Intersexuals/Talk

'much more common'? numbers, please?

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Some conservative religious leaders (e.g. [Chuck Colson]?) have attacked moves for greater social acceptance of intersexuality, on the grounds that, according to their interpretation of the Bible, God made humans to have only two distinct sexes, and that any other intermediate sexes are "natural evils" caused by human disobedience to God.

I pulled this because 1. It's unsupported, 2. Does not square with my experience in evangelical faith. I have never heard it expressed as a point of doctrine in evangelical circles that the children pay for the sins of the fathers. That's OT. All that being said, a much better way to approach the issue would be to write a nice NPOV article explaining the difficulty (as asserted here) that evangelicals such as Chuck ("The Sermonator") Colson may or may not have with intersexuality.

Chuck Colson had an article ("Blurred Biology, How many sexes are there?") on his Prison Fellowship website until the beginning of 2000 attacking people who believe that 'corrective' surgery should not be performed on infants or children, who by their nature cannot consent, but if it is to be done at all should be left until adolesence or adulthood, to allow the person concerned choice about their own body. Colson painted this as part of some liberal plot to destroy the divinely division of humans into male and female. He probably took it down because people found it offensive, and I have not seen it; but I have seen multiple sources mention its existence. See http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_cira.htm and http://www.isgi.org/director.html. The later also recounts that when her Baptist church found out that she was intersexual, many of them wanted nothing to do with her any more, including the pastor. -- SJK

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I pulled the following text from religioustolerance.org

Chuck Colson has written a particularly insensitive attack on intersexuals. He states (in part):

"The Bible teaches that the Fall into sin affected biology itself - that nature is now marred and distorted from its original perfection. This truth gives us a basis for fighting evil, for working to alleviate disease and deformity - including helping those unfortunate children born with genital deformities."

"...for the Christian, nature is not our basis for determining normality. Scripture tells us how God created us before the Fall, and how he intended us to live: as males and females, reflecting His own image. We take our standards and identity from His revelation of our original nature." 9

I wonder whether he changed his views, what. The quote could be used like this: "Chuck Colson once wrote . . . (source no longer available)." Ed Poor