Well, what you are saying is here entirely different thing from what you originally said you see. You had said that being gay or transgender is a choice and the example you gave was of a woman who made a choice as to her actions, not a choice with regard to what her sexual proclivities were. As to the people you work with, that is not a broad sample. For instance, I do not have much time for a social life because of my work but I do know a lot of people in that I have had well over a thousand employees over time. Within that sampling, I have only known about ten to be gay and one to be transgender, but that is just my small world and it may be due to other factors such as the type of work they do and the sorts of people who gravitate toward computer science and electrical engineering, I simply don’t know. But I have read up on the matter, and qualified experts have demonstrably shown through peer reviewed and published studies that it is not a choice. And while I have great respect for direct experience, in matters such as this it doesn’t offer an alternative for the broader work of professionals. The problem is that some churches are struggling with the matter by trying to shoehorn the whole corpus of the modern intellect on many issues to fit the ancient imaginations of their founders, and they are finding it an untenable task. While they have found very elegant ways to sidestep the dichotomies with very well thought apologetics, the result is that we end up with threads such as this. Because in creating enough wiggle room to rectify their prior teachings with the modern world, they by necessity also create enough wiggle room for misunderstanding among the rank and file, coupled with a profound denial of the human condition, whereas it just isn’t realistic to tell people not to have sex, which is the crux of the matter. It seems rather curious that certain institutions that have failed so greatly in matters of sexual misbehavior and criminal abuse would consider themselves in any way qualified to instruct anyone on such matters. It leads me very honestly to wonder if sexual repression, control and guilt mongering has in fact led to anything more than few millennia of unnecessary suffering heaped upon the suffering we already endure. These are honest and direct concerns that I have and they are on the minds of many people of all faiths.
All the best!
