Jersey Girl wrote:For anyone: What would be the church's position in the case of infants born with ambiguous gentalia?
Someone, I think my brother, told me of a member he'd either met, or heard about (this story has degenerated in my mind to about the status of "urban legend" by now), who was born with ambiguous genitalia and was raised as a boy by his parents, received the Aaronic priesthood, and then later in his teens decided that he'd rather live as a female and made the transition.
This is part of the problem with LDS theology. LDS theology posits absolutely that there are only two kinds of spirits, male and female, and that each person is either one or the other, period. There's no room in LDS theology for any ambiguity in the matter. But real biology is different. While it's true that the vast majority of us are either male or female, and that the males are overwhelmingly XY and the females are overwhelmingly XX, there are cases where XY individuals have developed as biological females, with boobs, vaginas, clitoris, labia, etc. And there are XX individuals who developed with nuts and a package. I read of an XY person who was somehow resistant to, or allergic to, testosterone who developed physically as a female and only discovered this after she and her husband were tested after having fertility problems.
And there are people who have XXY chromosomes even. That's truly ambiguous. What kind of spirit inhabits an XXY body? Is it a female spirit? Is it a male spirit? How would the LDS church know whether to ordain that person to the Priesthood or not? What would happen if they ordained that person, but in fact the spirit was female? Would it "work"? If baptisms were performed by that female spirit trapped in a genetically ambiguous body, would they be valid? And if so, why not just ordain all women then, if there's no problem with the ordinances being valid?
If an LDS couple were to discover, after 10 years of happy and consummated, but childless marriage, that both the husband and the wife were XY, and that the wife was one of these folks who developed female sex characteristics for hormonal reasons in the womb, would they have to separate? Would their relationship be homosexual, an abomination in God's sight? Would that XY body be inhabited by a female spirit, or a male spirit? Would it be a "man trapped in a woman's body"? What if the couple divorced, and the XY "female" decided to live as a male from now on? Would he have the right, based on his XY chromosomes, to receive the priesthood?
In reality, there is no such thing as a male spirit, or a female spirit. There are only human beings, who
usually are differentiated physically by sex on account of hormonal differences during development which are influenced by the X and Y chromosomes. And sometimes, when things don't go strictly by the plan, as it were, you have a human being who is neither strictly male, nor strictly female. It's real.
This kind of thing is, in my opinion, another subtle reminder of the manmade nature of the LDS theology and religion. It was formulated when only clear-cut man/woman roles and physical bodies were contemplated. It was formulated based on what Joseph Smith and his successors knew. Now we know a lot more, and we realize that the theology that seems so comprehensive and clear as a bell to the true believers is totally inadequate to include, and account for, the rare cases that in fact occur in nature.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen