What's Missing from the Gay Marriage/transgender Dialogue

I just saw an episode of Eli Stone, in which a transgendered priest (Lutheran, I believe) put forth his/her arguments for why a sex change operation is morally justified.

-- She was in the wrong body for 30 years and needed a new one.

Of course everyone in the show who "had a heart" melted at the expressions of compassion and acceptance by the end of the episode. Unsurprisingly, completely missing is a single concept:

Natural Law.

It is natural law that God makes each of us exactly the way we are. Our eternal essence, who we are fundamentally, is not just our soul. When we find ourselves in heaven we will be the fulfillment of the same mind, same body, same soul (the belief that souls are superior/separate from our body and thus where our essence must reside, is rooted in a heresy from St. Augustine's day, Gnosticism/ Manichaeism).

So, a personal drawn to being transgendered must address that question. Did God truly make them wrong? Or do they have a heavy cross to bear for some reason we can not see? Transgender surgery is not a repair, it is a controlling change. I don't know the answers, but our public dialogue is far from complete without these questions being included.

Gay marriage. The Church teaches that marriage is only between a man and a woman, for a life time. Why? Simply biology. Puzzle pieces. Love and pro-creation are part of every marriage.

I can not begin to understand the cross gay people carry. Or transgendered folk bear.  I do know the burden of carrying my own cross of life disabled with TBI. I trust that God has gift in this cross and that when it is God's will for this cross to be removed (on either side of death's veil), I will gladly accept healing. And I'll look forward to discovering just exactly who God created me to be, and how these things that I don't understand will have imminent clarity.

Church teaching in these matters is clear. How people who are born with them are to bear their cross is an entirely poorly explored area.

What would Jesus Do?

Jesus warmly embraced and accepted people who were clearly sinners and then challenged them to "go forth and sin no more." (The woman at the well). This remains the Church's action as well, except that we sometimes overemphasize the "sin no more" part, and don't see (and or having it dismissed by the media and political agendas) the "embrace, accept" precursors inherent to individual ministry. Why? Because they happen individually, privately, pastorally. As they should.