I fully respect the rights of gays + trans people. I have close relatives that are gay, and I have no problem with that. Of course whether or not I have a problem with that has no bearing to what I feel is the root cause of homosexuality/transexuality.
In my mind homosexuality and transexuality are almost invariably mental disorders/illnesses. Now whether they are caused by environmental or genetic factors is irrelevant, it doesn’t change what they are, mental illnesses.
Before you all bring up the load of irrelevant crap like “homosexuality/transexuality occur in nature all the time!” well guess what, lots of things occur in nature all the time. Cats can be born with 6 legs, a human baby can be born paralyzed from the waist down. Just because that is the way they are born it doesn’t mean it is good, or preferable. Having 6 legs or 3 legs (for a cat) an undersized heart/paralysis all represent problems for those individual creatures born with the deformity.
We should try to correct the deformity if it harms that creature’s life (well, at least if we are talking about humans or maybe pets if the owners are willing to go through the expense.)
Homosexuality as a mental illness in my opinion doesn’t cause any material harm to the persons involved, and it also doesn’t really pose a threat to society (even procreation isn’t really an argument because our species could and would continue even if all of us woke up with a serious case of the gay, lots of gay people want children and children can easily be made without the traditional male-female social relationship.)
If anyone really has a beef with my views re homosexuals they go more in depth and we’ll discuss them if anyone wishes, but right now they are just tangenital and waste space.
Now transexuality as a mental illness does cause harm to the person involved. It causes extreme mental anguish, identity problems et cetera. And these problems cannot be solved via non-medical means for many people. If you’re homosexual you’ll feel repressed and psychologically unhappy if you never allow yourself to pursue relationships with men. So to fix this you can easily just start dating guys. There are social problems involved but medically a fix for homosexuality isn’t needed (enough to devote research hours to it.)
For transexuals it’s very difficult to resolve their problem because they are always going to have the wrong tools. For some dressing up may be enough, and for them their transexuality isn’t that big of a problem. Although it is very difficult to attract men as a transexual I would think. Aside from fringe heterosexuals most aren’t interested in men dressed as women nor would most gays I know be attracted to a man dressed as a woman, they’re attracted to more mainstream males.
So anyways, faux-gender changing surgery (faux because just because the tools have changed imo the DNA is the same so no amount of cutting will change your gender) is the suggested correction? That’s ridiculous.
There are people with a mental illness (name forgotten atm) who constantly believe they have many different afflictions. Deep down inside they WANT these afflictions, they want to be thought of as sickly, they want to stay in hospitals and be taken care of et cetera. Do you think that because these people have diseased minds we should then actually disease their bodies so their disease is then happily consistent both physically and mentally?
Should we strive to actually tell people suffering from psychosis that all the things they “think” are real actually are real? Because obviously if they “feel” that way, we should try to make it so things really match the way they feel.
The focus of medical science for people with the transexual mental illness should definitely be a cure for the mind, not a cure for the body (because the body isn’t ill in any way, aside from the gray matter in the skull.)
If a transexual really wants to effect the surgical change on themselves, this is America (at least here in VA it is) and they should have the right to do so. I think it is medically a bad treatment, I think it should be frowned upon heavily by doctors and friends, and I think everyone involved should counsel these people against it. It’s again, like trying to accept someone who is psychotic and tell them that their delusions are okay and they should entertain them as much as possible.