ABSTRACT
The transsexual, unlike the transvestite, does not wish to remain a male, but wishes to have his body changed so that he becomes as completely female as medical techniques can contrive. In the case of the “true” hermaphrodite, no moral issue is raised because, with the patient having gonads of both sexes, one can remove the evidence of one sex and still feel comfortable that major biological criteria of the other sex remain. While it is no longer immoral to give anesthetics to women in childbirth, and only a few of the more esoteric cults call upon the Bible to save sinning mankind from blood transfusions or smallpox inoculations, the gender defects of homosexuals, transvestites, and transsexuals can still stir the thunder of the righteous. Especially disturbing—and not to the religious alone—is the body mutilation and destruction of fertility that must accompany sex-transformation procedures.
