Letter to Father Kurylowicz

The following is a letter from Bhakti Ananda Goswami, OII's Spokesman on Disability and Tolerance, to Father Kurylowicz

Dear Father Kurylowicz,

Human rights will be denied on the basis of aquired religious prejudice, innate fears and sexual aversions and/or superstitions etc., as long as the focus of debate remains fixed upon how a person responds to sex signaling, (including sexual orientation), as opposed to focusing on WHO A PERSON IS, all by themself, with appreciation of their own unique dignity and worth as a human being, even sans any sexual attractions, repulsions, sexual relationships or lack thereof.

Our problem with the Church is one example. I am 60 years old, and a long-time chaste and celibate Catholic hermit (under private vows), who has no desire for sex with anyone. I am not 'oriented' for sex toward anyone, but I DO HAVE A STRONG MALE GENDER IDENTITY. This gender identity is about WHO I AM, or at least WHO and HOW I percieve myself to be, and feel within my inmost being...which may or may not include how I spontaneously relate to my GOD, myself, Other Beings, my own body and the world.

However despite whatever devotion and aptitude for the consecrated religious life of service that I might have, because my body is INTERSEXED, I cannot be accepted by any Catholic order, male or female. This is because the Church's presently mal-educated simplistic binary-sex focus is on speculation about what my sexual orientation might be, rather than on WHO I AM actually as an unique person, loved by GOD.

In the ancient Church obviously intersex children, who were usually abandoned at birth, were often raised by religious orders, and became religious celibates. This religious devotion of intersex children has been true in many cultures, with intersex persons becoming healers, shamans, priests and priestesses or nuns etc.

But now, because of the tragic homosexual pedophilia abuses in the Church, homophobia is dominating the pastoral and medical ethics focus of the Church, and so it has changed everything. There is no longer any place for a person like me in any religious order, and in fact as an intersex person, I am treated as an unmentionable. In today's Catholic Church the existence of a person like myself is treated like a scandal, because the mal-educated and still superstitious members of the Magisterium are acting like atypical humans are some kind of demon spawn.

Intersex and transgendered persons, and even 'masculine' women and 'effeminate' men, all suspected of homosexual orientation, have been denied entrance into the religious life, or even cruelly cast-out of their orders or priesthood due to this homophobia. In each case the precious PERSON was not considered, because their individuality was not the focus. instead their imagined sexual object-orientation was the controlling interest of their character Judges in the Church.

Putting an idolatrous fixation with genes or perfect genital anatomy, or suspicions about a person's sexual 'orientation' before consideration of their actual spiritual gifts and character is impersonal. Such impersonalism is the very antithesis of the profound personalism Jesus Christ's Love demands of us !

After repeated encounters with such soul-killing impersonalism ( committed In The Name of Jesus Christ!), I gave up finding any religious order that would take me decades ago, and took private vows.

As a researchist, I later tried to provide information on intersex in vertebral species, and atypical sex differentiation in humans, to the largest Catholic medical ethics organization in the USA. Seeking to foster some Catholic bio-ethics contact with intersex human rights activists in the USA, I put one of the Catholic bio-ethics organizations in contact with a physician leader of the ISNA. I then ran up against two immovable objections. One was an apparent Magisterium taboo against discussing the rather common reality of intersex humans at all, and the other was strangely that the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) was dominated by some kind of seeming pathological feminist agenda driving its so-called advocacy for intersex people.

I learned that the ISNA ultimately was using intersex people in the service of their own feminist careers and medical politics. The feminist physician leader of the ISNA purposely sabotaged my efforts with the Catholic medical ethics organization, so that was the end of it. No rational communication on these issues can move forward when the dialogue is either prevented or hijacked by people with selfish radical, fear-mongering and hate-filled agendas.

Since then, the Church seems to have continued to ignore the common, pervasive and non-pathological reality of intersex in countless species. Intersex is a positive part of creation, providing many important functions within species, between species and in balancing entire ecosystems. The base line of intersex in many species is usually stabile until there is some degradation of habitat or other threat, at which time intersex may increase as a natural population control.

However the Magisterium is now identifying feminizing intersex as a global threat, related to environmental estrogens. Previously a rise in intersex, transgendered people or feminine males has even been blamed as the cause of the collapse of civilizations. Fundamentalists today even say this. But the fact is that there is an increase in atypical people in response to the collapse of civilizations! Degradation of the environment with all of its related biological stresses will cause a rise from the normal base line population of atypically sex-differentiated persons.

To demonize a whole class of people who are part of God's (or Nature's) answer to the problem, NOT ITS CAUSE, is profoundly backward. It is a continuation of the superstitious thought process that identifies atypical humans with being acursed or somehow the creation of the devil, not GOD. Primative societies that murder their atypical offspring out of fear and loathing suffer from the same kind of ignorance.

Education is absolutely the key to change. People of humility and goodwill CAN LEARN and DO CHANGE, when presented with the information that they need to realize something that they did not grasp before.

Humans do not come in only two models. Childhood play preferences and adult responses to sex signaling (our 'sexual orientation' is about these innate responses), are just as much part of our biological make-up as our genetics, bio-chemistry and gross anatomy. But somewhere in all of our subtle and gross physicality, is our precious PERSONHOOD. For most people (but not all) this includes an immutable sense of self, that is for many inseparable from their gender identity.

As long as the Church or any religious or governmental etc. institution having social power over people, denies their very right to their own PERSONHOOD (male, female, or intersex), including their gender identity (or absense thereof), such institution will be guilty of violation of the most essential of all human rights, the right to BE.

Before we act, we are. The Church fearing action (same-sex physical intimacy, and especially pedophilia) now violates the essential right to BE of countless devoted souls, who are innocent of any acts, or even intentions to act, which may violate the traditional Catholic vows of religious life.

When the Leaders of the Church become educated enough to understand the pervasive and positive reality of intersex throughout nature and in humanity, they will have to readjust their entire superstitious and idolatrous view of human sexuality, and start treating people as unique and precious individuals, instead of treating them impersonally as either ideal or defective males and females.

This is a service provided by
Organisation Intersex International