A factually-incorrect rant against trans people is really stretching this answer's relevance to the question. Self-identification is just communicating one's existing identity - why do anti-trans people so consistently misrepresent that? Doubling down on one's misunderstanding sure is easier than actually trying to understand others. You citing "denial of natural law" is pretty ironic, because YOU are the one denying the well-demonstrated natural variation in humans, in favour of trying to forcefully hammer everyone into 2 tiny boxes.

@NotThatGuy you mean the sentence and a half? That isn't objectively a rant. I respect that you disagree with Ken or the source he was quoting, But the comments are not to debate in.

@Wyrsa (1) The linked article is primarily about trans people, making it a questionable reference for an answer to this particular question. (2) The answer might remove most of that context, but still retains the bigoted conclusion (I use "conclusion" lightly, considering that it doesn't in any way follow from what's said before it). (3) That statement is still factually incorrect - crying about someone calling it a "rant" doesn't change that. "comments are not to debate in" - and answers are for answering the question, not for making unrelated bigoted statements.

@NotThatGuy This is a catholic source, and unfortunately the catholic church and most other christian churches oppose your position. You must respect their opinion, even if it is contrary to your opinion. That is how our C.SE site works, we respect each others opinion/belief even if we are all heretics to each other, because the site is about answering the question. You could have phrased the objection politely and I would be totally on your side, the article is only really connected by the words used. Is and Ought.

@Wyrsa "You must respect their opinion" - (1) No, I don't, especially not when their "opinion" involves outright lying to justify oppressing people. (2) If the question were "do trans people deserve basic human rights", and this answer said "no" and cited that article, I'd still have a lot of issues with that, but the answer would at least be an answer to the question. If someone randomly wrote "men are disgusting" in an answer to an unrelated question, I'd similarly object. "You could have phrased the objection politely and I would be totally on your side" - I very, very strongly doubt that.

@Wyrsa "You must respect their opinion" - I wonder if you'd be saying that if a someone says e.g. women or people of some other race shouldn't have rights, according to their interpretation of Christianity. The idea of everyone holding hands and singing kumbaya despite disagreements - that only really works if those disagreements don't include whether some people should be granted rights and basic human decency (and that, unfortunately, is too often the disagreement).

@NotThatGuy Yeah, if you had simply asked "what does the subject of trans pronouns have to do with the David Humes "Is Ought" problem?" I would have upvoted your comment, downvoted the answer, and been right behind you.

@NotThatGuy so now that this a chat, let's debate it.

On this website, people can answer based on research. I could answer a question about the position of calvinism (which i think is a disgusting version of christianity) as long as I cited sources.

I'm definitely not a calvanist.

likewise, I do not believe Ken was a catholic, he just found a random article and wanted to answer? It was probably stupid of him to do so

But the stack exchange is not a place to protest beliefs... I can't get upset about people answering with "heresy" either

as much fun as it would be

I assume, you are affected by this subject... how do you prefer to be addressed?

I have people I am friends in real life affected by this as well. So please understand I'm not unfriendly. :)

But yeah, the chat rooms are different, here we can debate, chat, etc as much as we like.

I dunno if you can chat, it shows you as here... you should be able to I think.

I'll respond in a bit, I just need to do some stuff first.

Cool, :) I'll be here

@Wyrsa "how do you prefer to be addressed" - if you mean pronoun, then he or they is fine. For name, I'll just stick to NotThatGuy. How about you?

"You can totally choose to protest their bigotry, but not on the StackExchange website" - while Christianity SE may have its own rules, SE Inc has infamously gone far beyond what most consider reasonable in punishing mods for even just hinting towards a possibility that they may not be 110% accepting of trans identities.

So I rock the boat with a strong suspicion that the captain will side with me (not that I'd only rock the boat if that's the case), even if they may not go quite as far as they went in the past, and it's unclear to which degree they accept religion as an excuse for bigotry.

If there's any hill I'll happily die on, it's that Christianity SE violates SE's code of conduct with stuff like this (especially when posted or endorsed by mods). According to the code of conduct, which appears on Christianity SE as well, it's considered abusive behaviour to deny a person's expressed gender identity or to display intolerance towards a person or group due to their gender identity or expression.

If nothing else, one shouldn't run into this via HNQ (for that's the only time I end up on this site).

There's probably a line somewhere between summarising a Christian position for information purposes versus prescribing it, but I lean much more towards treating people posting something as them advocating for it.

(When I post an answer summarising a position I disagree with, it's usually for the purposes of critiquing it, or it's included for completeness' sake, and I caveat it appropriately - if e.g., on Workplace, I mention the possibility of quitting to solve some problem, I also mention that this is quite an extreme option and not an option for everyone).

@NotThatGuy Another hill I'll happily die on is defending truth, rationality and humanism. It happens to be the same hill.

I likewise consider meself a Him.

I'm unaware of any mod hinting at such a thing. So that should be okay

I'm shocked that question got into HNQ wow.

I'm unaware of any user (except a troll) who has gotten involved in the identity politics subject in an unrespectful manner. He was promptly banned I believe.

@NotThatGuy this site is very specifically not supposed to be what you described. It would be impossible to not bicker and fight with each other as heretics towards each other, if we were proscribing moral position, religious absolutes, etc.

CSE is a secular source of information that is Christian in nature. (as I've been told repeatedly)

@NotThatGuy I think we agree here.

What would you propose if the subject of homosexuality or the modern trans issue arose? Because the majority of Christian faiths are opposed to it. Is the entire thing impossible to even address?

If someone cited the watchtower about how they oppose it... That's acceptable as research? Or is the whole thing just too explosive at all?

@Wyrsa What's "respectful" is of course subjective, but it's typically not considered respectful by trans-accepting people to suggest it's "utterly absurd" that "a man can self-identify as a woman" (which is clearly intended to refer to trans people, even though it's a misrepresentation of what being trans means ...

... which is another disrespectful aspect, especially when the author considers themselves well-informed enough to publicly share their views on the topic - if they've never spoken to someone who advocates for trans rights, they're irresponsible for writing that article as if they're an authority, whereas if they have spoken to such people, they'd almost certainly know what they're saying is a misrepresentation, yet they say it anyway - they look bad either way).

"this site is very specifically not supposed to be what you described" - it unavoidably is that, by the nature of what Christianity is, and given that many people accept Christianity as true, in whatever form. The question-and-answer-focused format of SE (and its code of conduct on how users should treat each other) limits infighting. I'd also say that e.g. Workplace SE involves giving workplace advice.

As a counter-example, Hermeneutics SE could be considered somewhat less prescriptive: it's more focused on critical analysis of the Bible without prescribing what one should do with that information (although the Bible certainly contains moral commands, and Biblical interpretation is strongly affected by one's moral views... at least if you're a Christian who holds that the Bible is divinely inspired).

"What would you propose if the subject of homosexuality or the modern trans issue arose" - religion commonly has a lot of problematic views, and given the choice between humanism and showing compassion towards minorities versus being tolerant of religion, I'm going to pick humanism and compassion every time.

If Christians here can't discuss those topics without violating the code of conduct (which I suspect they can't, at least not when their beliefs themselves violate the code of conduct), then refraining from discussing it is another option. My solution would be to keep that out of HNQ, or the simplest solution: remove Christianity SE from HNQ altogether.

"If someone cited the watchtower about how they oppose it" - presenting a code-of-conduct-violating position for the sake of critiquing it is fine, I'd say.

@NotThatGuy How does something even get in the Hot network questions?

Too keep it secular... unless something is specific or obvious, we shouldn't assume the person answering is advocating for what they responded with.

Still, I don't understand why Ken would reference such an off topic article... Hume's is ought is something entirely different. :S

@NotThatGuy I do agree with you here. The problem is not solvable if you accept it as a problem. That is why my answer was clearly, "Christians do not believe it is a problem"

I argue the same point, reward/punishment drives people out of "pure terror" which is not what a Loving God would subject humanity to

We should follow God, because God is the best role model... we should be loving, kind, and patient.

(And I know people will like to bring up the old testament wrath and stuff... but that's a whole different matter)

The example christians are given, was Jesus. (Not God the father from the old testament)

And Jesus was given no kindness, and was actually subjected to the most awful things possible, in a manner that was both emotionally, mentally, and physically cruel. And we are taught He forgave them for killing Him.

Many many christians seem to somehow forget this and get "self righteous" and it is deeply frustrating to see

Even if heaven doesn't exist, and God doesn't exist... it still seems like the best thing to do is to act as if God exists. Not out of fear but because the highest possible moral and virtuous ideal... is what we should strive to emulate and become. This makes us respectible members of society, helpful people, kind etc...

But as you point out... most "christians" are self righteous... they use christianity as some kind of weapon, and that is wrong.

Anyways... I'm off for the day, you seem like a nice guy :)

"It's an objective fact" - there are infinitely many facts. When one chooses to share a particular fact in a particular way in some particular situation, that's done with a particular goal in mind, and it comes with certain consequences that may or may not be intended. That's a lot of things that can make "a fact" non-neutral (as in communicating it is not neutral, even if the particular state of reality is neutral).

"religion is protected too" - religious identity is protected, religious beliefs are not. Someone who expresses that they're Christian (or Muslim or atheist, more likely) should be protected from discrimination and such. But someone who expresses that e.g. they think gay people should be killed does not qualify for any protection. There's probably some blurry lines if bigotry is ingrained into a particular religion.

"We should obey God, because God is Love, and he wants us to love each other" - if you say love is the ideal to strive towards, I'd still say that's subjective, even though I don't have much issue with an moral ideal of love, in itself (although love can be applied in better and worse ways).

For your sentence above, "God is Love" and "he wants us to love" doesn't imply "We should obey God". That's the is-ought problem: you have "is" on the one side, and "should" on the other, and you can't cross that boundary. When you say "God is the best role model", you're already making some subjective judgement about what a good role model looks like.

"Even if heaven doesn't exist, and God doesn't exist... it still seems like the best thing to do is to act as if God exists" - I very strongly disagree. What prompted this discussion is a big part of the reason why. Firstly, Christianity specifically carries a lot of baggage in terms of oppressing gay people, and trans people, and women, and there's all the stuff about slavery, there's other morally problematic parts of the Bible, and there's the anti-scientific truth claims.

People trust that God will fix whatever, so they don't do the work required to fix it themselves. God doesn't do anything, so it ends up not getting fixed at all. This applies to their health, their career, their love life and relationships, the climate, global poverty and disease, etc.

Some Christians reject all of that, but using the label of "Christian" still adds some implied support to the things above. If one steps outside of Christianity, the concept of "God" becomes largely meaningless. And given a claim that there is an all-powerful "loving" creator, that has truly horrifying implications for how people conceptualise "love", given the excessive amounts of suffering in the world.

If one acts like something is true when one doesn't have good reasons for it, at best that blurs the line between what's true and what's not, and you're left making worse decisions for more dubious reasons. At worst, one has a bad epistemology, and that line blurs in many other places too.

You can strive to "the highest possible moral and virtuous ideal" without calling that ideal "God".

"you seem like a nice guy" - thanks, you too

Lol, mod got mad I disagreed with their answer and suspended me. "We’ve noticed a pattern" ... of commenting on literally 2 posts in the last 6 months.