Why the transgender revolution can’t transcend human nature
By / Oct 13

As the world grapples with the transgender revolution, one area where the revolution refuses to subside is in the area of sports. There are now too many documented instances to count, but Christian legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom has put together a helpful clearinghouse of information on the subject.

As many might remember, the issue of allowing transgender-identified persons to compete in the category of their preferred gender identity rose to the cultural surface during this year’s Olympics when a transgender female (biological male) competed against other females in a weight-lifting competition. The athlete in question failed to advance, which, for some, may have put to rest the question of there being an unfair advantage in play when males competed against females.

But the issue shows no signs of going away, especially as a report from the European Sports Councils Equality Group is questioning whether innate advantages in male athletic performance can be reduced solely down to testosterone levels, which is what most regulatory bodies have tended to focus on in their rule-making.

What “retained differences” reveal 

The report offers these words summarizing their findings: “Our work exploring the latest research, evidence and studies made clear that there are retained differences in strength, stamina and physique between the average woman compared with the average transgender woman or non-binary person registered male at birth, with or without testosterone suppression.”

The language of “retained differences” is a massively revealing tell that we cannot ignore. There are admissions and clues given to us even from an unbelieving world that end up reaffirming God’s created order. It’s a sentence that also reveals why such a report needed to be written in the first place: “Retained differences” evidences an unwitting theological category for “nature” in general, and human nature in particular. Nature is a created reality (Genesis 1:26-27). The idea of “essence” speaks to there being a human nature known as male and female. And these categories, in Christian thought, are said to be immutable categories that cannot be transcended based on choice or self-willed preference. 

We know the nature of a thing by understanding its purpose, and purpose is never severed from a thing’s design. Hence, when we speak of male and female, we are speaking of those sexed persons whose bodily design bears a teleological purpose toward a particular end, namely, reproduction. As the Nashville Statement rightfully states, “the differences between male and female reproductive structures are integral to God’s design for self-conception as male or female.” The Nashville Statement’s wording testifies to the reality of an enduring gender binary. When God made us males and females, he did not make that an exclusively psychological category, but a physically enfleshed reality.

Even where testosterone is hormonally altered by medical therapies to make it virtually negligible to compete against women, that does not altogether reconfigure the innate advantages that males possess. There are more aspects to maleness than mere testosterone alone — such things as muscle, bone density, and anaerobic capacity. We cannot escape who God made us, despite our best attempts. Our true self will always shine through. The question is whether we will live in conjunction with it, or in futile opposition to it.

The underlying problem of the transgender revolution 

The report proposes several solutions to resolve transgender competition. But the attempt to resolve this dilemma will ultimately be pointless, because where you have a culture trying to suppress what is simply there by virtue of nature, human creativity will not, for long, withstand the natural flow of the universe. 

Where all interested parties in the report attempt to find supposed satisfaction in striking compromises, what it really does is reveal the underlying problem of the transgender revolution: When society takes the drastic action to separate gender identity from biological sex, it has done grave damage to the sustainability and equilibrium of gender and sex throughout virtually all segments of culture. The report seems to admit that there are no perfect solutions. It is the Christian who can help explain why that is: It is fruitless to treat nature as a malleable substance. It simply cannot be done without grave confusion and injustice happening.

This latest controversy reflects a truth of the Christian worldview: We are embodied beings whose sex is always brought to bear in our everyday life. While I might be more than a “male” as far as how I understand myself in the world, I am never less than a male. My experience as a professor, a husband, a father, and even as a friend, is an intrinsically sexed experience.

The sooner that our culture recognizes this, the sooner we can return to what is true.

4 ways to equip your kids to walk with friends who experience gender dysphoria
By / Jun 24

The actor Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen Page, cried in a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey. She had asked Page, “What brings you joy after transitioning from identifying as female to male?” 

“It’s the little things,” Page replied. 

Page choked up recounting looking in the mirror after having a mastectomy. Page had felt deep inner distress before the surgery when wearing a t-shirt. That distress was real — so real that Page went under the knife for breast removal surgery. Page’s relief at having them removed was obvious. That is serious distress.

In Genesis 1–2, God created two distinct biological sexes in his image to reflect something of himself. But humanity’s fall quickly followed. The fall affected all of the human condition, including biological sex, both internally and externally. Within our own bodies, the chromosomes that determine biological sex have been affected by the fall as much as those that determine Down syndrome, autoimmune disease, or infertility. Intersex is the modern term for a person born with a chromosomal abnormality and/or reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definition of female or male. According to statistics put out by The Intersex Society of North America, roughly 1 in 1000 people experience an actual biological chromosomal abnormality related to gender.

The American Psychiatric Association also acknowledges a mental condition known as gender dysphoria. It involves acute mental distress resulting from a perceived mismatch between biological sex and gender identity, a person’s self-conception about their gender. This is not the same as gender nonconformity, in which someone of one distinct biological sex prefers to behave or dress in a way more closely associated with the other. It is also distinct from being gay or lesbian. Page and others who experience gender dysphoria have felt such distress that they cut off their breasts or genitals as a result.

If you are a Christian who believes God created two distinct biological sexes to fully image him to the world, how do you walk faithfully with a son or daughter who is experiencing such a mental crisis? How can we equip our kids to walk faithfully with others as well? Here are a few principles that guide me, principles that I work to pass on to my children as well.

1. Listen first. 

My children don’t struggle with listening to their friends the way that I do, so this is more of the lecture I must give myself as a parent. I often think I know the answer from Scripture upon the moment I perceive there is a problem. That is pride, though. If ever there was a situation for the wisdom of James 1:19, distress around gender dysphoria is it. James says, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” 

I have often given the wrong advice — despite the best of motives to help someone honor God and Scripture — because I didn’t understand the situation. I had pride and unearned confidence in my own ability to diagnose what was going on and correct according to the Scriptures. Gender dysphoria is a particularly complicated mental health issue. The origins of body hatred to the point someone would cut off their penis or cut off their breasts are deep and complicated. 

James tells me to slow down as a parent, listen to what my child or one of their friends is actually saying, not what I assume they mean, and carefully seek to understand before responding with my own words. Kids experiencing true gender dysphoria are in a mental crisis. Listening can help diffuse the weights of conflict they feel, while advice one might give in response, even with the best of intentions, could push an already fragile teen to a scary place.

2. Ask deeper questions. 

Once the time comes to finally speak, start by asking deeper questions, not by simply dispensing advice. Kiera Bell recently won a lawsuit in the United Kingdom against the doctors who performed transition surgery on her when she was a youth. She recounts the distress she felt at the time: “I was an unhappy girl who needed help. . . . As I matured, I recognized that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause.”

Kiera had an abusive home situation. Her deepest struggle was with self loathing after her parents’ rejection. Many who experienced gender dysphoria in their teen years report that their acute distress with their bodies lessened as they aged. As they matured in their ability to handle other struggles in their life, or they moved out of abusive home situations, their mental distress over their bodies lessened as well.

If we or our kids have friends that are in such distress, it’s worthwhile to ask how things are with their parents or their friends at school. Are they feeling rejected? Do they feel unloveable as they are? Have cutting words from those around them caused them to hate themselves? Ask deeper questions, and listen well before offering advice or attempting to “fix” the problem.

3. Pray with gospel hope to the God we can all trust.

I tell my kids that if a friend in acute distress shares their struggle, then after you have listened and asked deeper questions, the best words to respond with are those of prayer: “I don’t have all the answers, but can I ask the God who created us for help?” Their friend may or may not know Christ. But we can still pray with them in hope, which leads to number 4.

4. Speak gospel truth. 

The good news of Jesus speaks into both the inner struggles of our broken sexual bodies and the outer struggles between our broken relationships. Jesus’ body was literally broken physically so ours could be literally healed. Some of us experience miraculous healing of various physical abnormalities during life on earth, but all of us are assured an eternity at peace with our perfectly resurrected physical bodies, perfectly male or female in the image of God. While some heavenly creatures do not inhabit eternal bodies, human beings do. 

Dr. Gregg Allison reminds us in Embodied, “God’s design for his embodied image bearers is that as we are in this earthly life, so we will be for all eternity: embodied.” Our bodies matter. God did not make a mistake when he made us male or female. We may wrestle with how God made us, but Christ’s embodied resurrection gives us hope that we will be at peace with the bodies he gave us for eternity. There is no dysphoria in heaven. 

As we train our children to engage culture wisely, we must recognize the very real issues that our broken bodies in our broken world experience in relation to biological sex. And in the midst of it all, we point our children to Christ as the hope we have for redeemed sexual bodies both on earth and in eternity. Christ, too, is our source to endure in broken bodies while they last on earth as we confidently wait for Jesus to return and make all things new.

Explainer: HHS reverses enforcement policy on sexual orientation and gender identity
By / May 12

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will interpret and enforce the Affordable Care Act and Title IX’s nondiscrimination provision and expand the definition of “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” 

Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the nondiscrimination provision of the ACA prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability under any federally funded health program or activity, executive agency, or entity under Title I of the ACA. 

How have other administrations interpreted Section 1557?

Under the Obama administration, new regulations were issued that expanded the scope of section 1557’s nondiscrimination by redefining “sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The regulations raised a number of significant religious liberty and pro-life issues. For instance, physicians would be required to provide gender reassignment surgeries and administer hormones to facilitate gender reassignment, including to children. They even required medical professionals to perform abortions in violation of the consciences. 

In response to the issuance of these new regulations, on Aug. 23, 2016, five states and three private health care providers filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas challenging the final rules in the case Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell. The District Court held that HHS erroneously interpreted “sex” under Title IX, that the final rule was arbitrary and capricious when Title IX “unambiguously refers to the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.” The District Court further ruled that the Final Rule’s failure to include religious exemptions likely violated the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

In 2020, the Trump Administration finalized a rule reversing the Obama administration’s regulations on Section 1557, and narrowed the definition of “sex.” Days after the Trump Administration finalized their rule, in a 6-3 ruling authored by Justice Gorsuch and styled Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court expanded the definition of “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” for the purposes of employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Office of Civil Rights used the Bostock decision as a justification for it’s redefinition of “sex.”

What’s next?

The HHS Office of Civil Rights could begin bringing enforcement actions based on this new interpretation of Section 1557 at any time. While the notice states that HHS will comply with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and all applicable court orders that have been issued in litigation involving the Section 1557 regulations, it is unclear what this means for religious healthcare providers and professionals. Medical professionals and providers who serve everyone would be forced to administer gender reassignment treatments if they provide the same underlying treatments for other conditions. That is, if a physician performs hysterectomies for cancer patients or hormone therapy for patients with hormone imbalances, HHS may force her to administer those same treatments for patients seeking gender reassignments.

The ERLC will continue promoting and defending the human dignity and religious liberty of all people and religious organizations with the Administration, on Capitol Hill, and throughout the public square.