Jennifer Finney Boylan

Were the mushrooms you ate with your steak asexual or bisexual?

British plant scientists made a fascinating discovery while investigating why an extremely rare green shrub formally called Ruizia mauririana was not doing well in an old Victoria formal garden called Temperate House in London’s Kew Gardens.

Examples of this specimen are extremely rare, but several were found in the Mauritian highlands. They also made a remarkable genetic discovery. The plant was “queer!”  That is, a member of the LBGTQIA+ community!

The sex of the plant depends on the temperature. In warm temperatures the plant grows male flowers. In cooler times and climates, it produces female ones (whose stigmata receive pollen). Some scientists say the concept of plants being gay may seem far-fetched, but the evidence is certain species have been found to produce more flowers when they are growing near the same species.

Others say: “Whatever the case may be, it is clear that plants exhibit a wide range of behaviors that go beyond the simple act of reproduction. So, while we may not be able to definitively say that plants are gay, it is certainly possible that they are capable of experiencing same-sex attraction.”

At this point I will remind you that Norwegian genetic research scientists determined decades ago that all 0f the top 1,500 animal species had homosexuals – and decided to stop the research – assuming all animal species had queers. Now the possibility exists that all plant life may be LBGTQIA+ – depending upon local conditions.

More than 30 years ago Bronx Zoo attendants noticed that two male penguins named Roy and Silo had fallen in love, so they gave the gay couple an abandoned chick to raise. They loved the opportunity. Since then, other zoos around the world have spotted male gay penguin couples. Elmer and Lima love in the Rosamond Gifford Zoo and Magic and Sphen love in Australia.  

Genetics 101: The world is filled with other combinations of Xs and Ys

The first lesson for God believers and Bible-thumpers to learn about the LBGTQIA+ community is that not every person with a Y chromosome is male, and not every person with a double XX is female. It’s far more complicated than that. The world is filled with other combinations: XXX (or Klinefelter Syndrome), XXX (or Trisomy X), XXXY, and so on.

There’s even something called the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, a condition that keeps the brains of people with a Y from absorbing the information in that chromosome. Most of these people develop as female, and may not even know about their condition until puberty or later.

If one is to understand the sexual complexities of 800 million LBGTQIA+ on Planet Earth, one must learn something about what happens when animals and plants evolve and reproduce. The men of the Catholic Church have been blundering, blustering and wallowing about sex between them and the other half of Homo sapiens – who have more wisdom and experiences in the arts of reproduction – for 2,000 years.

Men have 10 seconds of fun while women have 20 years of stress about reproductive sex. Pope Francis has become the first of 266 popes to ask 54 women to bring wisdom to the fall Synod he is sponsoring for 364 voting delegates. They are to discuss what the church should do to become a leader of 21st century societies.

Here are two issues:

(1) One in three women – plus transgender and nonbinary people – have lost access to abortion and red states have not finished passing stupid and demeaning laws,

(2) The archdiocese of Baltimore, where the first Roman Catholic cathedral was built in the United States, just declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy because more than 156 predators have assaulted at least 600 children. The Vatican has spent billions because horny priests assaulted altar boys and girls.  

Five hundred years ago Martin Luther compiled a list of 95 complaints

That event has been called the start of the Protestant Reformation. There are many events  in Germany today that will result in a Roman Catholic “Reformation.”  

In the wealthiest country in Europe, German bishops have been inviting women to say the homily at Mass and to baptize babies. Hundreds of priests have come out as celibate gay men while Catholic schools and churches have begun to fly rainbow flags, the flag of the LBGTQIA+ community. A majority of German bishops have blessed same-sex marriages and unions. Because of a drastic shortage of priests, bishops have called for female deacons and the ordination of older, married men as priests. A few bishops have asked that women be ordained as priests. There are German bishops and priests have been ministering to LBGTQIA+ Catholics for years.

Here are a few reasons why German bishops want the church to become more modern and progressive:

(1) More than 550,000 Germans left the church in 2022 while another 200,000 died,

(2) In 1953, 80% of the weddings in Germany were in churches, but in 2019 that number had fallen to 18%,

(3) If the numbers keep dropping, the church will have to sell a third of its churches, and (

4) Traditional Catholic churches have been the center of child abuse scandals.

A 2018 report found that 3,677 people were abused by Catholic clergy between 1946 and 2014 with half of the victims being 13 and younger, and a third being altar boys. Citizens of other European countries have at the same time been leaving Catholic pews by the millions.

A 2021 poll showed that more than half of the population of France have become atheists or consider Christianity to be irrelevant.

In The Netherlands, Catholics have fallen to 23% in 2015 from 39% in the 1970s.

In Italy in 2020 12 million attended church at least once a week, a drop from 18 million in 2010.

Spain, a very strong Catholic country in the 1930s, now has one-third of the population atheist or agnostic.

Although 90% of Poles still say they are Catholic, attendance of young people is way down compared to two decades ago.

Another note: baptisms are being replaced by baby-naming ceremonies in many European countries.    

What’s in Pants/Panties is Less Important than What’s Between Ears

It may be telling that ovaries and testicles begin their existence in the womb as the same thing. A transgender professor of English at Columbia University and a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, Jennifer Finney Boylan, makes an important statement everyone should live by: “No one who embarks upon a life as a trans person in this country is doing so out of caprice, or a whim, or a delusion. We are living these wondrous and perilous times for one reason only – because our hearts demand it. Given the tremendous courage it takes to come out, given the fact that even now trans people can still lose everything – family, friends, jobs, even our lives – what we need now is not new legislation to make things harder. What we need now is understanding, not cruelty. What we need now is not hatred, but love. Man! I feel like a human.”

In 2023 alone, more than 450 “trans” bills have been introduced in 44 states according to Trans Legislation Tracker. These bills are all about politics, not religious ideology. Trumplicans want power. They don’t give a damn about religion, but they need the votes of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians and conservative Roman Catholics who want to live in the White 14th century.

Trumplicans don’t care that more than half of young people in the United States who are transgender and nonbinary seriously considered suicide last year according to surveys conducted by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization of the LBGRTQIA+ community.

The Vatican is still pushing the ignorant and medieval idea that homosexuals are “intrinsically disordered.” Artist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci, still rated the leading genius of the world after 500 years, was “disordered?” No wonder Pope Francis is trying to keep the Vatican out of hospice with the Synod in Rome.

By the way, A 2021 study by The Journal of Adolescent Health indicated gender hormone therapy given to people younger than 18 lowered suicide attempts by 40%. Politicians in 44 states should be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license. Medical treatments by doctors, surgeons, and mental health professionals for gender diversity and dysphoria have been developing for 40 years and is now controlled by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health WPATH). Allow them to do their job.  

Shakespeare thought it was puzzling no person had come back to Earth

Five hundred years ago Shakespeare contributed 37 plays to the world’s literature, examining every facet of Homo sapiens life, whether historical, humorous or tragical. His “to be, or not to be” soliloquy by Hamlet is still considered to be the finest ever written. Shakespeare often challenges the religious thinking of the times in his plays. In the middle  of the soliloquy he poses a question about afterlife that every person has begged for answer:

“Who would fardels (burdens) bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life,          

But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovere’d country          

From whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather          

bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?”

In other words, is there really a Heaven and Hell somewhere that priests and ministers have been preaching about? It is the greatest puzzle. Slowly, step by step, science is winning the culture war in the Divided States of America. In 2022, the Gallup Poll found that 81% of Americans believed in God. In 2023, the same poll found that 74% believed in God, 14% were not sure, and 12% did not believe. That means that more than 20 million had lost some faith in religion. I have been saving the following letter in my files for years because I thought it was the best review of what atheists thought about life without gods.

An atheist wrote it because a “believer” had written a letter stating God had kept him from being cruel and without a moral code. “As a lifelong atheist I have a moral code that comes from the need to have a functioning society, as well as my values of compassion, kindness and tolerance, as well as an intellectual understanding that cruelty is, well, just awful. I remember moments from my own childhood where I was unkind. And I felt shame and regret then and I feel shame and regret now, looking back. Without a book of rules, I’ve managed to not murder, not shame, not out and not otherwise harm anyone else for quite some time now.

Please give the religious ‘nones’ some credit for being good people, and consider that nobody need supernatural input to refrain from harming children (or anyone). You don’t have to believe in a god to believe in the value of ‘tikkum olam,’ which is Hebrew for ‘repair the world.’ We can be good without a god.” Shakespeare could not have said it better.