The transgender woman wanting to rejoin the Orange Order

The city of Belfast in Northern Ireland is gearing up for its annual gay pride parade this weekend.

But what are the challenges that face LGBT people living in Northern Ireland where sexual identity and politics always seem to clash.

Peter Coulter has been to meet a transgender woman living in Belfast, who would like to rejoin the Orange Order.

I am perfectly well aware of what the Orange Order does and what it stands for and I stand by my description of their activities.

Do you think I got it wrong somewhere along the line?

The Ornage Order today, being merely a specter of its former past certainly has no role in denying Catholics their civil rights and nowhere did I suggest it did.

In the past, however, when every Norther Ireland prime minister, cabinet minister, head of government department and most local councils as well as senior ranks of the judiciary and the police were Orangemen their role was not so benign.

The Orange Order and their marches will soon be little more than a cultural anomaly, an interesting local custom performed by odd people, performing for the cameras of curious Japanese tourists like Papuan tribesmen in their penis gourds, I look forward to that day. That is their future, their past was by no means so quaint.

Who exactly decided that “transgender” issues were going to be an obsessive media focus this year??

I’m 56 y.o. and have hardly seen any articles or given a thought to “transgender” b.s. over my lifetime, until this year when some weird obsessive rage burst forth in the media and we are subjected to this nonsense 24x7.

Sir, I think your last comment was not quite so insulting as the first, although your attitude is still on display. If you think there is some weakness in these people, you certainly did get it wrong.

If the order is a shell of its former self, then partly we have the Green to thank. Peace was made possible by them when they decommissioned. One can only imagine what courage that took. Orange responded with trust and faith, and the Green have proved their sincerity. Deep respect is due them, and mutual respect is the way forward.

There is also the evangelical exodus. One cannot preach against ecumenism in the churches and then ignore it in the lodges, nor care about threats to the young people when there is a bar at the lodge. One cannot preach against the Masonic lodge and “secret societies” sitting beside the Royal Arch Purple. Some of the Belfast hooligans get so drunk binge drinking on the 12th that they can barely walk straight. If this is now “what the Orange Order does and what it stands for,” then it is of no moment whatsoever that a transgendered person join it.

I do not know where you are coming from, but loyalty to the Savior, Jesus Christ, and knowledge of His love for you informs my responses to you.

Thank you for posting the article which is very interesting to know about and I am indebted to you. It reminds me of a story about atheists, threatened with expulsion, who wanted to remain in the Lutheran church because they enjoyed the “experience of worship.”

“I think your last comment was not quite so insulting as the first”

For the life of me I cannot see how you thought my first post was insulting.

If you felt I was insulting you personally then I apologise, although I have no idea how I could have done so. If you thought my description of the Orange Order and what it does was unflattering, well I stand over my comments as factually accurate and withdraw nothing of what I said.

I think your, extremely accurate, description of the Order today and its intrinsic hypocrisy, especially with regard to booze, is much more damning than anything I wrote.

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