homosexuality and transgenderism

A thought just occurred to me. You know that post I made a while back on "gender and sex" where I talked about how some people consider sex to be a physical thing but gender to be a mental thing? That is, some people think gender has to do with your self-identification. A person can have a male body and a female mind, in which case their sex is male and their gender is female.

Well, I was just thinking about how that fits into the whole homosexuality thing. What does it mean to be homosexual in light of this notion about gender being mental rather than physical? Is a person homosexual because they are into the same sex or because they are into the same gender?

Suppose Tom is physically and mentally male, but his friend, George, is physically male but mentally female. And suppose Tom buys into the whole notion of "gender identity," so he refers to George as a "she." And suppose that Tom has a crush on George. Would Tom be gay or straight?

Or suppose Lisa is physically and mentally female, and she has a crush on George. Would she be gay or straight?

Or suppose Gwyneth is physically female but mentally male, and she has a crush on Brad who is both mentally and physically male. Would she be gay or straight?

Or suppose Andy is physically male but mentally female, and he has a crush on Gwyneth. Would he be gay or straight?

What is evidence?

Some people define evidence like this:

E is evidence of T just in case the probability of T is higher given E than it would be without E.

Or in other words. . .

P(T/E) > P(T/~E)

I once used that definition of "evidence" in a debate to show that contrary to my opponent's view that "faith is not evidence" for the existence of God, faith actually was evidence for the existence of God since the existence of God is more probable given that some people have faith than it would be if nobody had faith.

I'm not sure that's really a good definition of evidence, though. Consider the existence of the Elder wand in Harry Potter. The Elder wand is a magic wand made from the Elder tree that is so powerful, it renders the wizard who wields it invincible. That's assuming the wand chose the wizards since in Harry Potter, the wand chooses the wizard.

Now obviously if there were no such thing as an Elder tree, then the probability of the existence of the Elder wand would be zero. But the Elder wand would at least be possible if the elder tree existed, which it does. That possibility might be extremely remote, but the probability would still be greater than zero. Something whose existence is possible has a better chance of existing than something whose existence is impossible, so the probability of the existence of the Elder wand is greater given the existence of the elder tree than it would be given the non-existence of the elder tree. From that, it should follow that the existence of the elder tree is evidence for the existence of the elder wand.

But doesn't that strike you as wrong?