An individual at Catholic Answers wrote: I am an intersexed individual. I didn’t want to get too detailed, but I will try to use non-offensive language. I have a small penis and also gonads. Biopsies of the gonads showed them to be testicular tissue, but there were stripes of ovarian tissue in them too. However at birth they appeared normal, just small and undescended which is not extremely uncommon in males. That’s why I was assigned male, there wasn’t that much of an issue, I showed no visual oddities until puberty when my breasts appeared.

The priests I have visited have said I am a man definitively because I have something that resembles a penis. They would support me marrying a woman, despite the fact we’d look like a lesbian couple… Being intersexed from birth, I’m somewhat androgynous, I will look “wrong” to someone no matter what gender I present when I attend Mass. If I go dressed as a male many look at me with disgust thinking me to be a lesbian because of my feminine facial features and breasts, when I go dressed as a female no one asks questions regarding my general appearance, but then they notice I’m over six-feet tall and my voice sounds a bit low, and so they assume I’m a transsexual. They may not be intentionally pushing me away, but my life is very lonely, except for my male fiance… whom the church says I should dump and “just be friends” with.

Paul the apostle wrote in the first chapter of his letter to the congregation in Rome that it was wrong for a woman to “burn” for another woman. But what if the other “woman” has both a vagina and a penis (where her clitoris is usually located)? Such people exist. What kind of condemnation should apply to them? Are such people allowed to “burn” for people of either sex?

Cases of inter-sexed human babies include different degrees and types of inter-sexuality. “When all causes of inter-sexuality are considered, as many as one in 2,000 babies are affected.” (Altheaea Yronwode, “Intersex Individuals Dispute Wisdom of Surgery on Infants,” Transgender Tapestry, Issue #88, Fall 1999) The American Medical Association has decreed that doctors ought to operate on the genitalia of such infants to ensure that every inter-sexed baby is “made to fit” into either the “male” or “female” categories that society prides itself on being able to easily distinguish.

In the case of a baby who has not been operated on (because their parents did not allow it), and who has grown into an adult having breasts, a vagina, and a penis instead of a clitoris, what decision should churches make? To allow such a person to wed a partner of either gender is to approve of “semi-same sex” marriages. (How far is that from approving of “same sex” marriages?) Another option would be for churches to insist on operations for all babies born with inter-sexed genitalia–in other words such children must be mutilated for having messed up the neat and tidy categories of human sexuality with which the Bible deals. The AMA is beginning to shy away from continuing such operations, so maybe churches will need to mount a counter campaign to maintain them. Or maybe churches can continue to do what they have done all along, simply ignore the theological questions that “inter-sexed” people raise. Certainly the Bible gives little assurance as to how to proceed and “what to condemn” in such cases.

Given that she’s on suicide watch, this is in pretty poor taste.

Two things. First, I can’t think of a single instance when LBC was NOT in poor taste. Second, I doubt Semenya frequents the site.

That aside, it is sad what this poor girl has been put through considering she’s still a teenager.