Catholic Church needs to recognise the existence of transgender people

ANTHONY Horan of the Scottish Catholic Parliamentary Office has misunderstood the Scottish Government’s proposals on reform of the Gender Recognition Act (“Catholic Church: Allowing children to swap gender is deeply disturbing”, The Herald, November 14). The clue is in the word “recognition”.

This is not about allowing young people to “pursue a gender change”; it is about recognising the gender that they already are. The Catholic Church leadership may not like it, but trans people exist, and their gender identity does not match the sex they were assumed to be on the basis of the appearance of their genitalia at birth.

We would ask Mr Horan to consider what his life would have been like as a young person if all those around him had insisted that he was really a girl, and on treating him as such, when of course he knew he was a boy. No doubt he’d agree that would have been pretty unbearable. That’s what life is like for a young trans person, without the acceptance that comes with empathy and understanding of their situation.

Tim Hopkins,

Equality Network,

30 Bernard Street, Edinburgh.

I AGREE wholeheartedly with Anthony Horan of the Catholic Parliamentary Office who says moves to make it easier for young people to change their gender are deeply.

Why does our culture contort itself to justify and accommodate something that is so desperately absurd and so egregiously harmful to everyone involved? Perhaps because transgenderism puts feelings above all. In a world where a person can reject his biology in favour or of his lust and his emotions, the individual reigns supreme. My self-identity trumps my actual identity. Reality becomes subservient to desire. This is the key.

It is, more than any other reason, why our culture has taken up the transgender banner and fights so ruthlessly to protect it. In transgenderism, man achieves his final victory over truth and truth’s God.

No longer do we declare with confidence, “I am…” We don’t want to be so confined and pigeonholed. Instead we say, “I identify as…” What we identify with has taken the place of what we are. In the process, all forms of identity – every delineation and distinction that defines us and distinguishes us from everyone else – have begun to disintegrate.

I have no real confidence that, as a culture, we’ll choose truth. However, if it’s ever going to happen, now’s the time. Liberals have made it clear that they intend to finally and categorically reject and outlaw reality itself. Now the question is: will the rest of us stand up and do anything about it?

Martin Conroy, 2 The Orchard, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire.