June 2005 – Page 4

Intersexed Marriages

A reader writes:

I have an odd question for you, raised by a friend of mine. Some children ARE born "trans-gendered".

She writes:

Intersex = overarching term for anyone born with a physical form not clearly "male" or "female" by current definitions of the terms. Can cover everyone from those born with[out the usual parts men and women normally come with], through XY females and XX males (those born appearing female or male but with a chromosomal sex at odds with their physical form).

Can they marry? Does this come down to possiblity to bear children, in that if it’s not possible, a marriage cannot take place? Can an XY female marry an XY male? Or an XX Male and XX female?

I’m really confused on how to approach this issue.

You’re not alone in being unsure how to approch this issue. At present, the Church also seems to be. There are no authoritative statements from the Magisterium on the subject (to my knowledge), which means that the subject is in play for moral theologians to discuss. Eventually a consensus is likely to develop among moral theologians and, after that or in conjunction with that, a magisterial intervention may occur that creates an official position.

Till then, we just have to do the best we can figuring these things out. So let’s start with what seems certain and work our way out from that.

One thing that is certain (since you asked about marriage) is that a man can only marry a woman and visa versa.

It is also generally held as a certainty that all individuals are really either male or female. Sex in humans is binary. There are no alternatives or gradations in it. We may, in some cases, have a hard time determining which sex a person is, but ultimately they are one or the other.

But suppose, for a moment, that this were not the case. Suppose that, at some point in the distant future, the Church concluded that there are individuals who are not men or women but who have a defective gender. In such an eventuality, it would seem that those individuals simply would not be capable of marriage. Their situation would be analogous to individuals today who are incapable of marriage because they cannot perform the marital act (i.e., they are totally and incurably impotent). The situation of such individuals would be tragic–as is the case of individuals today who are incapable of contracting marriage–but that would seem to be the case for such individuals.

Now let’s suppose that the hypothesis on which that scenario is built is false–that all humans really are either male or female, as is generally assumed. In this case the trick would seem to be figuring out which gender a person is in an ambiguous case and then, to the extent medical science would allow, using corrective methods (e.g., surgery) to enable them to live and function as much as possible as what their gender is.

In determining what sex a person is, there seem to be two kinds of clues available to examine: anatomy and genetics. Unfortunately, at present neither of these can be turned to as an infallible guide.

In the case of anatomy, some individuals are born without sexual anatomy (or without a complete set of sexual anatomy). Others are born with a surplus of it (and a mixed surplus at that).

In the case of genetics, some individuals are missing a sex chromosome (e.g., they are born with just a single X chromosome; I don’t know if any are born with just a Y chromosome) or they are born with too many sex chromosomes (e.g., they have XXX, XXY, XYY, XXYY, or some other pattern).

Sometimes also anatomy fails to match genetics, as in the case of an "XX male" or an "XY female."

At this point moral theologians have not yet figured out how to resolve these ambiguous cases. The correct strategy is debatable and may depend on the facts of a specific case. Here are some of the options:

If the individual appears to have functional anatomy, go with the anatomy rather than the genetics. In other words, treat XX males as males and XY females as females.
If an individual lacks functional anatomy, go with genetics and use reconstructive surgery to help the person out. I.e., if someone is genetically male then help him surgically to have the appropriate anatomy. If someone is genetically female then help her surgically to hav the appropriate anatomy.
If an individual has two sets of anatomy (whole or partial) then go with genetics and use surgery to correct the anatomical situation.
If someone has a defective chromosome pattern (X, Y, XXX, XXY, XYY, etc.) then treat the person as whatever their anatomy would indicate.
Treat genetics as the ultimate determiner of sex. In the case of an XX male, use surgery to supply female anatomy. In the case of an XY female, do the same to supply male anatomy. In the case of a defective chromosome pattern, use the presence of a Y chromosome as a determiner of maleness, so X and XXX and XXXX individuals are female and Y, XXY, and XYY individuals are male. Use surgery to correct any problems that exist.

As you can see, these alternatives are not all exclusive of the others, though some are (e.g., 4 and 5 are directly in opposition).

I am a bit doubtful that the Magisterium would ever sign off on option #5. One reason is that it is radically different than the ways of handling these situations that Catholic health care providers and moralists have had up to now when helping children with ambiguous sex. Similarly, we’ve been living since the beginning of the human race (or almost the beginning, anyway) with folks who have one outward sex even though a genetic test would raise questions about it. It seems asking an awful lot to mandate that a XY females or XX males undergo surgery to switch their outward sex. This is a burden that they’ve never been asked to undertake before (though, of course, one may point out that we’ve never had genetic tests before).

I suspect that a patchwork of options, like the ones mentioned above, are likely to emerge in practice and in discussions among moral theologians. I suspect that the Magisterium will initially be hesitant to sign off on any of them.

Ultimately, it may conclude (I didn’t say will conclude) that neither anatomy or genetics (nor hormones, to mention something we haven’t touched on here but which play an important role in embryonic sex development) are alone fully determinative indicators of sex and that in hard cases whether one is male or female must be determined by looking algorithmically at a combination of these factors, as above.

Once the issue of what sex a person is has been sorted out–however it gets sorted out–it is then possible for that person to marry a person of the opposite gender, assuming that he or she is otherwise capable of contracting marriage.

The key here (given the concerns you raised above) is not whether the person is capable of fathering or bearing children. Fertility has never been a condition for validly contracting matrimony. What has and is a condition of that is the ability to perform the marital act. As noted, individuals who are perpetually and incurably impotent cannot contract marriage because they cannot truthfully promise to render the marriage debt (i.e.,sex) since they are incapable of rendering it.

If, however, through surgery or other medical means, they have been made capable of performing their marital duty (whatever their anatomical configuration was earlier in their life) then they are capable of marrying a person of the opposite gender.

MORE INFO ON INTERSEXED INDIVIDUALS HERE.

Freakonomics

Welcome to Freakonomics week here on the blog. This last weekend I read the book pictured to the left and decided that I had enough to say about it to do a theme week (one post per day) on the subject.

First, let’s start with a general book review.

In case you may not be aware of it, Freakonomics is one of the breakout books this year. It has done extraordinarily well (especially for a book about economics). People are talking about it, arguing about it, citing it in editorials, etc., etc.

Having read it, it’s easy to see why. First, unlike the vast majority of economics books, it’s very easy to read. Even easier than some of Thomas Sowell’s economics books, and his are among the easiest there are.

You don’t have to get braced up for lots of technical gunk with this book. It’s written in clear, easy-to-understand English.

What’s more, it’s interesting. The authors aren’t trying to get across a lot of stuff about how the American economy or the global economy works. They aren’t predicing bear markets or bull markets, recessions or booms.

Instead, they are doing something an increasing number of economists are doing: Taking the principles and ideas normally used in economics and applying them to areas of life not traditionally considered economic in nature. Hence the "freak" part of the title. With chapter titles like "What Do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?" and "How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?" and "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?", you know that you’re not in for a typical, dry economics tome.

(Answers: School teachers and sumo wrestlers both fake results for reasons of self-interest; the KKK and real-estate agents both conceal certain kinds of information and lose their power when that knowledge is publicly exposed; most drug dealers pull in so little money that they are making less than minimum wage.)

The book is also iconoclastic. In applying economics principles to unusual areas, by asking unusual questions and then seeing what the available data has to say about them, the authors (or more specifically, the lead author) comes to conclusions that frequently (though not always) fly in the face of conventional wisdom. That helps make the book interesting, too. If it was just a work documenting all the cases in which the conventional wisdom is right, it’d be a lot less interesting.

For example: Did you know that it’s one hundred time more dangerous for small children to be in a typical house where there is a swimming pool than in a typical house where there are firearms?

Just one of the many cool tidbits that you’ll pick up by reading this book.

Now: There are things about the book that I don’t like. F’rinstance: I don’t like the way the lead author is treated. Steven D. Levitt is a noted young economist who has been the subject of various press articles by individuals such as co-author Stephen J. Dubner. Levitt was initially approached by a publisher about writing a book but wasn’t interested in doing it himself, so he teamed up with Dubner. As far as I can tell, all the economic ideas in the book are Levitt’s, while all the writing on the book was done by Dubner (no doubt with Levitt editing).

Here’s the problem: The book regularly quotes from a New York Times Magazine profile of Levitt that is basically a puff piece. It portrays Levitt as the coolest thing since sliced bread and as some kind of freaky economic supergenius who gets it right where all the other economists get it wrong. In fact, in one excerpt the piece compares Levitt to the guy who comes across numerous highly intelligent people futzing with a complex machine that they can’t get to work, only to notice that they haven’t plugged it in.

While it may be within the purview of the NYTM to publish such heroic puff pieces, it’s another thing entirely to quote such embarrassingly excessive passages in one of your own books. I expect to find deleriously positive ravings about an author placed by a publisher’s marketing department on the back of a book, but I don’t expect to find such statements placed in the text of the book by the author himself–or (more likely in this case) allowed by the author to be placed in there by his co-author.

It offends my sense of modesty and decorum.

It also seems to me to be massively imprudent. Writing a best-selling book that trounces what your colleagues in the field are doing is offense enough. To add to that offense such ego-displaying passages is bound to attract the attention and annoyance of one’s colleagues and generate a reputation for one as being a prima donna.

In fact, the authors cite in the book the example of one economist who went online and, pretending to be one of his own students, wrote glowingly about how great he was as a professor. When the ruse was found out, the professor became the object of professional and non-professional scorn.

Something similar is likely to happen in this case. Levitt may not be putting words in the mouth of an imaginary student about how great he is, but he’s immodestly allowing his co-author to reprint them inside a book that carries his name, and that’s just vanity in the extreme. Colleagues will not approve.

It’s also just the kind of thing that would lead colleagues to go over the reasoning in the book with a fine-toothed comb and find fault with it.

A lot of the stuff in Freakonomics is highly new and experimental and at least some of it is (here’s the important part) Not Likely To Hold Up After Further Study. Going back to the data, getting better data, and doing finer-grained analyses are likely to overturn at least some of the ideas advanced in the book, and when that happens, Levitt will look like a young whipper-snapper who self-importantly thought that he could tell everyone in the profession what to do and who crypto-(i.e., through his co-author) boasted in his own book about what a genius he was.

If I had no other impression to go on besides what comes through in such passages of the book (as, indeed, I do not), I’d have to conclude that Steven Levitt is an arrogant young would-be know-it-all and a Big Jerk who’s going to get his comeuppance one of these days.

In real life, Levitt may not be like that at all, but he’s likely to have a significant price to pay from the impression created among his colleagues once the backlash starts. Such passages are even annoying to non-economist readers who, after all, picked up the book to read about interesting economic ideas, not what an economic "superstar" Levitt wants to be portrayed as.

Now, I wouldn’t want the existence of such passages to put you off reading Freakonomics. They’re a relatively minor thing in the book. Most of it is devoted to the "freakonomic" ideas and not to portraying Levitt as a superstar. It’s easy enough to skip a paragraph or flip a page when the latter happens.

The economic ideas in the book are interesting–interesting enough that I’d devote a theme week to them–and involve very well-told tales.

So I’d encourage you to

GET THE BOOK.

Postscript: There’s a bit of offensive language in the
book when Klansmen and drug dealers are being quoted, so fair warning.

One other postscript: You may have noticed that I got all the way through the above review without even mentioning the most controversial claim of the book–that abortion is a major factor reducing the crime rate in recent years.

We’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Big Doings At SCOTUS Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the last day of the Supreme Court’s current term, and there are expected to be some decisions on big, controversial cases. (That’s not unusual. The Court often leaves big, controversial cases to the end.)

We also might get a number of resignations tomorrow, but my guess is that whatever we’re likely to get will come the next day or later in the week. (Think about it: If you were a Supreme Court justice would you want ot announce your resignation on a day when you were handing down controversial decision and had all kinds of protesters at the Court building ready to cheer or scream at the news of your resignation and do either or both in front of waiting cameras so the media can hype it?)

So here’s a preview of what’s likely to come down tomorrow (unless, for some reason the justices hold a case over until the next term–e.g., for re-argument):

Justices have a few cases left to resolve, including two of the most-watched of the term: the Ten Commandments appeals from Texas and Kentucky and a case that will determine the liability of Internet file-sharing services for clients’ illegal swapping of songs and movies.

Also Monday, justices are expected to announce whether they will hear appeals from two journalists who may face jail time for refusing to reveal sources in the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s identity.

Rulings are also awaited in a Tennessee death penalty case, an appeal that will decide police departments’ liability for not enforcing restraining orders, and a challenge to the tight control cable companies hold over high-speed Internet service.

GET THE STORY.

"I Am A Jelly Donut"?

Also today, June 26, but in 1963–mere months before he was shot dead in Dallas–President John F. Kennedy uttere the famous words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

By this he meant "I am a Berliner," and he said it as an expression of solidarity with the people of West Berlin, who were under dire threat from the Communist puppet state of East Germany and its Soviet masters.

The Berliners loved it. Wild cheers all round.

Now: Turns out that many folks today argue that Kennedy didn’t really say "I am a Berliner" in German. They claim that, instead, what he actually said was more like "I am a jelly donut." It wasn’t that he didn’t say the words "Ich bin ein Berliner" correctly. He said them right (albeit with his thick Boston accent). It’s that the words themselves are wrong.

According to this claim, in German the word "Berliner" is a reference to a kind of jelly donut. And it is. But not so much in Berlin, where Kennedy was speaking.

The "I am a jelly donut" thesis is reportedly an urban legend that started in the 1980s.

Not convinced? Well . . .

HERE’S AN ARTICLE FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION.

“I Am A Jelly Donut”?

Also today, June 26, but in 1963–mere months before he was shot dead in Dallas–President John F. Kennedy uttere the famous words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

The Berliners loved it. Wild cheers all round.

According to this claim, in German the word "Berliner" is a reference to a kind of jelly donut. And it is. But not so much in Berlin, where Kennedy was speaking.

The "I am a jelly donut" thesis is reportedly an urban legend that started in the 1980s.

Not convinced? Well . . .

HERE’S AN ARTICLE FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION.

And Then There Were Three

Today, June 26, in 1409 the Western Schism got 100% worse.

The reason? The Church now had 300% of the requisitie number of popes.

Now, in truth, it only had one real pope–ever. But there were at this time two additional "popes," or antipopes as they would be properly called, also running (or strolling or sitting) around Europe causing havoc.

On June 26, 1409 the second antipope, Alexander V, was "elected" by the Council of Pisa. (Not an ecumenical council.)

He wouldn’t last long.

Ten months later, he’d be dead, though he did have a successor.

Ultimately the Western Schism was sorted out in 1417, when the Council of Constance deposed the two antipopes, accepted the resignation of the true pope, and elected a new true pope, the way for one thus being cleared. The result being Pope Martin V.

Though the Western Schism was over, the damage it did to the fabric of Western Christendom was horrendous. The experience of having two–and then three–popes vying for power left severe questions in the minds of many folks, and the perception of the Church was gravely weakened.

This is thought by many historians to have been one of the reasons leading to the Protestant Reformation.

I’d love to give you a link where you could spit on the grave of Alexander V, but I don’t have one, so you’ll have to settle for

LEARNING MORE ABOUT HIM.

AND ABOUT THE SCHISM ITSELF.

The Big Little Man

Today, June 25, in 1875, they fit the battle of Little Big Horn, resuting in the death of one of the biggest little men of the 19th century.

Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer made his last stand against the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Sitting Bull didn’t do a lot of sitting that day, though, and Crazy Horse didn’t prove too crazy, for Custer was shuffled off this mortal coil in a battle that lasted about two hours.

Vain and ambitious in life, Custer found the fame he was looking for in death.

So at least he got something out of the battle.

Saddam Hussein: Novelist?

It appears that Saddam Hussein (pictured left doing his Kevin McCarthy impression) may not only be guilty of crimes against humanity but also of crimes against the humanities!

Turns out he’s a novelist.

He’s already inflicted three novels on the world (published anonymously):

"Zabibah and the King" tells a story of a leader who sacrifices a luxurious life for the sake of his people.

"The Fortified Citadel" described the rise to power of Saddam’s Baath Party.

"Men and a City" is widely viewed as a thinly veiled autobiography, presenting him as powerful and heroic.

Now he has a new novel scheduled to come out. Unsurprisingly, it’s a religiously inflammatory geopolitical allegory:

"Get Out, Damned One" tells the story of a man called Ezekiel who
plots to overthrow a town’s sheik but is defeated in his quest by the
sheik’s daughter and an Arab warrior.

The story is apparently a metaphor for a Zionist-Christian plot
against Arabs and Muslims. Ezekiel is meant to symbolize the Jews.

Interestingly . . .

"Get Out, Damned One" describes an Arab leading an army that invades the land of the enemy and topples one of their monumental towers, an apparent reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York by Islamic militants of
Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

Ezekiel [a Jewish symbol] is portrayed as greedy, ambitious and destructive. Youssef, who symbolizes the Christians, is portrayed as generous and tolerant — at least in the early passages.

GET THE "STORY."

Of Course, This Is Totally Unscientific, But . . .

. . . I scored well on an unscientific IQ test.

Your IQ Is 140

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius
Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius
Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius
Your General Knowledge is Genius

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

The questions involved more reasoning than I thought they would. It ain’t just a joke (as I thought it might be). Still not the real thing, though.

Curing Same-Sex Attractions

A reader writes:

Any ideas on what Christian homosexuals should do if they no longer want to be homosexual and would like to have children with a woman? In other words, what could one do to change their sexual preference?

I’m afraid that I don’t have a lot of knowledge in this area, but we’ve had Dr. Joseph Nicolosi–a counselor who specializes in this area–on Catholic Answers Live before (LISTEN, DOWNLOAD).

I believe that Nicolosi is based in the L.A. area. If you live there you might be able to see him for help. Otherwise, you might be able to get a referral to someone in your area who could help.

Nicolosi is also head of a group called NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality). Their website IS HERE.

There’s also a support group that I can recommend. It’s called Courage, and its website IS HERE.

Both the NARTH website and the Courage web site should contain links to additional resources, book recommendations, etc., as well as ways to contact folks dealing with the same issue.

I also have an additional piece of advice: It has long been my conviction that people should not define themselves by their sins or temptations. Thus I do not encourage people to identify themselves by saying "I am a homosexual" or "I am an alcoholic" or "I am an overeater" or "I am an anything else." People are people. They may have different temptations and different histories, but if they define themselves by the temptations they have or the mistakes they’ve made in the past, it will make it all the harder to deal with those temptations or overcome their past.

Everyone–regardless of their temptations or their backgrounds–is a person with dignity whom God loves and for whom Christ died and who, if he is a Christian, is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Thus I would advise you not to think of yourself as a homosexual. You’re a person dear to God’s heart who happens to have same sex attractions to deal with, just as everyone has some kind of temptation to deal with. If you make the shift to thinking of yourself as a person who has an issue to overcome rather than as "a homosexual" then it will make it that much easier to overcome the problem.

Hope this helps, and God bless!