Translate this blog.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

And If Pope Francis Does Meet With Barak Obama........

I hope that Pope Francis inquires of Barak Obama why President Obama allows just under a quarter of a million Muslims from the Middle East into our country each year but won't allow Middle Eastern Christians to enter our country when they are so horribly persecuted and murdered in a genocidal manner by ISIS and other Muslim terrorist organizations. Inquiring minds want to know!

Friday, September 18, 2015

So Now We Learn the Vatican Has Objected to the White House Guest List

As our French friends would say, "Quelle Surprise!" (What a surprise!) Not really. Of course the Vatican would object to a White House reception that Obama planned in order to attempt to humiliate the Pope, Catholicism and Christendom at large. To participate in that planned circus would be a humiliation of the greatest degree. Perhaps Obama expected the Pope to bow to him and his controversial guests as Obama has made a show of bowing to other leaders of State who he thinks America owes apologies to for our history.

Pope Francis is a very liberal Pope and endorses views that I personally oppose, such as open borders and a belief that global warming is the result of human activity ( more on that perhaps another time, some scientists are lobbying to have Obama legally prosecute other scientists who dissent from the opinion that global warming is the result of human activity). He holds other views that I do not agree with or support, but I respect Pope Francis and believe that he has done things that have been good for the Catholic church and for the progress of Christendom at large. He has granted audiences to people who are transsexual and not rejected them, though the teachings of the church is at odds with the belief that transsexuals and transgender people have a place at the table in the world of Christendom. He has met with gay people as well and seems to say they should not be excluded from being offered the sacraments, though he believes having a transsexual or transgender identity or gay sexual orientation is a sin. Christian theologians recognize that there is no sin greater than another and while I disagree that I am sinning because of my identity as a woman, I know that I can be forgiven for that if it is a sin as it is no worse than any other sin.

In principle, Obama and Pope Francis share much on an ideological basis. It puzzles me why Obama would attempt to set up such a situation. Is it mere arrogance? Obama seems to be able to act outside of the United States Constitution with impunity. However, Pope Francis and the Catholic church are much bigger than the United States and in this instance, it might behoove Mr. President to remember his place in the grand scheme of the world and seek to build bridges instead of continuing to burn them to the ground.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

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.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

The 2015 National Center For Transgender Equality Trans Survey

I'm sorry to have overlooked posting this sooner, but an important opportunity is at hand. The National Center For Trans Equality is seeking respondents for its second survey that is the most important study to identify transgender issues about access to health care, employment discrimination, mental health, substance abuse, public access to activities and education, to name some of the very important things that we as members under the umbrella "transgender" face.

The first survey revealed important information that was brought to public attention and made a tremendous contribution to the expansion of our freedoms and access to healthcare. It is important that no matter how you identify under the umbrella of "transgender" that you participate in the survey, even if you responded to the survey the last time it was offered. Don't believe your voice makes a difference? Maybe not in a lot of circumstances, but here it really does and it is worth the 20 to 30 minutes to take your time and respond to the survey!

A big and heartfelt THANK YOU to Mara Keisling and all the folks at the National Center For Transgender Equality.....

Here is the Link to the survey:  http://www.ustranssurvey.org/

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Further Along: Summer's Last Days

Labor Day has passed for 2015. In about two weeks the Autumnal Equinox, that day when darkness and light are perfectly balanced before the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer until we reach the soul’s longest night, the Winter Solstice. Then the cycle renews itself and the days grow longer again with the promise of Spring and the rebirth of life, come March.

With my gender transition, I find myself more in harmony with the cycle of the seasons, of the earth and of life. This summer I have rekindled a dream from long ago to live off my land to as great a degree as I am able. A dream left behind in my twenties. One that was left behind when I left this place I love so much when I was 18 and went off to college. Though I returned to live here in my mid 30’s and made a few stabs at successful gardening, I had lost the vision of wanting to homestead on my own land and of what was possible.

Perhaps it was being inspired again by watching several of the television shows about life in Alaska, particularly the ones where we see people wholly living and subsisting off the land. Perhaps it was the realization that in only six years Patty and I will lose between 20 to 25% of our take home income.

Perhaps it is watching the breakdown of our social order and recognizing that our government over the past 30 years has squandered our prosperity and national security. Both of our political parties have had a hand in that. We have led a life of illusion thinking our government will keep us safe and secure and because of that we shall not know want. But now our own natural born citizens are increasingly finding themselves without jobs and going hungry. Some find it more profitable to be on public welfare rather than work because they almost make as much living on the dole than they would make taking a job at entry level pay and don't have to work as hard, because those jobs are hard jobs for the most part. The influx of illegal aliens who will work for less than many Americans will work for only exacerbates the problem.

We can't take care of our own anymore because of the flood of illegal aliens from Mexico, Central America and South America. Additionally, we are increasingly pressured to take in Muslim refugees who are flooding Europe. Apparently they don't defend their own borders anymore either. Our government will not and cannot keep us safe anymore. By promising to be all things to all people, it has greatly reduced the opportunity to become prosperous.  It had driven us to accept mediocrity as the highest aspiration and punishes excellence. Our enemies are coming for us and we are told not to worry. We are told that we should just appease them and the threat will go away. We just aren't tolerant enough.

 We have become so dependent on technology and computers that our children don’t even know how to write because writing is not taught. We rely on computers to run everything. Most people don’t know how to do anything without them, including how to relate to each other on a face to face basis. Too many people interact or socialize only over social media. We are just one electromagnetic pulse away from collapse.

How short our institutional memory is as a result of living in a life of instant gratification and a throw away culture that does not produce things we that last and does not value self- reliance or individualism. In fact we produce very little ourselves. We have shipped our manufacturing capabilities overseas. My parents were children during the Great Depression and World War II. Few are left to teach us the lessons of endurance and survival, the willingness to fight for our way of life, and that the price of Freedom was paid through personal sacrifice.

As a result, my dream of homesteading has been reborn. Nothing too grandiose to begin with, mind you. We grew some vegetables on the patio this summer. Nothing more than something to enjoy here and there as something bore a few vegetables. Some fresh spices to use in cooking too! Something to rekindle the imagination to create the desire to explore and see what possible goals could be realized with our beautiful country home.

This summer we have learned to can vegetables. That’s nothing spectacular; people have been doing it forever it seems. We have been buying from the local farmer’s market and a local produce farm to can enough food to last us into the next growing season when our own garden begins to produce vegetables that we have grown through our own efforts. This will save us money from not having to buy at the grocery store. Even with buying from our local farmers directly, we will save hundreds of dollars over the coming year. Canning is so easy that it was not hard to learn to do at all!

Nothing succeeds like success, as the old saying goes. We have a six year plan. We don’t have to do it all in a year. Next year we are planning to grow a garden for two people’s needs for a year. We will again supplement what we still need for the coming fall, winter and spring with produce bought at the farmer’s market and a local farm. Then we will expand it by growing for two more people each year until we have enough for ourselves and have our own produce to sell to others to supplement our income.

This coming year we will try several different ways to garden. I have had very good results with raised bed gardens in past years. Additionally, we plan to try straw bale gardening and using grow bags to determine which methods are easiest, and most cost effective in producing a bountiful harvest.  We plan to grow potatoes and corn in the traditional tilled earth manner. We also plan on trying winter gardening beginning next fall, something I have never done before. I have started composting on a moderate scale as well. Why put things in the landfill that will become fertilizer for  next year's garden?

We plan to have our own chickens for producing eggs beginning in the spring. This winter I will build a chicken coop and we will start with a rooster and three hens. We plan on expanding this part of the operation until we have enough eggs for ourselves each week and be able to sell the eggs. Fresh eggs from free range chickens are wonderful; another savings from not having to buy eggs at the grocery store and a source of income from selling what we can produce ourselves.

There’s plenty of help and advice available to take advantage of for free from the Virginia Tech agriculture extension agent. I've also found the local farmers to be willing to offer their advice based on their experiences and a willingness to help with things like plowing and tilling for a very reasonable price.

Other projects include harvesting blackberries in the early summer, which are abundant on our property as well as gathering walnuts, hickory nuts and chestnuts in the fall to sell. All of these are good moneymakers with economy of effort as well.

Our lake is large enough for us to pump water for the garden in dry conditions and also big enough to sustain feeding us a meal of fish once a week when the weather is warm enough to want to fish without having to worry about restocking the lake every year.

Though I have no desire to hunt or kill animals, I do enjoy venison. Our land is large enough and the deer are plentiful. I could easily harvest a deer or two in extremely difficult times if I were in need of meat, and squirrels, rabbits and wild geese are plentiful as well. I hope that I will not have to do that, though.


It seems we are only limited here by our imagination and physical ability to do the work. I look forward to the challenge, the adventure and the realization of a long time held dream.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Further Along: A Summer Evening


White Chocolate Bliss
At Days's Last Light
Ice Constant Comment Tea
Life's Soothing Companion
Quiet Outdoor Sounds
Soothing the Spirit

Time After Time
Across Stand the Three Older Sisters
Having Looked Over Me Since I Was a Child
The Oldest Sister is Gone Now

Each Year They Grow in Grace
Offering the Safety of Constancy
And the Natural Gift of Spirit Love
Simple and Pure

I wrote this about sitting outside on my patio and looking out at the woods and my lake. In early summer my magnolias add to the beauty with their wonderful white huge blossoms and their wonderful fragrance......

Thursday, September 3, 2015

It Seems Like Being an American Citizen Doesn't Mean Much Anymore

Today, I saw a news report from a source called "The Daily Caller" that reports an illegal alien who is also a convicted felon under our law (besides having entered the country illegally) was granted asylum because she claims she is a person who is transgender and alleges she was abused sexually by family members.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION

Federal Court: Illegal Immigrant And Convicted Felon Can’t Be Deported Because He’s Transgender

Blake Neff reports:
"A federal appeals court has ruled that an illegal immigrant and convicted felon can’t be deported back to Mexico because he identifies as a transgender woman, which leaves him vulnerable to torture back in his home country.
Edin Carey Avendano-Hernandez was born male in Mexico, and claims to have been raped by his brothers and suffered other torments. In 2000, he illegally entered the U.S. and took up residence in Fresno, California. Avendano-Hernandez also started taking female hormones and began living openly as a woman in 2005. In 2006, he committed two separate drunk driving offenses, the second of which injured two people and resulted in a felony conviction. After serving a year in jail, he was deported back to Mexico in 2007.
Back in Mexico, Avendano-Hernandez claims to have been subjected to more harassment from family and neighbors and to have been raped by members of the Mexican army. He illegally entered the U.S. again and, after being arrested, petitioned for sanctuary in the U.S. under the U.N. Convention Against Torture (CAT), arguing that deporting him would violate the CAT because he would more likely than not experience torture at the hands of Mexican authorities.
An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) both rejected Avendano-Hernandez’s arguments on the grounds that he had committed a serious crime (felony drunk driving) and was not likely to face official torture.
Now, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals says Avendano-Hernandez must be allowed to stay in the U.S., because he “more likely than not” will be tortured if returned to Mexico.
Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, an Obama appointee, chastised immigration officials for improperly handling Avandano-Hernandez’s gender identity.“The [judge] failed to recognize the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation, refusing to allow the use of female pronouns because she considered Avendano-Hernandez to be ‘still male,’ even though Avendano-Hernandez dresses as a woman, takes female hormones, and has identified as woman for over a decade,” Nguyen’s decision says. “Although the BIA correctly used female pronouns for Avendano-Hernandez, it wrongly adopted the [judge’s] analysis, which conflated transgender identity and sexual orientation. The BIA also erred in assuming that recent anti-discrimination laws in Mexico have made life safer for transgender individuals while ignoring significant record evidence of violence targeting them.”
Nguyen cites the repeated sexual abuse Avendano-Hernandez claims to have endured as evidence of de facto torture, and furthermore concludes that these actions were not crimes co“Avendano-Hernandez provided credible testimony that she was severely assaulted by Mexican officials on two separate occasions: first, by uniformed, on-duty police officers … and second, by uniformed, on-duty members of the military. Such police and military officers are “public officials” for the purposes of CAT,” Nguyen wrote. She added that this torture was likely to resume should Avendano-Hernandez ever return to Mexico.
The belief that Avendano-Hernandez was raped and tortured in Mexico appears to be based entirely on his own claims, which were deemed to be “credible” by his immigration judge.
Nguyen said it did not matter that in recent years Mexico has passed laws intended to protect its gay community, arguing that those laws don’t extend far enough to protect the transgendered.
The belief that Avendano-Hernandez was raped and tortured in Mexico appears to be based entirely on his own claims, which were deemed to be “credible” by his immigration judge.
Nguyen said it did not matter that in recent years Mexico has passed laws intended to protect its gay community, arguing that those laws don’t extend far enough to protect the transgendered.
“[L]aws recognizing same-sex marriage may do little to protect a transgender woman like Avendano-Hernandez from discrimination, police harassment, and violent attacks in daily life,” she said. She added that Mexican police sometimes target the transgendered for extortion and sexual favors, and said the country has an alarming number of unsolved murders of the transgendered.
The decision technically doesn’t spare Avendano-Hernandez from deportation, but it means his deportation will be delayed until he no longer faces a risk of being tortured.
While the decision only applies to Avendano-Hernandez, it could encourage more transgendered Mexicans to seek asylum in the U.S., as Nguyen’s description of torture in Mexico is quite general."
It seems to me that our government is not so concerned with protecting our U.S. Citizens and guaranteeing the rights of law abiding transgender citizens as they are trying to weaken the rights of American citizens across the board. 
It amazes and appalls me that our courts find that illegal aliens have the right to bear arms under the second amendment of the United States Constitution. Sanctuary Cities are allowing to illegal aliens to vote in their elections.

It seems to me that under the current government's interpretation of constitutional law, law abiding natural born citizens, including law abiding transgender citizens are not being afforded the Constitutional protections we are entitled to, while those whose rights have been suspended or removed due to criminal conviction, or because they are here because they entered the country illegally (which is in of itself a felony) are being afforded more protections and freedoms than the rest of us.

It really doesn't mean much to be a law abiding transgender American citizen, much less any American citizen anymore. Convicted felons who identify as transgender get better health care and more access to transgender health care up to and including sexual reassignment surgery. Anyone who claims they are transgender who are illegal aliens get asylum and get all kinds of access to social welfare programs and transgender healthcare no matter what crimes they commit, in addition to entering the country illegally.

Those of us who are natural U.S. citizens who go to our jobs and work every day and meet our daily obligations are pretty much short of luck in getting the health care we need. On top of that, to add injury to insult, we have to pay the government to take care of the people who have committed felonies and come here illegally. If we protest, then we are branded as racists and inhumane. We have to pay to provide transgender health care for convicted felons that we can't afford for ourselves. What a crock of junk this is for us to have to swallow. So yeah, I'm pretty disgusted at this point and to me it really does seem that being an American citizen doesn't mean much anymore. There's not much left to take pride in.








Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Whose Rights Matter Here?

I saw two news reports today involving two transwomen. In one case the question is raised about the rights of the individual vs. the rights of society, in this case, the rights of other teenage girls to be afforded a dressing room without a preoperative teenage transsexual girl sharing the locker room with them. The other case involves the rights of an adult transsexual woman to complete her transition by having gender reassignment surgery vs. her parents' desire to block her from having the surgery. In that case, a Pennsylvania judge has issued a stay preventing the woman from having her surgery until the case can be heard.

Because the transsexual girl is a minor, I have chosen to delete her name from the news report by the CBS news affiliate who did publish her name. I don't think publishing her name is the proper thing to do.

In the first case, the CBS affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri reports: " Over 150 Missouri high school students voiced their displeasure about a transgender teen using the girls’ locker room by walking out of class.
Students at Hillsboro High School staged a two-hour walkout Monday over 17-year-old  (the student), a student who has identified as a female since she was 13, using the girls’ locker room during gym class.
The school offered (the student) a gender-neutral bathroom, which she turned down. St. Louis attorney Timm Schowalter says, “All students have a right, under Title 9, to access the bathroom of their choice.”
Family members of high school students were also holding a protest.
“Boys need to have their own locker room. Girls need to have their own locker room, and if somebody has mixed feelings where they are, they need to have their own also,” protester Jeff Childs told KMOV. Childs was holding a “Girls Rights Matter” sign.
Tammy Sorden, whose son goes to Hillsboro High School, believes it’s not right to give (the student) special treatment “while the girls just have to suck it up.”
“The girls have rights, and they shouldn’t have to share a bathroom with a boy,” she told the Post-Dispatch."

As a preoperative transsexual myself, I find myself agreeing with the female students of the high school. I don't think they should have to share a locker room with a preoperative transsexual. That is an environment in which there is not the privacy afforded in a regular women's bathroom. This is an environment in which women are fully disrobed in front of each other and I do think it is important to be sensitive to their feelings about this situation. Personally, at this point in my own transition I think it would be terribly disrespectful to subject genetic women and postoperative transsexual women to my presence in the locker room. In the news report or in the protests by the high school students, I do not see any mention of the girls objecting to this preoperative transsexual girl sharing the regular restrooms. This indicates to me that this particular school's students and faculty are rather tolerant of the transsexual students presence in another intimate place, albeit not as intimate as a locker room. To me the transsexual student is being insensitive to the feelings of the very people she is trying to assimilate with. This is not the way to go about it, in my opinion.

In the second case, I will include the name of the transsexual woman because she is an adult.
The Associated Press reports " A transgender woman whose parents went to court Wednesday to block her gender-reassignment surgery in Pennsylvania said she would rather die on the operating table than continue living with male anatomy.
Christine Kitzler, 48, said during a break in the emergency hearing that the risk factors her father raised - including complications from her HIV and Hepatitis C diagnoses - were worth enduring to have her body match the gender she's identified with since growing up in suburban Cleveland, Ohio.
The surgery, temporarily halted earlier this week by a suburban Philadelphia judge as he considers a longer stay, would also save her from backsliding into alcohol and drug addiction, Kitzler said.
Her parents, Klaus and Ingrid Kitzler, contend Kitzler is not competent to make an informed decision to have the surgery because of depression and a childhood learning disorder, and want a temporary guardian named.
"I might die from this. But it's worth dying," Kitzler said. "I would rather die than live the way I was and return to my bad addictions, like alcohol, because I can't do it and I won't do it."
Kitzler's surgery had been scheduled for Tuesday in Pennsylvania, but Bucks County Judge C. Theodore Fritsch Jr. stopped it after her parents' lawyers filed for an injunction and asked for time for reflection before she goes through with what they called an irreversible surgery.
Testifying at the hearing, Klaus Kitzler underscored his concern for his daughter's health. He said he would accept her surgery if an independent psychiatrist deemed her fit to make the decision.
"I accept it, but I want to stop it," Kitzler told the judge. "I would love to have a son back who goes to church with us on Sunday mornings."
Christine Kitzler, who lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, has already been through 16 months of pre-operative preparation, including a 24-hour fast before Tuesday's scheduled surgery, and has received clearances from mental health professionals that she is knowingly and willingly undergoing gender reassignment, her doctor said.
Her lawyer, Angela Giampolo, said she had never seen competency invoked to block a gender-reassignment surgery.
"This isn't a competency hearing. This isn't a guardianship hearing. It's a difference of opinion," the prominent Philadelphia gay-and-transgender-rights lawyer said.
Giampolo said Kitzler's parents are trying to prevent her from living an authentic life. They said they fear Klaus and Ingrid Kitzler want to bring her back to Ohio, win a court action there and permanently block the surgery.
"They have a daughter. They don't have a son," Kitzler said. "I'll have the parts. I am a woman." "

Ms. Kitzler is an adult and she has made a carefully informed decision that having gender reassignment surgery is necessary for her to have a quality of life that makes life itself worth living.
In my opinion, the arguments that she has suffered from depression, has a history of addiction and has a learning disorder are all specious arguments. And here is one reason why the WPATH standards of care exist. 
Let's take this point by point: 1. Ms. Kitzler is an adult and as an adult it is her right to pursue gender reassignment. 2. Show me a person who is transsexual and never suffered from depression to one degree or another. I don't believe there are enough of individuals who have not been depressed in people who are transsexual to be considered statistically significant. 2. Transsexual individuals experience higher rates of addiction and substance abuse than the general population. 3. Having a learning disability in no way impacts the decision to make a gender transition. 4. Having HIV and Hepatitis C infections does not necessarily preclude one from having surgical procedures. 5. None of the above factors generally diminish legal competency.
Because of the guidance of WPATH standards of care, Ms. Kitzler was screened by mental health professionals and found that her mental health and substance abuse issues at this time are not a barrier to treatment and that she is making a well informed and competent decision to pursue gender reassignment surgery. Her physicians have assessed her and found her to be a good surgical risk and are willing to perform the procedure. This should be the end of the story, but it isn't. Her father's sole reason for seeking the court's intervention is that " I just want to have a son who goes to church with us on Sunday mornings." 
If the truth be told, he never had a son, though I do believe he didn't know that for many years. Transsexuals become skilled at living a life and acting out a life that is not authentic. Wouldn't if be more loving and affirming if her father had said, "I'll be looking forward to having my daughter to go to church with us on Sunday morning." 
When this sad episode is over, I'm guessing he will neither have a son or a daughter. My guess is that Ms. Kitzler will never wish to speak to her parents again, or at least for so long a period of time that there will not be much time left in life for them to share. Really, how sad is that? What a terrible thing to happen.