Sexual identity

(Re: “Seminar: Gender ideology spreads false idea of person” and “Guidelines for Catholic education affirm students’ sexual identity as biological sex,” Feb. 27.) Transgenders are dismissed, ignored, harassed, joked about, misrepresented by everyone from politicians to their religious institutions, have to take crucial medications for the rest of their life that might be taken away from them if they can’t afford them or if they are imprisoned, are a part of the largest group per capita to be targeted with hate crimes and the most under-reported, they have the highest incidence of suicide, are victims of terrible violence and even murdered.

Why has God created such individuals who feel the need to identify as part of this group? Why would parents give their consent for their children to change the course of their lives? Why have these people gone to such extremes to live, or at least hope to live, a more fulfilling life?

All of us want to be loved and to love, to be the children of God we are. Who are we to decide who gets to do that only by doing what we think is OK? To love each other is Jesus’ greatest commandment. With love must come acceptance, of all our differences. Why else would God have created us the way we are?

Elizabeth Rosenwinkel
St. Albert the Great, Minneapolis

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