Infidelity

Did anyone see that news segment this morning about the co-hosts of that Daystar Christian Television Network? Well, the male host came on to acknowledge his past infidelity and talk about it, after there was a whole scheme devised by several people to blackmail him, but I'm not going to get into all the details of that. What I wish to discuss is an interesting point raised by the couple's counselor and friend. Good Morning America showed a clip of the couple at counseling with this friend, who was trying to help put things in perspective for the two troubled lovers. He said, and I paraphrase, "Okay, Marcus made a mistake, once, and was unfaithful, but it was with a woman. It wasn't with a man, it wasn't with a transvestite, it was a woman."
Hmmm.
Where do I begin? Aside from being a spectacularly weird statement, it is also not, in my opinion, a good defense of what Marcus did. How is cheating with a woman better than cheating with a man, transvestite, animal, alien or anyone else? I don't know, and I can't see how this would make Marcus's wife, Joni, feel any better. I believe what the man was trying to say was that, at least, Marcus was not breaking the Christian rule of having sexual or romantic relations exclusively with members of the opposite sex. So he was only breaking one rule, that of remaining faithful, and not two.
But if he had cheated with a transvestite, would that necessarily be breaking the rule of exclusivity? A transvestite is not a transgendered person; a transvestite is merely someone who dresses up as a member of the opposite sex, like the hilarious British comedian Eddie Izzard. So if Marcus had had an affair with a transvestite who was a woman dressed as a man, he would still be having relations with a woman, and thus would not be breaking the rule. Unless there is a rule in the
Bible of which I am not aware forbidding one from having relations with someone dressed as a member of the opposite sex. It may be in there; I don't know. If his partner in crime were a man dressed as a woman, then yes, this would be breaking the rule, since the person would still be a man.
Now, say the person was transgendered; would Marcus be breaking the rule then? How could one tell? The person is in between genders. Does the Bible have a rule about that? I don't think so. I highly doubt that being in-between genders is something that would even have been dreamed of at the time the Bible was written. Maybe there is a way to measure which gender the person embodies more; if the person is at least 51% male, then I suppose having relations with this person would be breaking the exclusivity rule. However, if he/she is 50% or less male, then you must acquit!