Mateo Williamson, Barak Obama and Pope Francis

Barak Obama has decided to welcome Pope Francis to America and to the White House by inviting some guests to help him greet the Pope. He has invited Gene Robinson, a retired Episcopal Bishop who is a gay man, Sister Simone Campbell, who is a pro abortion nun and is the Executive Director of the social justice lobby group Network, and Mateo Williamson who is supposed to be representing "transgender" people to the Catholic church.

First, I must question why Barak Obama is insisting on sticking his thumb in the eye of Pope Francis and by extension Catholics in America and the rest of the world? How will this possibly move the dialogue forward between Christians who are Catholic, and by extension all Christians who are not accepting of abortion, particularly unfettered access to abortion which includes partial birth abortion and the harvesting and sale for profit of the organs of unborn children? How does having a gay man who likes to wear women's clothes advance the acceptance of people who are transsexual with the Catholic Church and the broader body of Christ when he has nothing in common with transsexuals and confuses the public about who transsexuals are?

While the Episcopal church has recognized that gay people have a rightful place as members of Christendom and are just as much children of God as straight people, presenting Bishop Robinson along with Sister Campbell and Mateo Williams discredits the message that Bishop Robinson could bring to meeting with the Pope and diminishes the opportunity and hope for reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Episcopal and Anglican churches, which is a much desired outcome between these denominations. It certainly isn't going to help me find acceptance in the broader sense of Christendom. Presently, I worship with the Episcopal church, but I long for the day when I can find acceptance as a woman of Christ in the Southern Baptist Convention where I spent my formative years.

It utterly confuses me why Mateo Williams would be included in this meeting. I quote Mateo Williamson from his own words published in Breitbart News: "Today I identify as a gay man and before that was difficult to understand because I thought that in order to be transgender, in order to be a transgender male that I had to be attracted to females but I never have throughout my entire life.”

How he came to the conclusion that he "had to be attracted to women to be transgender" escapes me. I can only conclude he has never been familiar with the professional literature (of which I am very well acquainted dating back to the mid 1960's). In actuality, in the earliest days, professionals believed transsexuals must be attracted to men and there has been considerable debate on whether people who are attracted to women or can only imagine themselves as being women having intimate relationships with men were fetishists. I'm sure Barak Obama could have found someone more grounded and more knowledgeable about transsexualism to greet the Pope if only the President cared about substance over symbolism.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/16/white-house-invites-trio-catholic-dissenters-greet-pope-francis/

Mateo Williamson is not a woman of transsexual experience. He's a gay man who likes to wear women's clothes for whatever reason. He has had a clear confusion about his identity over the course of his life and that is what the problem with the umbrella term "transgender". His life and his experiences which make him sound by his own words to be a drag queen at best, or just another gay man, have nothing to do with people like me and others I know and have worked with. Presenting him in the context of representing people like me to the Pope devalues my unique identity and experience. People like him and people like me have nothing in common with the exception that we are all human and have the right to be respected for who we are, but other than that, we have nothing in common.

The fallacy of likening people like him with people like me is that his issues, plainly spoken in his own words, have to do with his sexual orientation. My issues are based on my gender identity. To have him publicly be the face of some conglomeration of people in which I am lumped in only makes it harder for the public to understand and become more tolerant of people like me.  

I do understand that what I rail against here means very little, but I do have a voice and a separate identity that should not be subsumed under some term like transgender or like LGBTQI (Et Cetera Ad Nauseam) that blurs my unique experience for some larger political lobby that does not represent me or care about my rights or needs. Because under that paradigm, any hope for advancement or gaining access to health care, or other basic human rights are slowed to a snail's pace.