The Vatican is new document Rejecting the concept of changing biological sex is a setback for transgender people who had hoped that Pope Francis would prepare them for a more welcoming approach from the Catholic Church. .
Major religions around the world take different approaches to gender identity and the inclusion or exclusion of transgender people. Some examples:
Christianity
The Catholic Church's disapproval of gender transition is echoed by some other denominations. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, adopted a resolution in 2014 stating that “God's plan is for the creation of two distinct and complementary genders: male and female.” The magazine argues that gender identity is “determined by biological sex, not by an individual's self-identification.”
However, many mainline Protestant denominations welcome transgender people as members and clergy. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America elected an openly transgender man as bishop in 2021.
Islam
Islam has no single central religious authority, and policies may vary from region to region.
Abbas Shuman, secretary general of Cairo's Al-Azhar Council of Senior Scholars, said: “For us, gender change is completely rejected.”
“It was God who determined the sex of the fetus, and interfering with that change is a change in God's creation and is completely rejected,” Schoman added.
In Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Shia theocracy, issue religious laws; or the fatwa, which, decades ago, paved the way for public support for sex-reassignment surgery.
hinduism
While traditional roles in South Asian Hindu societies were, and still are, defined as male and female, people with non-binary gender expressions have been recognized for thousands of years and are included in sacred texts. It has played an important role. People of the third gender have been respected throughout South Asian history, and many rose to important positions of power under Hindu and Muslim rule. A 2014 study estimated that around 3 million third gender people live in India alone.
Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu scriptures, has three gendered vocabularies: masculine, feminine, and gender-neutral.
The most common third gender group in India is known as 'Hijras'. Some people choose to undergo gender reassignment surgery, while others are born intersex. Most people consider themselves neither male nor female.
Some Hindus believe that people of the third gender have special powers and the ability to bless or curse, which leads to stereotypes and the community being feared and marginalized. It is the cause. Many people live in poverty without adequate access to health care, housing, or employment.
In 2014, Muslim-majority countries India, Nepal and Bangladesh officially recognized people of the third gender as citizens with equal rights. India's Supreme Court has said that “it is the right of every human being to choose his or her gender” and that recognition of this group is “a human rights issue, not a social or medical issue.”
Buddhism
Buddhism has traditionally adhered to binary gender roles, with men and women separated and assigned specific roles, especially in monastic traditions.
These beliefs remain deeply rooted in Theravada tradition, as evidenced by attempts by Thailand's Buddhist governing body, the Thai Sangha Council, to ban the ordination of transgender people. More recently, the Theravada Buddhist tradition has relaxed some of the restrictions on gender nonconformists by ordaining them in the sex recorded at birth.
However, the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist sects allow for more exceptions, and Jodo Shinshu is more inclusive in the ordination of transgender monks in both Japan and North America. In Tibetan Buddhism, an openly queer monk, Tashi Choedup, was ordained after his teachers refrained from asking him about his gender identity, as stipulated in Buddhist doctrine. Many Buddhist sects, especially in the West, intentionally include transgender people in their sanghas and congregations.
Judaism
Reform Judaism accepts transgender people and allows for the ordination of trans rabbis. According to David J. Meyer, a longtime rabbi in Marblehead, Massachusetts, traditional Jewish wisdom allows for a different gender identity and expression than is typically associated with the gender assigned at birth. It is said that her sexuality was recognized.
“Our mystical text, the Kabbalah, deals with the concept of transition from one gender to another,” he wrote on a Reform website.
In Orthodox Judaism it is almost always different. The Human Rights Campaign, a major U.S. LGBTQ rights organization, says, “Most transgender people will find it extremely difficult to navigate the Orthodox community.”
“Transgender people are further constrained by Orthodox Judaism's emphasis on duality and strict separation between men and women,” the HRC states. “For example, a transgender person who has not been medically transitioned poses a challenge for a rabbi who must decide whether the person will sit with a man or a woman during a service.”
Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesperson for the Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel of America, wrote a blog post last year after appearing on an Israeli television panel discussing transgender-related issues.
“There is no denying that there are people who are deeply conflicted about their gender identity. They deserve protection from harm and are entitled to empathy and sympathy because they face difficulties that others do not experience.” “There is,” Shafran wrote. “But the Torah and its extension, Halacha, or Jewish religious law, say that to be born in a male body requires living a male life, and to be born female requires living as a woman. I’m clear about the facts.”
“In Judaism, each gender has a specific role to play in life,” he added. “The bodies God has given us are an indication of who we are, what we are not, and the kind of life God wants us to live.”
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through The Associated Press collaboration Funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and in collaboration with The Conversation US. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
