Franklin Graham finds it 'hard to swallow' that Caitlyn Jenner got 'Courage Award'

[rae317]

True. I actually had no idea who he was until the Kardashian stuff. I was born in 1989 but I like to think I’m somewhat knowledgeable about past sports greats. He just doesn’t rate at all.

wow.

You have a lot of judgment and opinion about her, most I disagree with. Some of them, like this, are kind of mind blowing. In the world of athletics she was at the top, one of the greats. Very few people in the world will get to where she was. But you say it does not rate at all?

It is her life and she is free to live it as she wish’s. She is a high achiever, and I am sure she will continue to be. Her identity is just as valid, and as controversial, as yours. You don’t need to be on the attack.

 

[rae317]

Surely this is the epitome of calling white, ‘black’ and black, ‘white.’

How can denying pretty much everything about one’s existing “self” possibly count as “self-acceptance?”

Never mind, don’t even try to explain. You will only hurt yourself doing the contortion that would be required.

Oh yes, what she did took tremendous courage and self acceptance, and I would add humility. I can’t wait for the responses to me saying that! To put yourself out there as she has, to say this is who I am despite all the consequences of doing so, cannot be done without self acceptance and humility.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

True. I actually had no idea who he was until the Kardashian stuff. I was born in 1989 but I like to think I’m somewhat knowledgeable about past sports greats. He just doesn’t rate at all.

He won the decathlon and was on the Wheaties box. I guess you had to be there.

Just for context: Do you think the USA men’s hockey team in the 1980 Winter Games “rate”?

 

[Darryl_Revok]

Unfortunate phrasing of the quote.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Oh yes, what she did took tremendous courage and self acceptance, and I would add humility. I can’t wait for the responses to me saying that! To put yourself out there as she has, to say this is who I am despite all the consequences of doing so, cannot be done without self acceptance and humility.

Well it does require a great deal of something, but acceptance of “self” when everything about himself has been altered from what it essentially was doesn’t bespeak acceptance. Abandonment or abdication come to mind, but not acceptance.

The fact that his “humility” was, ironically enough, trumpeted far and wide in Vanity Fair, speaks volumes.

 

[OraLabora]

It makes no sense for Franklin Graham to compare Jenner to military heroes.
…

From the Chicago Sun Times:

Maura Mandt, one of the co-executive producers of the ESPYs, recently explained to Sports Illustrated the rationale for selecting Jenner for the award.

“I think Caitlyn’s decision to publicly come out as a transgender woman and live as Caitlyn Jenner displayed enormous courage and self-acceptance,” Mandt told SI.

.

Self-awareness and self-acceptance are very necessary steps to facing down a disorder. It surely takes courage to stand up in front of an AA meeting and declare that one is an alcoholic.

But self-acceptance does not mean giving into our sin. On the contrary, God calls us to rise our nature, whether normal instincts or disordered passions. I have enormous compassion for those with this condition, but succumbing to it to me seems the opposite of courage. A gay person choosing chastity surely better earns the title “courageous” even if he or she sometimes falls. Swimming against the tide is never easy.

For true courage, consider this. After Sully Sullenberg landed his crippled Airbus on the Hudson, not only did he make sure that everybody else was evacuated before he himself got off, he walked up and down the aisle of the sinking aircraft TWICE as the icy water rose up his legs, checking under every seat to ensure no child was trapped there.

When he landed the plane, he was doing his job with skill and nerves of steel. But when he walked up and down the aisle in waist deep frozen water to ensure everyone was off prior to getting off himself, he showed true courage.

 

[TimothyH]

Self-awareness and self-acceptance are very necessary steps to facing down a disorder. It surely takes courage to stand up in front of an AA meeting and declare that one is an alcoholic.

But self-acceptance does not mean giving into our sin. On the contrary, God calls us to rise our nature, whether normal instincts or disordered passions. I have enormous compassion for those with this condition, but succumbing to it to me seems the opposite of courage. A gay person choosing chastity surely better earns the title “courageous” even if he or she sometimes falls. Swimming against the tide is never easy.

What is described above is part of true Christian humility - admitting our weaknesses, forgiving ourselves for our fallen nature and realizing that we need a savior to help us.

Falling is inevitable. True courage is waking up the next morning and beginning again in spite of the fall. Courage is not the absence of fear but acting even though we are afraid.
A young man once asked, “How do I become holy.” A wise older man replied, “Begin again.”

-Tim-

 

[Bruised_Reed]

Unfortunate phrasing of the quote.

What quote? What’s wrong with it?

 

[Memaw]

Self-awareness and self-acceptance are very necessary steps to facing down a disorder. It surely takes courage to stand up in front of an AA meeting and declare that one is an alcoholic.

But self-acceptance does not mean giving into our sin. On the contrary, God calls us to rise our nature, whether normal instincts or disordered passions. I have enormous compassion for those with this condition, but succumbing to it to me seems the opposite of courage. A gay person choosing chastity surely better earns the title “courageous” even if he or she sometimes falls. Swimming against the tide is never easy.

For true courage, consider this. After Sully Sullenberg landed his crippled Airbus on the Hudson, not only did he make sure that everybody else was evacuated before he himself got off, he walked up and down the aisle of the sinking aircraft TWICE as the icy water rose up his legs, checking under every seat to ensure no child was trapped there.

When he landed the plane, he was doing his job with skill and nerves of steel. But when he walked up and down the aisle in waist deep frozen water to ensure everyone was off prior to getting off himself, he showed true courage.

Yes and Franklin Graham was saying we should honor our REAL heroes and not the phony ones. God Bless, Memaw

 

[Bruised_Reed]

Yes and Franklin Graham was saying we should honor our REAL heroes and not the phony ones. God Bless, Memaw

And I don’t think Franklin Graham knows who the Courage Award is supposed to honor.

I don’t think anyone has suggested someone better for this year’s award.

 

[meltzerboy]

The whole Bruce Jenner thing is pretty infuriating, to me. I’ll be honest: I’m a female to male transsexual and I’ve been on testosterone therapy for over a year and living as a man for about 6 years now. I don’t think that Jenner is really a transsexual. I think he’s a sort of transvestite called an autogynephile. His actions and the things he says just scream autogynephilia to me. I’ve known people like that in real life and they’re just very “off”. They often decide to “become” women when they’re in middle age or later. They’re usually heterosexual (attracted to women, in their case) and don’t want to have genital surgery. They tend to have a highly sexualized, immature concept of femininity, as transvestites usually do because it’s a sexual fetish/paraphilia. They don’t display dysphoria as children or report perceiving themselves as the opposite sex from a very young age. They also tend to have had very masculine careers, get married and father children before they decide to live as women.

Whereas actual transsexuals report a cross-sex identity from their earliest memories, along with a strong sex/body dysphoria, are distressed about their sex characteristics and desire to transition to their target sex as much as possible. They usually try to keep it quiet and just go on about their lives. They’re not going to feel comfortable getting married and using their genitals to have sex and reproduce.

So there’s a lot of people who call themselves transgender or transsexuals who really aren’t and who usually have a sexual fetish. That’s mostly found among natal males, but it happens in females to a lesser degree (i.e. there’s some FtMs who aren’t actually transsexuals but are a sort of transvestite, too). Real occurrences of transsexualism are very rare, like intersex conditions are rare. But it’s been heavily politicized and turned into a trend. So we have a lot of confused people who are muddying the waters and true transsexuals are thrown in with it.

I got fed up with the whole thing and now have nothing to do with the “trans community” or the wider “LGBT community” anymore. There’s too many weirdos and confused people involved in it who don’t really know who they are. What they really need is therapy. As for me, I just want to get on with my life and not cling to it as some sort of identity. It’s just a medical condition, to me. It’s similar to intersex conditions; it’s a sex differentiation disorder that occurs in utero when the brain is hit with a large amount of cross-sex hormones which causes it to form oppositely sexed compared to the rest of the body (that’s what causes the dysphoria).

I’m quite sure that Jenner has never had intensive therapy. When you have that kind of money, you can pay doctors and surgeons to do what you want. It’s tragic that we’re celebrating someone’s mental illness and not questioning it, even when it’s glaringly obvious that something’s not right here and his story doesn’t add up. That Diane Sawyer interview was extremely bizarre.

It just makes me so mad when people like Jenner are able to get all that surgery and be hailed as heroes when so many of us are dirt poor and have to suffer for years, not having access to treatment.

Lauren Hill should’ve gotten the award.

Good post with interesting information about transgenderism. Thanks for sharing your personal story.

 

[meltzerboy]

Thanks.

Well, it’s pretty simple to me. I don’t believe it’s sinful to have a sex change due to strong sex dysphoria because of science. Science tells us that males and females have brain differences and that there’s all sorts of conditions and possibilities that can screw things up in the womb during sex formation. External physical features don’t tell everything about what a person’s sex is. You can look externally anatomically female yet have vestigial testes. Sometimes things just get screwed up. If you believe in the Fall, it’s not so hard to comprehend, imo. We suffer disorders and such, including congenital ones, because we’re living in an imperfect state and this imperfection extends to our genes and such.

The thing is that most people just don’t understand it because they’ve never had to deal with it. They’re just normal and it’s never an issue to them. Everything matches up. But we have to deal with it 24/7 because the disparity is glaringly obvious to us. Also, most people have a very black and white and scientifically ignorant view of biology and anatomy. It’s not always clear-cut and there’s biological shades of grey. Yes, most people are male or female, but nature produces aberrations that have some level of both in one body. There’s so many things that can go wrong. (Actually, all people have elements of both sexes in them because we all produce the hormones of both sexes. It’s just that which hormone your body primarily functions on and which hormone has shaped your brain the most decides which sex you are. )

It’s like how people talk about chromosomes being the decisive factor for whether you’re male or female. That’s just wrong. For example, there’s a condition called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome where the fetus has an XY karotype yet their body doesn’t respond to androgens at all and so they develop as externally female. In fact, they tend to feminize even more than XX karotype females do because even XX females produce small amounts of testosterone which has an effect, yet CAIS females don’t respond to testosterone at all. So is the person with CAIS a man or woman?

For example:
youtube.com/watch?v=cJxZe4KAdqU

Is Katie a man or a woman? Is she sinning because she was born with a medical condition and had to correct it using hormones and surgery? Is her having relations with a man a sort of homosexual activity (she’s attracted to and has relationships with men)? Or even with me, I identify as a heterosexual man (I’m attracted to women) and I’ve never identified as a woman/female. So even after I complete my transition (with genital surgery), would that still be “lesbianism”?

See, this is where our views of things have to be reexamined in light of science. It’s like, I agree with natural law theory but it has to be modified to account for those who are intersex and transsexual (transsexualism may actually be a form of intersex, to be honest). There’s not many of us but we do exist and these things need to be considered. Current Church doctrine actually has little to nothing to say about this. It doesn’t fall under the teachings about homosexuality for what I would hope are obvious reasons. I’m not a woman, I don’t want to be a woman, I don’t want to act as a woman in a relationship/marriage. I want to be a husband and a father. I don’t want to be a mother or wife, because I’m not a woman.

Honestly, unless I chose to divulge it you, you would never know, anyway. I can get my name and gender marker changed on my legal documents and ID. I can change the gender marker on my birth certificate, too. So even if same-sex “marriage” was never legalized, I would still be able to have a legal marriage to a woman.

So this is quite a quandry, especially with respect to Church teaching. This is something they haven’t addressed and I hope they do.

Again, interesting stuff. Thanks for the information. I think we must all learn to open our minds and hearts a little more.

 

[meltzerboy]

It makes no sense for Franklin Graham to compare Jenner to military heroes.

This ESPY award is for people in SPORTS who are in keeping with Arthur Ashe’s goal to educate others about health issues of the day, just as he himself tirelessly tried to do before he died of HIV-related pneumonia…to educate the world about HIV when it was still relatively new.

Here’s the very moving speech Jenner gave, fyi:

abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/espy-awards-caitlyn-jenner-accepts-arthur-ashe-courage-32482615

Besides, Jenner isn’t being given the award “for undergoing a sex change,” as the article and Graham ignorantly states.

From the Chicago Sun Times:

Maura Mandt, one of the co-executive producers of the ESPYs, recently explained to Sports Illustrated the rationale for selecting Jenner for the award.

“I think Caitlyn’s decision to publicly come out as a transgender woman and live as Caitlyn Jenner displayed enormous courage and self-acceptance,” Mandt told SI.
“Bruce Jenner could have easily gone off into the sunset as this American hero and never have dealt with this publicly. Doing so took enormous courage. He was one of the greatest athletes of our time. That is what the Arthur Ashe Courage Award is about, somebody from the athletic community who has done something that transcends sport.

One of the biggest platforms the Arthur Ashe Foundation has is educational,** and I think in this choice we have the opportunity to educate people about this issue** and hopefully change and possibly save some lives. I think that is why it was the right choice.”
…That was what Arthur Ashe was about.

.

DG, you have the hallmark qualities of a true investigative reporter!

 

[Saint_Frank]

wow.

You have a lot of judgment and opinion about her, most I disagree with. Some of them, like this, are kind of mind blowing. In the world of athletics she was at the top, one of the greats. Very few people in the world will get to where she was. But you say it does not rate at all?

It is her life and she is free to live it as she wish’s. She is a high achiever, and I am sure she will continue to be. Her identity is just as valid, and as controversial, as yours. You don’t need to be on the attack.

I have a right to be angry. I’m not going to celebrate some rich person who drops tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery, seems confused about what they actually are (“oh, I’m not gay! I like women!” “For all intents and purposes, I’m a woman!” “I’m not having genital surgery.” Huh?!), kills a woman with a family by driving wrecklessly, lies to his ex-wives and children, etc. He only cares about fame.

Yeah, he can do whatever he wants, but that doesn’t mean I have to go along with his delusion. People like him make a mockery out of transsexualism, which is a real medical condition and it’s horrible. This guy marries 3 times and fathers children and then he decides to transition in his '60s. Um, that’s not how it works. I’ve known people like that from a trans support group I used to attend. They’re not transsexuals and they’re not really trans women. They’re a sort of transvestite. They’re all about clothes, makeup and such. They usually present a sexualized, immature idea of femininity.

During that Diane Sawyer interview, he spoke of his “female self” in the third person, as if it’s a persona or a split personality. Any good therapist or psychiatrist would tell you that that’s a red flag right there. It’s like “Caitlyn” isn’t integrated into his main personality. Plus, you don’t “debut” your “new female self” while presenting as male and not having a female name picked out. He even responded to the question of whether he’s attracted to men like a typical straight man would - quick to declare himself a heterosexual. That whole affair was very off.

I’m more concerned about the trans women who have to do sex work to pay for their transition because they’re so poor. I’m concerned about the trans women who get assaulted and killed. I’m concerned about access to health care since most of us can’t afford it (including me). I don’t care about or idolize some rich narcissist who can buy anything with his money. I’m not going to go along with the deluded media in hailing such a screwed up person. No, thanks.

 

[Saint_Frank]

He won the decathlon and was on the Wheaties box. I guess you had to be there.

Just for context: Do you think the USA men’s hockey team in the 1980 Winter Games “rate”?

Well, at least I’ve heard of them.

 

[Saint_Frank]

Good post with interesting information about transgenderism. Thanks for sharing your personal story.

Sure. It’s not easy for me to talk about, but I try to help people understand.

Even with the word “transgender” and such, I don’t like it. That’s being used as an umbrella term that means whatever you want it to mean. So I just use “transsexual” and “transsexualism”, which is the original term for it and was the medical term for it. “Transgender” came about later on and there’s some controversy over who used it first. The older generation of transsexuals who were around in the '50s and '60s associate it with transvestites like Virginia Prince. So I don’t use that term.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

Well, at least I’ve heard of them.

I’m not into track and field but I remember watching Jenner’s events during the Olympics because her scores indicated she was likely to win. I don’t eat Wheaties but being on the box was a big deal.

Back to the hockey team: Do they “rate?”

 

[Saint_Frank]

I’m not into track and field but I remember watching Jenner’s events during the Olympics because her scores indicated she was likely to win. I don’t eat Wheaties but being on the box was a big deal.

Back to the hockey team: Do they “rate?”

I guess they do. Like I said, I wasn’t born until 1989 and had no idea who Jenner was.

 

[Saint_Frank]

Self-awareness and self-acceptance are very necessary steps to facing down a disorder. It surely takes courage to stand up in front of an AA meeting and declare that one is an alcoholic.

But self-acceptance does not mean giving into our sin. On the contrary, God calls us to rise our nature, whether normal instincts or disordered passions. I have enormous compassion for those with this condition, but succumbing to it to me seems the opposite of courage.

What do you mean “succumbing to it”? Are transsexuals supposed to suffer through our lives with a body that’s out of sync with the mind and playing-acting a role that’s abnormal to us? Is that what God would want? For us to be suicidally depressed throughout our lives?

Being homosexual and being celibate aren’t even close to being on the same level as being transsexual.

 

[Mike_Dye]

Bless Franklyn Graham. Everyone should speak out against all of the idiocy that is going on in what is left of our country.