Transsexuality and religion

[The Mikado]

I remember the first time I read about the widespread acceptance of transsexuality in Iran (a regime that's not particularly friendly to the "L, G, and B" in "LGBT," to say the least).  It's a pretty shocking notion, but Iran is something of a mecca of sex change operations.  I was wondering what people on here thought about transsexuality and its difficult implications for religions that are sometimes considered to be homophobic, esp. Christianity and Islam.  Is a MtF transsexual sleeping with a man in a homosexual or heterosexual relationship and vice versa?

Transsexuality is something I know very little about (and I assume Transamerica was a bad movie to introduce trans issues to me), but have always found a fascinating concept, and would love to be enlightened.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This hits pretty close to home for me.

Being transgender, like sexual orientation, has spectra involved in it. I can't speak for people at different points on them than I am, and obviously my experience at a somehow-thriving mainline church in Western Massachusetts is far from typical, but insofar as my gender issues (since I'm at an extremely early stage of this whole matter mainly out of fear or inertia) have ever even been mentioned I've experienced more or less the same treatment as in the town and area at large--considerably better than America as a whole, but still sometimes upsetting, which is why I don't much talk about it.

An interesting thing to read might be Yentl the Yeshiva Boy. NOT the Barbra Streisand movie. In the book Yentl is pretty explicitly trans.

I really can't speak for Iran. That's always confused me too.

[ilikeverin]

Given that transgender issues have only been so recently brought up in Western discourse, very few denominations have commented about it.  I know Methodists don't have a policy, for example.  Oddly, from what I can find, denominations have been a good deal more quiet about transgender issues than LGB ones; conservative Methodists basically forgot to bring it up at the 2008 General Conference.

This hits pretty close to home for me.

Being transgender, like sexual orientation, has spectra involved in it. I can't speak for people at different points on them than I am, and obviously my experience at a somehow-thriving mainline church in Western Massachusetts is far from typical, but insofar as my gender issues (since I'm at an extremely early stage of this whole matter mainly out of fear or inertia) have ever even been mentioned I've experienced more or less the same treatment as in the town and area at large--considerably better than America as a whole, but still sometimes upsetting, which is why I don't much talk about it.

*hughughug*