Transgender Tax Cut

"Costs incurred in sex-change operations ....are tax-deductible, the US Tax Court has ruled."
Ryan Donmoyer in Bloomberg News, Feb. 4, 2010

A Boston resident, now named Rhiannon O'Donnabhain, had claimed the cost of sex-change surgery and hormone treatment as a medical expense on his (her?) 2000 tax return, and the IRS had rejected the deduction as mere "cosmetic surgery." The taxpayer, who had been married to a woman for 20 years and had fathered three children, convinced the Tax Court that the procedure was necessary to treat a "gender identity disorder." Maybe now thousands of other men who have longed to become women, but were deterred by tax-considerations, will be inspired to follow his example.

Older readers will recall that George Jorgenson of New York underwent similar treatment in Denmark in 1952 and emerged as "Christine Jorgenson." (1) So did tennis star Renee Richards about twenty years later. Chastity Bono (2) is undergoing treatment to convert herself into a man, to be known as "Chazz Bono." Transgender people are becoming increasingly common, and often appear as guests on the Jerry Springer Show.

But is sex-change real? The mainstream media, including Bloomberg News in the article quoted above, accept the change as valid, and apparently so does the Tax Court. After all, if modern science can put men on the moon, can it not change a man into a woman, or vice-versa?

If a veterinarian told dairy farmers that he could convert a bull into a cow, and charged them for allegedly doing so, I believe he would be indicted for fraud. A castrated bull is known as a "steer", but is not a cow, even if shot-up with boatloads of estrogen.

In all vertebrates the chromosome configuration of every cell is either XX for females or XY for males. The choice is determined at conception, and cannot be changed later. Moreover, true females are characterized by the development of ovaries and a uterus (womb) before birth. Today's medical technology is not capable of producing these organs in males, and I doubt that it ever will be. To say that a doctor has converted a male into a female is therefore bogus, in my view. But if someday a mammal born male undergoes a sex-change procedure and subsequently produces ova (eggs), I will retract this Glazerbeam and admit I was wrong. (I do not do this often, so call or e-mail as soon as it happens!) Meanwhile, O'Donnabhain should be considered a eunuch, not a woman.

Doctors are bound by the admonition "Primo, non nocere", which means "First, do no harm." I question whether surgically removing healthy tissue because the patient is unhappy with his gender role is not a violation of this principle. Patients who seek gender-reassignment treatment are undoubtedly sick, but the proper treatment for "gender identity disorder" may well be psychiatric, not surgical. Doctors should inform such patients that since true sex-change is not really possible, they should seek treatment that will enable them to accept the bodies with which they were born.

If the validity of sex-change is accepted by our legal system, numerous paradoxes would be created. For example, the Wisconsin Constitution now prohibits the State from recognizing a marriage between two women. So if a married man becomes a woman, the marriage would become invalid, even though no divorce has taken place. By the same token, if a Jewish man undergoes sex-change treatment, the individual would still be expected to sit on the men's side of the synagogue "mechitza " (partition), wear a "yarmulke" and don tefillin on weekdays, even if dolled-up in a dress and high-heels. (3)

But isn't the tax deduction for this procedure great? I could sure use a tax-cut, but this is one kind of cut that I definitely don't want. If I feel the need to reduce my tax liability, I would sooner vote Republican than part with any of my essential parts.

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(1) Wikipedia.

(2) Chasitity Bono was named after a bisexual woman played by her mother (Cher) in a film made by her father ( Sonny) . Shakespeare asked "What is in a name?" Maybe plenty.

(3) Both the emasculation surgery and cross-dressing are contrary to Jewish law.

Dead Sea's Living Legacy

The Milwaukee Public Museum is now offering an unprecedented look at the Dead Sea Scrolls for Milwaukee area residents and visitors. The scrolls, written in the late Second Temple era (probably) by a Jewish sect called the Essenes (Tznuim), were found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940's. The Essenes rejected the leadership of the Temple cohanim (priests), whom they considered corrupt and evil. They left Jerusalem and other Jewish cities to establish their own commune under the leadership of their Moreh Tzedek (Teacher of Righteousness).

The Display: The exhibit includes both actual scroll fragments and facsimiles, as well as coins and artifacts from the same time and place. Some of the scrolls are Biblical, others include the rules of governance of the Essenes commune. The actual scrolls are exhibited in a dark room with very low illumination, perhaps to avoid light damage to the materials. Each part of the exhibit is accompanied by an explanatory sign.
For documents that are about 2,000 years old (verified by carbon-14 dating), the actual scrolls are remarkably legible. Although the calligraphy is somewhat different from modern Hebrew, anyone who knows Hebrew will be able to read at least some of the words. If you want to read the facsimile Isaiah Scroll (the most complete of those found), bring a Hebrew text of the Book of Isaiah, so that you can match the words of the Scroll to their equivalents in modern lettering.

Religious Significance: Comparing the Dead Sea Scrolls with corresponding Hebrew Bible (Tanach) texts used today reveals only a few minor differences. (1) This means that the writings held sacred by Jews now are essentially the same as those revered by those who lived while the Temple in Jerusalem yet stood. Although the destruction of this Temple by the Romans in 70 CE ended the practice of animal sacrifice, the core of Jewish belief and practice has survived intact during two thousand years of exile and persecution.
Of the religions widely practiced in the Middle East at the time the scrolls were written (Roman, Egyptian, Greek, etc.), only Judaism lives today. Although Jesus and his first followers were contemporaries of the scribes who wrote the latest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, neither he nor Christianity are mentioned in any of them. (The exhibit does contain some Christian writing and artifacts from subsequent centuries).
Islam, which arose in Mecca nearly six hundred years after the era of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is mentioned in the exhibit only in noting that the mosque, the Muslim house of prayer, was modeled on the Jewish synagogue.

Political Significance: This exhibit, like the scrolls themselves, are a reminder that the Jewish people had a thriving society in the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea some two thousand years ago. When the scrolls were composed, it was a large Jewish population living under Roman military occupation. Those who speak of "Arab East Jerusalem" or the "Arab West Bank" need only visit this exhibit to be reminded that the Arabs moved in only after most of the Jews were driven out.
Ironically, the explanatory signs refer to the land where the scrolls were composed as "Palestine" several times, even though the land was known as that time as "Judaea". (The Romans renamed the land "Syria Palestina" many years later after the Philistines, who had inhabited the coastal area .)
It is significant that the cave where the scrolls were first found by Arab goat-herders is near Qumran, in the West Bank. This is a reminder that Jews lived in the West Bank before 1967.

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(1) The Dead Sea Scrolls by Millar Burrows (Viking, NY, 1955), page 303.