicides of those to afraid to face their condition (currently around 50% of those who don’t transition).

As a footnote, I left the Catholic Church because of its tendency to reject those of us who are LGBT. I’m now a lesbian woman living in a committed, long term relationship with my new wife (we were married in Vermont and hope some day to enjoy marital rights equal to our heterosexual counterparts). Our current Lutheran Church embraced us, and welcomed us to their Christian community.

Yes, you can go to Public Religion Research Institute and read the surveys for yourself. How they telephoned roughly a thousand people during a survey, of which a couple hundred identified themselves as Catholic. And using this survey sampling then extrapolate the results to the 68.5 million registered Catholics in the U.S. Aside from the question of the sample size for what is obviously a very large parent population, what is not clear from their research data is from what areas the phone surveys were conducted, which of course could also seriously skew the data.
But as with all surveys, what really matters is the agenda of those using the results (on either side of the debate).

We live in a great country. It has defects, but it is still the best on the planet. Our republic has lasted as long as it has due to the grace of God and the wisdom and foresight He assigned to the founders. Our Church is what it is and I have a feeling I know what it isn't. It isn't a social experiment(although the Catholics in name only treat it as such), or a club(hey the anglicans went this route-no offense to them-have a little cookie and a little wine and smile to the rest of the congregation-Their own words). The Catholic Church is ALSO NOT A DEMOCRACY. There is much being said of Pope Benedict XVI and his mission to return us to a more traditional expression of our faith as one body. As a standards kinda' guy to me that means everybody on the same sheet of music. I found this article which I excerpted to highlight Pope John Paul's views on the challenges of managing Catholic universities but also the issues of choice vs holiness as relayed by Cardinal George(from Chicago):

"In his talk to the bishops of the Midwestern states in May 1998, the Pope had referred to four elements of the Catholic identity of a university: student activities, community life in the university, the curriculum and the sense of mission in the faculty (academic staff). The cardinal wanted to concentrate on the last two. He is sure that "the same God who made us free also made us smart and wants us to be holy". The sense of freedom which is so dear in the United States needs to be in conversation with reason and holiness all the time, since these are three values which shape the Church and shape individual academics. He recognised that the main problem arises when there is an attempt to institutionalise these values."
Source: Origins, vol. 28, no. 18 (15 October 1998) pp. 306-308.

Here's Pope Benedict XVI's succint statement: "An Adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties.­"
You'll find more in this article preceding his election as the Bishop of Rome:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/cardinal_ratzinger_prays_for_a_pa...

So, I don't see where the Church is making a change in course. In fact, that seems to be the one staunchion we can count on. The Church doesn't change colors with the change of fashion or fads. My personal views on issues are built on my Catholic faith. Now-I'm not perfect, I know I've missed the mark aplenty in my little time on this planet. I also know I'm not wrong by sticking to scripture and teachings, not my own interpretations thereof generated under the light of some personal agenda. So, I am not supporting the normalization of what the Church's teachings and therefore my beliefs declare an abomination. I will listen to the scripture references and rationale from the Pope and perhaps the Congregation Of The Doctrine Of The Faith. FAITH!

Where is Anita Bryant now? We need her more than ever. She was a prophet.

The church teaches that non-sacramental marriages are not valid in the eyes of God . !Pre-Vatican II theology taught that a state marriage ceremony alone was not a true marriage and persons married by the state were living in sin. With such a view why does the Church support DOMA (defense of marriage act) which prevents civil gay marriage. If civil marriage is not valid in Catholic theology then why bother militating against civil gay marriage. Why take so much timeand effort to defend a practice that is not even recognized by the Church as a marriage except when gay couples, seeking the civil protections of a state marriage, wish to get married. Is civil marriage suddenly sacred and sacramental when gays desire to marry and adultery when non-gay couples have the very same state ceremony.Talk about moral relativism....