Gender Identity

            

            I want to briefly discuss the matter of gender identity. The devotion of the political Left to diversity, equity, and inclusion – or DEI – borders on an ideological state religion. If the goal were to have treat all persons the same before the law, it would be consistent with American values. However, turning a gender identified apology into warring groups is against the value of individual rights and justice.

     

          In 2024, the Equality Act would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination because of sex, to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Presented as protecting fundamental rights, it would undermine some existing fundamental rights, like women’s rights to safety and privacy in women’s spaces (including women’s prisons) and their right to fair competition in sports. The bill could also undermine children’s right to grow up without having their growth stunted by experimental transgender medical interventions. Doctors and psychologists who support medical interventions euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care” acknowledge that the side effects of such drugs are not fully known. They also admitted that teenagers have contracted cancer due to cross-sex hormones and that those drugs could permanently stunt a child’s growth. Further, it provides for sexually explicit materials in school libraries, leading to opposition that the political Left refers to as book banning and which they defend as necessary for LGBTQ+ children to see themselves in literature. Such books are not banned, for they can still be published, parents can still buy them, and children can read them, but such actions do restrict their spread to minors in a school setting.

Here is a significant divide between the political Left and Right. 

            In Jewish and Christian thinking, God made humanity in the image of God as male and female (Gen 1:27, 5:1-2). The verses link the creation of both male and female directly to the image of God. Christian theology presupposes human destiny is toward fellowship with God based on this notion of human creation in the image of God. Jesus also refers to the creation of humanity as male and female (Mark 10:5=Matt 19:4). 

            We now know that biologically, some persons are born with a defect that blurs the distinction between male and female. Usually, a doctor and/or the parents decide and make surgical decision as to which gender the child will be. The point is that there is a biological reality involved. It still takes a combination of XY chromosomes to make one male or female. 

            Thus, I begin with biological fact that finds support in the theological affirmation of our creation in the image of God as male and female. 

            From a Christian perspective, here is something I need to stress. Anyone who is confused about their identity is my neighbor, and Jesus calls us to love them. Love and inclusion within the love of God does not depend upon the clarity or lack of it concerning gender identity. However, I also believe that what they do not need is a culture that encourages such gender confusion and supports it.

           Here is an example. One doctor who performs sex change surgeries said that nobody believed in traditional ideas about biological sex anymore; only “dinosaurs” would believe such antiquated notions. Such denial of the mere existence of a countervailing argument seems like a common feature of the progressive. It leads to the desire to cancel opinions such as I hold here. 

            Here is a second example. At a congressional hearing, when asked, “Can biological men become pregnant and give birth?” a doctor from Planned Parenthood said, “Men can have pregnancies. … Somebody with a uterus may have the capability of becoming pregnant, whether they are a woman or a man.” 

            Here is a third example. When Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson cannot define the word “woman,” it seems like we are entering the realm of the absurd. It seems like the progressive is abandoning rationality on purpose. 

            Has the world become too absurd to satirize it (G. K. Chesterton)? 

            I offer a few questions to ponder on the matter of gender identity.

            Are we really to replace the label “woman,” as Bette Midler put it, with “birthing people, “menstruating persons,” or “people with vaginas”? 

            Are biological men like Lia Thomas, who “won” the 2022 NCAA Division Women’s 500-meter Freestyle, but who are transgender women to compete against women in sports? 

            Is it true that just because you change your body parts you become woman? 

            Are you “transphobic” if you suggest that only women can get pregnant? 

         Seeking legal enshrining of this ideology presents a danger to liberty. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and anyone else who maintains that marriage is a lifelong conjugal union between one man and one woman will be branded a bigot and driven from the public square and marketplace. Anyone who owns a small business related to the wedding industry — photographers, bakers, website designers, venue owners, caterers, florists — will be sued into oblivion if they refuse services to same-sex couples. Religious colleges and universities will lose their tax-exempt status. Religious institutions of every kind, if they hold to their teachings and traditions about marriage, will face an onslaught from the Department of Justice and the federal bureaucracy. The goal is to intimidate opponents and parents from continuing to oppose harmful LGBT policies in education, medicine, and girls’ sports. By shifting the narrative to position all opposition to LGBT policies as “hate” and responsible for violence, they believe it can crush opponents. Such exercise of legal and political power to crush dissent ought to be of concern to anyone who values pluralism and rational discourse in the public square. For such persons, disagreement is violence waiting to be unleashed. Which is why censorship is the only way to achieve a more peaceful world.

            For many of us, all this falls into the realm of inventing ways of doing evil (Romans 1:30), opening the way to committing cultural suicide.

            Christians have a vocation to be children of their heavenly Father by the love they express to God and to their neighbor. They have a responsibility to abide by the teaching of their scripture and their tradition of 2000 years, regardless of the direction culture might travel for a season. They share this teaching through the love to which God called them. Where possible, engaging those who disagree in reasonable conversation would be an effective way to witness to the love of God for them. Such conversation shows the political other that disagreement means neither hate nor violence. Conversation, which always has its basis in mutual respect and the worth and value of the other, holds the possibility of transformation.

Parental rights, responsible medicine, and common-sense child safety policies regarding adult entertainment are necessary and important. Those who disagree with the LBGTQ agenda cannot allow themselves to succumb to their own darkness and hate the neighbor, but nor can they allow their political opponents to bully them into silence.