Exactly which decision are you referring to? Is it the gender transition in general? Is it the “wrong” gendered clothing? Is it the use of the anti-androgen and estrogen replacement? Is it the surgery? All of the above?
Exactly what do you mean by objective moral law with regards to whichever decision it was you were talking about? When I think of objectivity in terms of law, I think of some law which was written by some authority. I’m trying to find out how a Catholic might answer these kinds of questions so that I can begin to have this discussion with my father. It seems like the best thing that people can come up with so far is that the Mosaic law against cross dressing was maintained as a tradition. It also seems like people are hinting at something more than that, but I haven’t seen anything approaching an objective source.
I do not get knotted up over who wears lace, glitter, the color pink, or any of the rest. I am referring primarily to medical care, and a case in which you were asking me to provide material support for care I believed to be against my own morals. (I was dotting philosophical "i"s, that’s mostly what I was doing.)
I think when you are talking to a parent, you are not dealing with what is primarily a religious question, almost without exception concerning how religious the parent is. You are dealing with the identity of your relationship:
is it no longer “father-son”?!? No longer “mother-son”? You see, your parents did not raise you to be a daughter. They raised you to be a son–not a son like anyone else’s son, but
their son. No matter what mold they had in mind before you were born, you have become the definition of what
their son is. I only mean to remind you that you are not the only one who has spent decades with a profound emotional stake in* your* gender identity! They were probably also raised in times when parental failure or upheaval was considered the most probable reason for gender dysphoria. (Anything your kid has that has “dys-” in it, you worry that your child is suffering out of some fault of yours!
:crying
Please also remember that you have come to your present conclusion a) by a direct experience that has been both puzzling and yet always immediate to you, yet hidden or foreign to them and b) by an emotional period of agonizing that they were largely oblivious (or in denial) of. They can hardly guess where you’ve been! Yet that was how you came to accept your present conclusion. Whether your path is perfect or faulted, you have a lot of miles on them.
Imagine that you were a typical male, and you had gotten married to the girl next door, a lovely thing that your parents loved like another daughter. The two of you went off to some far distant land and had only indirect contact with your parents. While you were in this land, you were killed saving your wife’s life. Your wife was not sure at first whether you had been killed, but she grieved. The years past, and finally she found that you were not ever going to come back.
Now, your wife is now free to marry again. She misses you, but she has gone through the grieving process and has accepted your death. She accepts that you are in a better place. Not wanting to upset your parents and for various other reasons beyond her control, however, she waits until she sees them in person to tell them. She has finally found someone to help her through her grief and to live again, and she shows up at your parents’ door with this splendid new husband in tow.
Do you see how different the news of your death would seem to her than to them? Your wife would have gone through the emotional roller-coaster of losing you, of not knowing, of finally reaching closure. She is satisfied that you died doing what you loved and in a way that you would find fitting. Your remains were never recovered, but she is satisfied that you are in fact quite dead. She has come to the conclusion that it is time to move on with her life, and move on she has. You are gone, but she is happy. She cannot prove that you are dead, but she is satisfied that the preponderance of evidence is that you are gone.
Your wife could tell your parents this news without falling to pieces. She might even have difficulty hiding the delight she has in her new husband, who is a total stranger to your parents. Your parents, however happy they were to see your wife, would be immediately be sent into a state of shock by the news of your death. You might imagine what kind of emotions they would go through!
Your wife could not hurry them to the place she is in. There are no “right words” she could say to get them to where she is. She could not even be sure that they will ever get over their grief, and she cannot be sure they will not hold her to blame in some way. She certainly wouldn’t rush to say that you would be thrilled to know she’s finally re-married and found a way to be happy, even though she knows it to be true. I tell you: Even if
she were their natural daughter and you were the boy next door that they had been happy to see you marry (an analogy much closer to your own), they still would go through very similar emotions at finding that the son they thought would put them in their graves is no longer.
When someone transitions, those who are “left behind” are dealt news akin to a death. They can’t know the inner turmoil. They weren’t there for the relief. They only know that someone they love is never coming back. It is a death for them. Even if they are happy for the person who got life because their loved one died, they still feel that loss, and they might feel it always.
You may not feel it, but you were lovable and loved just the way you were. That is what will be the big obstacle in dealing with your parents. If not for that, dealing with the religious aspects of your decision would be difficult enough, yes. Still, I think I would recognize that the loss of their son will be the most difficult. Maybe you would put the word “son” in quotes, but they are not likely to be ready to do that. If they are, I would not worry about the other aspects. That is the biggest mountain they will have to climb.
