Issue

She does a good job of educating the reader who knows little about the transgender community, but her primary focus is to provide guidance to Christians on how to accept and welcome the gender variant into their faith community. She helps her readers to understand that acceptance versus persecution of transgender Christians is biblically rooted and consistent with the teachings of Jesus. Sheridan finishes her work with several suggestions on how to open a dialogue within the church family to address the needs of the gender variant. I would highly recommend this book to clergy and church administrators along with transgendered Christians who have felt alienated by their religious experiences.

I would also love to know what happened to this family...

Excellent book. Interesting as an unofficial case study.

This is the kind of book you'll want to curl up with in a comfy chair. It manages to be warm, personal, and inspirational as well as practical. There's a LOT here, and it really runs the gamut--everything from domestic violence to spirituality to your more typical health and wellness topics. Ms. Oliver lists lots of useful resources, including Web links, and adds touching, often funny personal anecdotes to the mix. Her experience as a women's magazine editor really shows. And this isn't just a book for African-American women--I think that any woman would find plenty of material in here to interest her. A very welcome addition to the inspirational market!

The translation used is the New Living Translation, which is the one I prefer to read, and study in my daily devotions. Combined with the commentary, this makes the Bible accessable to today's woman.

The idea that universal health insurance would be less costly than our existing system is absurd. To insure 280 million people -- hundreds of thousands of which are addicted to crack, PCP and black tar heroin; hundreds of thousands of which are Mexican immigrants carrying new strains of tuberculosis -- taxes would have to be raised to astronomical levels. Moreover, with the government providing health care for anyone and his uncle, there would be no reason not to go to the doctor. If you've got a cold, why stay in bed and drink orange juice when you can walk into a hospital and receive professional medical care? In effect, the government would be taking away the incentive to stay healthy.

Great Britain's universal health care system, the NHS, which they adopted in 1948, turned out to be an enormous bureaucracy. The demand for health care instantly skyrocketed, as did the yearly cost of maintaining the NHS, forcing the British government to make massive spending cuts for the NHS. By the mid-seventies, medical instruments were a scarcity in British hospitals, and nearly three-quarters of a million people were on waiting lists. Also, Canada's single-payer universal health care system, trumpeted by liberals as a sensible alternative to our existing system, has kept patients waiting for several months to receive an MRI or heart bypass surgery.

Forcing me to pay high taxes to insure hundreds of thousands of drug addicts and disease-ridden third-worlders isn't "compassion" -- it's stupidity. It's not my responsibility to bring drug addicts out of their stupor -- it's theirs. If they're incapable of doing so, too bad -- I wasn't the one who jammed that crack pipe between their lips. In short, it isn't my responsibility to pay for a total stranger's irresponsibility.

The solution to the public's growing dissatisfaction with America's health care system is capitalism. That way, doctors and hosptials would be free to charge what they thought their services were worth; but they would also face risking losses if they charged more than they thought consumers were willing to pay. A market-driven health care system is what America needs.

His story was so fascinating, I read the book in less than a week. I recommend it to anyone!