…um, tell that to someone who needs to hear it. Like the parents who broached the subject by shitting all over their daughter’s life and identity at her own fucking funeral.
What a a disgusting, disrespectful gesture, and I hope the backlash from it hits them hard and keeps them from deriving any comfort from it.
Why do her parents’ wishes trump those of people who, you know, actually loved and respected her?
Regardless of whether I wanted to, I’d certainly deserve to if I had done so in a hateful, offensive, bigoted way.
How compassionate of you.
They could be tormented nightly by all the furies, and I would call it justice.
I already asked the same question (basically). @namenotreserved ignored my question as well.
I have a will for this exact reason. If I died tomorrow without a will, I’m pretty sure my parents would bury me as a man, with my former name. My will specifies otherwise. I hope that will be enough. Well … to be honest, I hope I never die, but that’s probably not too likely, so I’m glad I have the will.
as schgoliz said above
Putting anything about your funeral in your will is too late. It needs to be part of your medical directive, and the person who is named as your medical power of attorney needs to be trustworthy.
Why would you guess that? All secular humanists are definitionally atheists, and the very core concept of secular humanism is compassion and empathy. I’m trying to be diplomatic here, but it would seem you’re making an unwarranted leap of logic calling @namenotreserved an atheist because they’re unempathetic in their statements. There’s at least equal ground to say they’re of a religion that believes once the body is dead, there’s no part of the person left. I agree with the logic of the statement as an atheist myself, but I can still justify the fact that I am utterly disgusted with the behavior of the parents here, and find everything that @namenotreserved has said so far to be a deflecting apology for the parents’ reprehensible, vile, callous behavior.
In other words: Don’t we atheists endure enough negative stereotyping without using such stereotypes ourselves?
Because it’s irrelevant. If you think the custody of the body should have been granted to someone else, take it up with the authority that manages that.
I’m unempathetic because I think relatives should be left to grieve in peace, regardless of their views?
Perhaps you should try to stretch your empathy a bit.
By not accepting the person as it is, they gave up their link. Only genetics remained. Now they are attempting to force their will over the dead, after they couldn’t’ve overpowered the living.
That’s not grieving.
Imagine you had a horribly racist grandfather that, despite his faults, you still loved. Would you display his Nazi and Confederate memorabilia at the funeral as he wished, and if not, would you not be refusing to accept him as he was?
Why wouldn’t I? They are just things.
If that’s what the parents did, I wouldn’t even care to comment here because there wouldn’t be a story to report. Instead I’m seeing you apologize for what amounts to an act of violence against their “loved one” although how much they actually loved their daughter is questionable. They rejected her a decade ago, and deserve neither peace, nor respect for what they’ve done.
You’re the one here who has decided to defend the actions of people who didn’t care at all about what their daughter and her friends would have wanted. The funeral and memorial may not be entirely about the deceased’s wishes, but the parents had no moral right to desecrate her body, and erase her chosen identity. Perhaps you’d defend my own estranged biological parents if they decided to have me buried in a catholic cemetery with a full on catholic funeral against my own wishes. You’d be wrong-headed and unempathetic in that case too.
The parents here were wrong. They’ve acted in a shameful way. It doesn’t matter if they’re bereaved. There’s a chance I would be more empathetic to their stance if I hadn’t once shared it in the past, but I did, and yet somehow discovered how wrong, and frankly evil I was to side with these parents ideas of what’s respectful and loving.
You seem to be insisting that all they’ve done is try to remember her the way they wanted to. I suppose when you eventually die, some of the people might remember you as a shitstain. They’re entitled to do so. But I wouldn’t assume we’d all go out and slander your memory, erase all records of who you were, desecrate your corpse, and expect people to be proud of our actions, and defend us saying “that’s just their special and valid way of expressing grief”.
I’m tired of reading your lackluster justifications, careful deflection of the issue at hand, and reprehensible intellectual dishonesty.
I am not concerned (at the moment) with the legal niceties of who should have received the right to arrange the funeral. What I request is that you offer (if you can) a moral reason why the feelings of the parents should be placed above the feelings of those who genuinely accepted Jennifer Gable for herself. Surely, she would not have wanted her friends to be distressed by this mistreatment of her body.
For that matter, it would be a convenient occasion to bury them with his mortal remains. Everyone wins.
Inherit, sell, ka-ching.
How would you impartially decide who should be distressed by the treatment of her body? Shouldn’t the closest relatives be chosen by default, when the deceased has not indicated a preference?
Legally, I imagine the parents are in the right. Morally, I feel that the deceased’s wishes should be respected. Jennifer Gable quite clearly indicated a preference to identify as a woman. To so utterly dismiss this no doubt hard fought battle, one decade of her life, is the furthest thing from respect.
Quite frankly, if Jennifer had no one else to mourn her but her parents, I’d be inclined to shrug this off. But this situation doesn’t merely insult her, it insults everyone who genuinely loved her for who she was. Through their actions, her parents aren’t showing love for anything except their fantasy of who they wanted their child to be. Jennifer would not have wanted her true loved ones to be treated like this. I see no justification for granting her parents any sort of moral high ground.
