Catholic and dealing with transgender relatives

[mia.s]

Not sure where else to post this, but Catholic guidance is requested.

There is a transgender relative in my family, who initially came out as gay many years ago and has now decided that she is a man. She's done the "transition" surgery and hormonal treatment. I'm not sure how to refer to this relative anymore either...a she or a he, because my relative definitely presents as a man despite the fact that we all know that's not biologically true.

My husband and I aren't sure how to handle this. Relative is a cousin, lives nearby, and has children (through artificial means). I have a child and I don't want to teach my child that disordered thinking is acceptable and should be encouraged.

I've read many ways to tackle this scenario but it's comparing apples to oranges. Some people say to treat the relative the way you'd treat a drug addicted relative. Well, a drug addict can potentially be dangerous to others due to unpredictability in behavior and can act violently toward others. I'd be more scared of a drug addict relative who wasn't in a recovery program with an accountability partner. Same thing with an alcoholic relative. Other explanations I've seen are to treat the relative with love and respect and explain to children that the relative has gender dysphoria, and we do not do things that affirm their dysphoria (such as attending a wedding, celebrating an a "wedding anniversary," etc.), and to refrain from using disordered pronouns. What I've been doing with the pronouns is referring to the relative as "they/them" (since the use of "they" as a singular isn't a new thing, tbf) or referring to the relative by the first name in front of my child.

Am I going about this right? I want to express that I have love and care for my cousin, but I also don't want to go against the Catholic faith.

[peregrinator]

Speaking only for myself (I do have at least one trans relative, though I don't really have any contact with him) I would use the name under which they identify but not the pronouns since the latter is a lie.

[VeryTas]

We have a daughter who leaned the way the world has been leaning about sexual identity. She came out as Lesbian during college and even "married" (in Canada which recognized such a thing before the U.S.). But before long she went on into "transition" and so has a groomed beard and permanent lower voice. Those were from hormones. There was some breast surgery but we didn't ask if other body parts saw a knife.
We have kept on good terms with her and she is attentive to our elderly needs. In regard to names and pronouns, in her presence and that of people who know her preferences, I use her chosen name, repeating it instead of pronouns. But referring to her privately with people who understand the situation, I do use truthful pronouns. If I am called on to introduce her to someone (I don't think I have had to yet), I think I will say something like "This is N, our oldest kid".
I imagine that her older nieces and nephews who remember her female appearance have been confused, not simply by the change itself but also the transitioning of pronouns by many of their elder relatives. We have five children and seventeen grands.
If there is a silver lining, it might be this. At least two of her former Lesbian partners got a good enough impression from her semi-masculine ways, that they went on to become heterosexual and they married (if you can believe it) men!

[Riverboat]

I hope others weigh in on this topic. I have a somewhat similar problem.

[Tired]

not sure I have a direct answer as I haven't been in that situation. But the whole 'transgenderism' thing is unquestionably the greatest mental illness of our time. I do like mia.s direction. What is your hope, in the end?

[Signum Crucis]

This is something that I never dreamed of happening back in my youth. My dad's uncle was probably gay, but no one ever said it out loud. Everybody else, on both sides of my very large extended family, was/is normal. Now, not so much. One granddaughter wanted to be a boy. She preferred her middle name, which is not gender-specific, cut her hair short, and dressed like a boy. I always referred to her as "her" and "she", and I used her first name. I wasn't trying to ignore her preferences, it was just out of habit. She is boy-attracted, not girl-attracted. She is over it now, thankfully, and has fully embraced her femininity. Her oldest brother, otoh, is bisexual. He's in his mid-twenties and recently married. The only way I can describe how he looks is beautiful. He definitely has feminine features and a slight build. Another grandchild said he was bisexual, but his dad told him to "knock it off". That was the end of that, as far as I know. Now I have a grandson who has some significant behavioral disorders, and recently told his mom that he's SSA. To sum it up, three of my six children have children with sexual deviancy issues. I blame social media for some of it, but two of my grandsons do seem to be wired that way. Maybe it's hormones flooding into the water systems?

[mia.s]

It could be all the hormones, social conditioning, the lack of understanding and awareness we have toward our physical bodies, etc. It's hard to say, but I don't think social media and the pandemic helped.

What I'd like to accomplish/the end goal (if that question was aimed at me) is to maintain a healthy relationship with my family member in a way that doesn't compromise my faith. When this relative got "married," we didn't attend the wedding. I did seek advice on how to handle that, and responded to the invitation with a "no," (no other explanation needed) and we went about our business. From what I heard, her parents were upset that we weren't there, and my parents asked too, but I found out they didn't want to be there either and only went out of obligation. They did they were uncomfortable the entire time and complained...

When my relative's child had a birthday party, we did attend (I asked for advice on that, too) because the party was meant to celebrate the child and not the parent's deviancy.

I do understand that there are different ways to interpret this...some people would say they'd cut off the relative to avoid the hassle of the pronouns issue, they wouldn't have attended the child's party because the child came about the world not in a "normal" way, etc. Unless she did something absolutely reprehensible to me, I don't see the need to go that far. I don't see myself getting super chummy with her, because we never had that kind of relationship, but it would be good to have family ties.

[mia.s]

I hope others weigh in on this topic. I have a somewhat similar problem.

Do you also have a family member in the same scenario?

[Riverboat]

Do you also have a family member in the same scenario?

Not quite that drastic. A few months ago, my two boys ganged up on me with a group phone to denounce something I had posted on FB. It was shortly after the election, and I was having fun at Kamala's expense, as usual:

I’ll say the same thing I said four years ago. I’ll never apologize for being grateful that Nurse Wretched and Que Mala were ignominiously defeated. I was more ambivalent about Trump four years ago, but at least he knows where the border is.

The one who has my grandkids doesn't want me to post "hate speech." By that, he means anything that promotes colonialism, the patriarchy, and homophobia/anti-tranny stuff. Otherwise, I'm not allowed to post pictures of the grandchildren on my profile. To top it off, he angrily claimed that he was - well, I can't remember the term. Bisexual, probably. I know good and well it's just a pose. It's the cool thing to be, even if you're not.

He gave me a deadline to remove my "hate" posts, which I ignored. I conveyed the idea that disagreement is not hate, and I'm not changing to suit any man, except the One who died on the cross.

My wife had a chat with him days later to remind him this is way I am, and that's that. Things have returned to normal since then. Meanwhile, I blocked him and the other boy from my profile. It's not like they even use it. All the "cool" kids left FB to the geezers and migrated to Instagram. Frankly, I'm surprised he even saw anything of mine. On the plus side, my oldest still thinks of herself as "Daddy's Girl." If she heard anything about this contretemps, she probably rolled her eyes.

I'll say this much in his favor. He never so much as hinted he wouldn't allow me to see the grandkids. Otherwise, it's the ages-old lament: They don't always turn out the way you raised 'em.

[mia.s]

I'm an elder Millennial, but the whole hate speech thing boggles my mind. I always thought it was "x group should die in a fire" that constituted hate speech, not expressing individual views. In today's world, now it's facts that are considered hate speech, such as "men are physically stronger than women." Wish I could laugh about that, as it was possible to do so 20 years ago, but now not so much.

[Peetem]

We have six. When our oldest child had the MMR vaccine there was an immediate change in his behavior. He became hypersensitive so loud noises and later started tippy-toe walking - for years. There were other things, but those stand out. As he grew older, he was obviously "different" from other kids. He always felt like he was being singled out/picked on (he wasn't - it was just normal boys ribbing boys) and couldn't handle the least bit of criticism. He would talk to me about SSA. We even spoke with two priests (very orthodox) about how to have discussions with him to try and help him through his internal challenges.

Late in college he "came out" as gay. No shock to any of us. We loved and still love him. But at the time, I told my wife he will split the family if we're not careful. Well six years later my older three no longer practice their faith. The oldest son goes to a socially very liberal, but more otherwise orthodox High-Church Anglican type of Church ("priest" is a woman, who actually seems pretty orthodox). He's the choir director and the music is excellent. At least he's practicing something. But our oldest daughter, who was got brain-washed in college, doesn't practice anything and moved in with her boyfriend. Our next son doesn't practice anything because he now disagrees with the Church's teaching on sexual morality because of his brother. Our 4th child goes to mass with us and sometimes at college. Our 5th asked why her oldest brother can't "marry" his partner. When we explained why, she said she disagrees with the Church's teaching.

The day is going to come when my son wants to "marry" his partner and the wife and I won't go to the ceremony. That will be the final split of our family. But as I told the wife ("he will split the family") is happening as I, sadly, predicted.

I say all of this because I think all the confusion around gender and sexuality are the devil's last stand. All these new damnable ways of thinking are guised as "love is love" nonsense and who the heck can argue with feelings?! And while the wife and I have always held firm and been unrelenting in teaching the faith to our children, 12 years are absolutely horrible Catechesis helped get us where we are today. No matter how hard we tried at home to teach them, there was always some idiot CCD teacher who caused confusion. So yeah, I kinda blame the Church for this mess too. The devil attacker Her and ruined Her reputation because of a few terrible priests (most are so good too, kills me for them!) and allowed years of "spirit of Vatican II" to liberalize everything. The trend is reversing, but there's a very lost couple of generations in between.

But I have come to forgive myself as I was obviously not the parent I should have been preparing my children to fight the world. I will answer for that and am fearful for my judgement. But it's also true, not matter how you raise a child, they turn into their own kind of adult.

[Highlander]

A theory and an observation.

If one recollects the various strange behaviors of adolescents over history, the recent explosion of sex and gender issues may make sense. In particular, when hormones flood a child and the child transitions to a different creature -- an adult -- that person's identity changes in a confusing, fundamental way. Most notably for young females. Who crave attention. The Salem witchcraft hysteria was all about teenage girls. Remember when bulimia and anorexia racked young women? Pretty much gone now. But there was a lot of damage. Fluctuating sexual identity and practice seems to be the latest craze.

Add to that the pernicious influence of the universities women's studies mob which encourages lesbian sexual experimentation and denigrates heterosexual relationships -- like marriage.

There is indeed a core, a small core, of homosexual people and a very small number of genetic mutations affecting sexual identity, but, IMO, the bulk of recent sexual identity issues is a passing fad. The problem with the fad is the damage done when adults decide that the child needs to be physically altered to match the identity of the moment.

We have neighbors who are gay. Good guys, good neighbors, solid citizens, unfortunately Californian immigrants. And we have the Arizonan immigrants with the daughter, with hair of many colors, who was lesbian, then trans, and lesbian again. Her Mom drives the Pride Van, festooned with rainbow images and their house flies the requisite flags. The sport "We are Proud" stickers on various things. The daughter literally prances up and down the street, waving at all. Seems to me to be extreme attention seeking ... by the whole family.