The answer was that they may not. But there is some question about how far the prohibition goes. It is well known among mental health professionals that transgender people have a very high suicide rate. If someone feels they cannot go on living in a body that does not align with their self perception and threatens suicide, does that override the prohibition of changing one’s sex?
I cannot answer that question. But I pose it to show how serious this issue is even among observant Jews that are religious enough to ask a Shaila about it.
Leaving aside these Halachic issues, it is imperative that we have compassion for people with gender dysphoria. Which is described on the Mayo Clinic website as follows:
A diagnosis for gender dysphoria is included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association. The diagnosis was created to help people with gender dysphoria get access to necessary health care and effective treatment.
The current societal attitude is that transgender people ought to be treated exactly as the sex they believe they are regardless of which sex they were born - whether they have sex reassignment surgery or not.
This new social construct raises serious challenges for observant Jewry. How are we to reconcile a religious view that sees sex reassignment surgery as Halachicly problematic with the current culturally positive approach that considers it a simple matter of the personal right to choose to be whatever sex we want to be?
Making matters even more complex are advocacy groups that seeks a government mandate for schools to aggressively teach their values to our children at the earliest possible opportunity. Regardless of how a parent might feel about it - even it is from a religious perspective
This last issue is discussed by Scott Yenor in a First Things article with which I pretty much agree. Certainly the state has an obligation to teach values they consider moral by societal standards. But what if those values conflict with the values of the parents? This is where Yenor weighs in:
The transgender movement strains the parental rights framework. In some cases, appeals to parental rights function as a limit on practices shaped by gender ideology that are harmful to children. For instance, Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill appeals to parental rights to limit instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools. The bill states that such instruction “may not occur” in kindergarten through third grade in public schools. In this case, the bill’s acknowledgement of parental rights carves out a sphere of parental discretion on sexual identity (parents can, after all, still teach their children gender ideology in their homes, if they wish) within a broad grant of power to the state on other curricular matters.
Personally I believe parental rights need to go far beyond the 3rd grade. The idea that a school can teach children that changing ones sex is a matter of personal choice is in my view an extremely harmful departure from what a school should be doing. Even if they do it as delicately as possible with as much input from medical professionals as possible. The idea of instilling a values like that into the mibds of children whose parents want to raise them with their own religious values is abhorent to me.
This s categorically different than the right of a state to teach children the kinds of skills typically learned in schools that will help them function as productive members of society. That - as most people known is something I emphatically support.
However, indoctrination children with values that are anathema to a religious parent is a horse of an entirely different color. Even if those values are considered normal by current societal standards. This is not to say that tolerance and compassion of people that have gender dysphoria should not be taught. It should be taught at a n appropriate age. But what the transgender movement wants - goes too far by orders of magnitude in my view.
Gender dysphoria is not as a lifestyle choice made relatively easy by simple surgery. It is a serious mental condition. The government should treat it that way.
Just my quick thoughts on the subject.
