By Alexandra Berrocal

According to AP News, on Monday the Vatican blasted gender-affirming surgeries as against the will of G-d. They are now on par with abortion and physican-assisted suicide in Catholic doctrine. This is a mistake. The document recently released by the Church says that biological sex cannot change, that G-d made the sexes different, and that people shouldn’t tinker with it or play G-d. According to AP, what Pope Francis said is that gender-affirming surgeries threaten the unique dignity of a human being. He distinguishes between gender affirming surgeries and “abnormalities” present at birth or which become present later, which the Church supports medical intervention for.

Well, if gender affirming surgeries are an affront to human dignity, is dying not an affront to that dignity? According to Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, the suicide rate among trans people is 32% to 50% across the world. Trans people experience bullying, violence, discrimination, being rejected by their kin and friends, harassment from the police and the public, and ill treatment in the health care system. Those are just a few of the problems that trans people face. Rejection of gender affirming care doesn’t help.

The conservative Catholic church has attempted to be more inclusive of the LGBTQ community in recent years. The conservative church now blesses same-sex couples, or so I hear. This is a step in the right direction. However, this step by the church feels like an attempt by the church to have its cake and eat it too. Some churches are more welcoming than others. This opinion doesn’t represent the more welcoming churches out there. The conservative church wants trans people in their congregations, but at the same time they don’t want them to authentically exist as members of the gender of their heart. You can’t have it both ways. Either you reject trans people, or you accept them for who they are; there really is no middle ground. Expecting them to live and function as members of their birth gender in the church, while tooting your own horn at how accepting you are of trans people, is sickening. It is bigotry, while pretending it is the opposite. Catholicism has to oppose this sort of spirit. It corrodes the dignity of a person, and it corrodes the dignity of the church. The Vatican has to be better than this. The document at least focuses on human dignity. The section on trans people just takes a tragic step backwards.

Alexandra Berrocal is an asexual Lumberjack reporter that attends Cal Poly Humboldt. She is a Unitarian Universalist. They attend the Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship semi-regularly and take inspiration from Buddhism in their religious practice.