In 1999 people were abuzz with the story of Lee Mingwie who was purported to be the world’s first pregnant man. If you go to his website, www.malepregnancy.com, you will find ultrasound pictures, links to the hospital and the genome company who helped accomplish this amazing feat. I guess something went wrong, though, because he has been carrying that baby for ten years and it still isn’t born. Some pregnancies are rougher than others, I guess.
If you haven’t guessed it by now, the site is a hoax, a piece of internet art by two men who are very talented and more than a little twisted. People believe the site is real and send emails either in support or opposition.
Maybe it was that site that encouraged Thomas Beatie to try to conceive a child. Only this time it wasn’t a hoax. Thomas even appeared on Oprah to show the truth. A man really is pregnant!
Well, not really a man. See, Thomas was born Tracy, who made it all the way to the Miss Teen Hawaii finals. Tracy felt that she was a man trapped in a woman’s body, so she had her breasts removed, starting taking male hormones and had her gender legally changed to “male.” Tracy became Thomas and began living as a man. The rub here is that Tracy, er, Thomas, kept her female parts. That allowed him, her, whatever, to be artificially inseminated by Nancy, Thomas’ partner.
“The Advocate” was the first to trumpet the news of a pregnant man, then the wire services picked it up, then Oprah got involved. A pregnant man, surely anything is possible now. Beatie told Oprah that he considers it a miracle.
Well, before any of you men get fitted for maternity clothes, let’s think this through. Thomas Beatie is not a man. She is a woman. A beard, flat chest and a name change do not make you a man. Understand, I am not casting off on this person’s lifestyle choice, although I think it is a little, okay, a lot, drastic. I just think it’s crazy to call Thomas a pregnant man, when she is clearly a woman with a beard. However, I have seen other women with facial hair, so maybe she isn’t really all that rare after all.
Abraham Lincoln used to ask people, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” Most people would answer five. Lincoln would correct them, saying “Only four, calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” Same rule applies here. Calling Tracy Thomas doesn’t make her a pregnant man.
I see people all the time who try to rationalize their sins the same way. “My sin of (fill in your pet sin here) isn’t as bad as others, so it must be okay.” A few years ago the comedy troupe Isaac Airfreight used to do a routine about the “Amazing Ronco Bible.” The beauty of the Ronco Bible was that you could take any sin you wanted and turn it into a virtue. If you didn’t like a certain portion, you could just take it out. You tailored your Bible to your life instead of tailoring your life to the Bible.
It makes a great comedy skit, but not great for a life that is trying to please God. Sure there are things that God has asked of me that are tough, but I know they are for my own good. Sure, being good to people can be tough. Forgiveness is really hard, and I would just as soon live any way I like, but those things aren’t good for me or anybody else. I’ll stick with God’s way, he really does know best.
Not pregnant, just chubby… Jerry
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