Normal versus Natural

Many people confuse these words.  Normality is a human construct based on perceived desirable traits as present in the greatest number of people. 

Natural is very different.  There are natural variations in all species, some rarer than others, and not all traits are deemed as positive or even desirable.

"God doesn't make mistakes."

I keep seeing this as a reason to deny differently gendered people their full rights to live and love along with the rest of us.   It is particularly applied to the transgendered because those who maintain God's infallibility can not accept that a person's perception of gender can be different from that person's apparent biology.  The latest statistics puts those who identify as LGBT at around 4.6% in the United States. 

By comparison those who are right brain dominant (ie, left-handed) are 15% while those with red hair are only 2%.  Both of these latter groups suffered discrimination -- often brutally applied -- in the past.

So why do conservative Christians consider all those born with different sexual orientations as being unnatural rather than merely different in the same way as  right brain dominance and red hair?  There are many sexual variants to be found throughout the animal kingdom.  One large-brained mammal known to engage in all manner of sexual activities, including with the same gender, is the dolphin.  For dolphins homosexual expression is a completely natural behavior that does not endanger their overall population.

Why do conservatives single-out LGBT as being "unnatural," but NOT a mistake of the Almighty?

God's faithful followers are a fickle lot.  When things are going well they praise God, but when things are going badly they suddenly turn pagan and blame Mother Nature. But whether you put God or Gaia in control, mistakes happen all the time.  

Switching gears here, let's examine some of God's mistakes afflicting the most helpless in His creation.  My late father was an OBGYN who specialized in high risk pregnancies.  After he retired from practicing medicine he worked as an expert witness in malpractice trials. We sometimes discussed his cases in which the bad outcomes were truly horrific, what Dad termed GORKY babies -- the acronym for God Only Really Knows Why.

So for those of you who believe that "God doesn't make mistakes" -- have a look at what He has been inflicted on fetuses.  Be certain that you look at the pictures carefully because I promise you that the parents involved has seen far worse. 

Neural Tube Defects  (NTDs) are amongst the most common of serious birth defects with anencephaly as the worst of the NTDs.  Most of these babies -- if they make it to birth -- are usually stillborn or die within a few hours to a few days.  A very few survive past that, but can never achieve any semblance of life.  Without a brain they can not feel emotions nor can they feel pain. Their senses have no place to send impressions of the world around them -- thus they do not see or hear.  They do not speak.  They do not think.  If that is life, then that all it is.  The child is merely alive, but can not actually live.

Cyclopia  is exactly as the name implies -- a baby with a single eye, ears usually below the jaw and a proboscis, being a phallic shaped protuberance where the nose should be.  Any pictures you see of such a baby will be postmortem.  This defect is incompatible with life. Nothing more than a waste of the conception which so many deem sacred. 

Parasitic Twin and Fetus en Foetu  Identical twins are rare, conjoined twins rarer still, so the rarest is a mistake that allows one twin to develop normally while the other does not develop much at all.   In a parasitic twin the underdeveloped twin is attached to the exterior of its healthy mate.  In fetus in foetu, the parasite remains inside its host, growing inside the abdomen, the chest or even the brain.

Only one baby has a chance at life.  The parasite does not and may even kill the developed child by straining the system meant to support one life by forcing it to support the extra body mass of the undeveloped parasite.  

There are many more birth defects -- far more than I wish to enumerate here.  Some can be attributed to the mistakes of man -- the use of teratogenic chemicals in the environment, during war, or in medicines (such as thalidomide) given to or substances taken by pregnant women.  Others are simply accidents of nature -- or mistakes of God, if you prefer placing a divine role in everything. 

Science has advanced sufficiently to find that those who express a different gender realize it at a very young age, even if the children do not as yet understand what it means.  That alone removes the aspect of choice that the homophobic opposition stresses must be a factor in those who identify as LGBT.   Science has yet to prove how gender orientation is determined, but rather than make the blind claim that "God doesn't make mistakes" I think we should accept the LGBT as facts of nature -- right along with red hair and left- handedness.