A setback for transgender individuals hoping Pope Francis might be opening the door for a more accommodating approach from the Catholic Church has been put forth by the Vatican in a new document that rejects the idea of changing a person’s genetic sex.
Major religions around the world include or exclude transgender individuals from mainstream cultures with various approaches to gender identification and gender identity. Some examples:
Christianity
The Catholic Church’s critical attitude toward gender change is shared by some other faiths. For instance, a decision from the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Christian church in the country, established that “God’s architecture was the creation of two distinct and comparable sexes, male and female,” in 2014. It asserts that sex identity “is determined by genetic sex, never by a person’s self-perception.”
However, many major Protestant churches welcome transgender people as members and as part of the church community. In 2021, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America elected a publicly transgender person as a priest.
Islam
There isn’t a single central religious authority in Islam, and policies can vary by region.
Abbas Shouman, director-general of Al-Azhar’s Council of Senior Scholars in Cairo, said that “for us,… gender transition is totally rejected.”
“It is God who has determined the… gender of the infant, and to change that is a shift of God’s creation, which is totally rejected,” Shouman added.
In Iran, the Shiite theocracy’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious order, or fatwa, decades ago, opening the way for official support for gender change operations.
Hinduism
People of non-binary gender appearance have been recognized for millennia and have held significant roles in sacred texts in South Asian Hindu society, even though traditional roles have also been prescribed for men and women. Third-gender people have been revered throughout South Asian history, with some achieving important positions of authority under Hindu and Muslim leaders. According to a 2014 survey, there are approximately 3 million third-gender citizens living only in India.
Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu scriptures, has the vocabulary to describe three genders – masculine, feminine, and sex-neutral.
The “hijras” are the most prevalent third-gender population in India. While some choose to have gender reassignment surgery, people are born transgender. The majority of people don’t consider themselves to be either male or female.
Some Hindus believe that third-gender people have unique abilities and the ability to love or curse, which has led to stereotyping and marginalization in the community. Some live in poverty without appropriate access to healthcare, housing, and employment.
In 2014, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, which is a largely Muslim state, formally recognized third-gender people as citizens deserving of similar rights. The Supreme Court of India ruled that “every person has the right to choose their gender,” and that the right to recognize a group is “not a social or medical issue but a human rights issue.”
Buddhism
In its monastic traditions, where men and women are segregated and given specific roles, Buddhism has traditionally adhered to binary gender roles.
These principles are still persisted in the Theravada tradition, as evidenced by the Thai Sangha Council’s effort to outlaw transgender people’s ordinations. More recently, the Theravada custom has lessened the restrictions on gender nonconforming individuals by requiring them to have their sex be recorded at birth.
However, the Jodo Shinshu sect has been even more inclusive in ordaining transgender monks both in Japan and North America, while the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism have allowed more exceptions. Tashi Choedup, a publicly queer monk, was ordained in Tibetan Buddhism after their teacher forbade anyone to inquire about their gender identity as required by Buddhist doctrine. Many Buddhist denominations, particularly in the West, are intentionally inclusive of transgender people in their sanghas or gatherings.
Judaism
Reform Judaism welcomes transgender people and permits the ordination of trans rabbis. Jewish traditional wisdom allowed the development of gender identity and expression that were not typically associated with the sex assigned at birth, according to David J. Meyer, who spent many years as a rabbi in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
“Our mystical texts, the Kabbalah, address the notion of transitioning from one gender to another,” he wrote on a Reform-affiliated website.
It’s different, for the most part, in Orthodox Judaism. “Most transgender people will find Orthodox communities extremely difficult to navigate,” says the Human Rights Campaign, a major U.S. LGBTQ-rights advocacy group.
Orthodox Judaism’s emphasis on binary gender and the strict separation between men and women further restrain transgender people, according to the HRC. A rabbi must decide whether a transgender person will sit with men or women during worship, for instance, if they haven’t already undergone a medical transition.
After appearing on a panel of Israeli television to discuss transgender-related issues, Rabbi Avi Shafran, of the Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel of America, published a blog post.
There is no denying that there are people who are deeply conflicted about their gender identities. They deserve to be safe from harm and, facing challenges the rest of us don’t, deserve empathy and compassion,” Shafran wrote. However, the Torah and its extension, halacha, or Jewish religious law, are unwavering about the fact that being born a man requires living the life of a man, while being born a woman requires living as a woman.
“In Judaism, each gender has its particular life role to play,” he added. The bodies that God gave us reflect both how He wants us to live our lives and what we are not.
Through the collaboration between AP and The Conversation US, which has funding from Lilly Endowment Inc., the Associated Press’ religion coverage is supported. The AP is in total control of this content.
