**Additional resources for this class are found HERE.
Introduction
1.
Key themes that connect the past few weeks
a.
Christian sexual ethics is dependent on the
whole Christian worldview with all of its theological resources
b.
Crucial importance of the body for Christian
thinking/theology
c.
1 Corinthians 6.12-20: Paul’s example of
engaging the topic of sexual ethics in the body of the Christ with the full
resources of the gospel
2.
In one sense this is the topic that was the
beginning for this series
a.
Glendale Community College Gender
& Sexuality: Current Controversies and the Common Good
b.
In preparation: Nancy Pearcey’s Love Thy Body
3.
My goal today:
a.
Orient us toward the topic by examining some of
the philosophical assumptions and consequences of Transgender ideology
b.
Cannot cover all aspects of this issue!
4.
Crucial distinction: transgender ideology vs.
transgender individuals
a.
Individuals: need pastoral sensitivity, wise
discipleship centered in Christ, and a community of loving fellow-pilgrims
i. See
Andrew Walker’s God and the Transgender
Debate (The Good Book Co., 2017)
b.
Ideology: needs refutation
i. Rooted
in an alien worldview and seeking to deconstruct sexuality in our culture
ii. “So
members of the church who do not experience gender dysphoria should not assume
that all transgender persons want to deconstruct sex and gender per se. There are voices in our culture that do want that, to be
sure. But the average person who
identifies as transsexual is unlikely to be that person.”
iii. “However,
most people sorting out gender identity concerns do so in a cultural context in
which a culture war has been taking place.”[1]
c.
Ideology manifests itself in cultural conflict
but it is ultimately a worldview issue
i. “Fate,
not God, has given us this flesh.
We have absolute claim to our bodies and may do with them as we see
fit.” --Camille Paglia in Vamps and Tramps[2]
ii. Entire
worldview wrapped up and presupposed in that statement!
1.
Nancy Pearcey à
need to address the issue at level of worldview
2.
“…every moral system rests on a worldview.”[3]
3.
Components of a worldview: metaphysics,
epistemology, and ethics
5.
Components of a worldview: metaphysics,
epistemology, and ethic
·
Consider the statement by Paglia…
Metaphysics
|
“Fate, not God,… we have absolute claim to
our bodies…”
|
Epistemology
|
Paglia
is implicitly claiming to “know” a lot about fate, God, our bodies, ethics,
and our ability to “see” what is best for our bodies.
|
Ethics
|
“…we may do with them as we see
fit.”
|
6.
Worldviews in conflict and conversation
a.
Proof: positive presentation of evidence and
reasons for truthfulness of worldview
b.
Defense: answering objections to one’s worldview
c.
Offense: critically probing the internal
structure and consistency of the other’s worldview
Transgender Ideology and Worldview
1.
Definitions of gender
a.
American Psychological Association—difference
between “sex” and “gender”
i. “Sex is assigned at birth, refers to
one’s biological status as either male or female, and is associated primarily
with physical attributes such as chromosomes, hormone prevalence, and external
and internal anatomy.
ii. “Gender refers to the socially
constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society
considers appropriate for boys and men or girls and women. These influence the ways that people
act, interact, and feel about themselves.
While aspects of biological sex are similar across different cultures,
aspects of gender may differ.”[4]
iii. “Transgender is an umbrella term for
persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavior does not
conform to that typically associated with the sex which they were assigned.”[5]
iv. “Notice
the politicized language: a person’s sex is ‘assigned at birth.’”[6]
v. “The
phrase ‘sex assigned at birth,’ i.e., imposed from outside, is now favored
because it makes room for ‘gender identity’ as the real basis of a person’s
sex.”[7]
b.
More radical definitions
i. “From
a medical perspective, the appropriate determinant of sex is gender identity.”
–Dr. Deanna Adkins (Duke University School of Medicine and director of the Duke
Center for Child and Adolescent Gender Care [2015])
ii. Shifting
paradigms[8]
Older Paradigm
|
Newer Paradigm
|
Sex à
biological reality
|
Gender identity à
destiny
|
Gender à
social construct
|
Sex à
social construct
|
c.
“The Gender Unicorn”
i. According
to TSER: “Biological sex is an ambiguous word that has no scale and no meaning
besides that it is related to some sex characteristics. It is also harmful to trans people. Instead, we prefer ‘sex assigned at
birth’ which provides a more accurate description of what biological sex may be
trying to communicate.”[9]
ii. This
diagram “deconstructs sexuality into five separate factors that call all
contradict one another.”[10]
2.
Gender is fluid and a social construct … even
the body is a construct!
a.
“It is a choice to refer to some bodies as male
and some bodies as female, not a fact. … It is an ideological position—and not
a scientific fact.” –Trans Activist quoted by Nancy Pearcey[11]
b.
This view “treats the body itself as infinitely
malleable, with no definite nature of its own.”[12]
c.
Goal of gender ideologues à de-naturalize gender
i. Deny
that gender has any grounding in nature.
ii. “Why
do postmodernists want to de-naturalize gender? Because once we reduce sexual
morality to merely a social construction, then we are free to deconstruct it.”[13]
iii. “Why
would anyone hold such an extreme view?
What’s the appeal? If the
body cannot be defined, then it places no constraints on our gender identity.
The goal is complete freedom to declare oneself a man or woman or both or
neither.
“The sovereign self will not
tolerate having its options limited by anything it did not choose—not even its
own body.”[14]
1.
Latest echo of the Serpent’s lie: “You will be
like God!” (Gen. 3.5)
2.
God-like quest to be our own Creators—to create ex nihilo simply by an act of one’s will
ii. Manifests
a low view of the body
1.
Cass Bliss “Here’s
What It’s Like To Get Your Period When You’re Not A Woman” HuffPost Personal
(August 20, 2018)
2.
“As someone with a
petite body and a chest that was once measured as a 32C, period swelling makes
my chest stick out significantly further away my body and that makes it difficult
for me to bind that part of my body. Binding is something a lot of transmen and
nonbinary menstruators do to flatten our chests if we have not had top surgery.
Personally, I bind because the sight of my chest pushing out against my shirt
makes me feel as if the world is seeing someone I am not. My breasts feel like incongruous
growths that do not belong on my body –- like giant skin tags that have nothing
to do with who I am. Until I can get them removed, the only way to make
myself feel more at home in my own body is to press them down, making my chest
as flat as possible. To do this, I use what’s called a binder, a specially made
article of clothing that looks like a much tighter cross between a tank top and
a sports bra.”[15]
7.
Nancy Pearcey’s concept of “Two Forms of Reductionism”[16]
Postmodernism
|
Gender is of product of social forces.
The
human will creates reality
|
Modernism
|
Sexuality is a product of material forces.
Materialism;
no teleology (purpose)
|
i. “Postmodernism
thus takes modernism to its next logical step. Modernism denies any purpose or teleology in nature. And if nature reveals no purpose, then
it cannot inform our morality.
Morality is de-naturalized.
Both are forms of reductionism.
Modernism reduces the human body to product of blind, purposeless material forces. Postmodernism responds by reducing
gender to a product of social
forces.”[17]
8.
Transgender ideology rests upon key
philosophical concepts: postmodern, antirealist assumptions
a.
Gender is fluid
b.
Transgender activist Judith Butler argues in her
book Gender Trouble…
When “gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself
becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine, might just as easily signify a female body as a male one
and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.”[18]
c.
“At the heart of the transgender movement are
radical ideas about the human person—in particular, that people are what they claim to be, regardless of
contrary evidence. A transgender
boy is a boy, not merely a girl who identifies as a boy. It is understandable why activists make
these claims. An argument about
transgender identities will be much more persuasive if it concerns who someone is, not merely how someone identifies. And so the rhetoric of the
transgender movement drips with ontological assertions: people are the gender they prefer to be. That’s the claim.”[19]
d.
“At the core of the ideology is the radical
claim that feelings determine reality.”[20]
e.
Philosopher Elliot Crozat argues that…
“These claims appear to rest on
the postmodern antirealist assumption that what one takes as reality is a mere
subjective or sociocultural construct.”[21]
f.
Professor Crozat goes on to give the
implications of such a view…
“Hence, there are no objective
natures, no human nature, no male nature, no female nature, and no such thing
as human flourishing that results from the proper functioning of the essential
properties and capacities of a human nature.”[22]
The Christian Worldview’s Response: Proof, Defense, &
Offense
1.
PROOF: Biblical, Theological, and Natural Law
Arguments
· As the
church responds to this revolution, we must remember that current debates on
sexuality present to the church a crisis that is irreducibly and inescapably
theological. This crisis is tantamount to the type of theological crisis that
Gnosticism presented to the early church or that Pelagianism presented to the
church in the time of Augustine. In other words, the crisis of sexuality
challenges the church’s understanding of the gospel, sin, salvation, and
sanctification. Advocates of the new sexuality demand a complete rewriting of
Scripture’s metanarrative, a complete reordering of theology, and a fundamental
change to how we think about the church’s ministry.[23]
a.
Creation: “God makes ‘male and female’ in
Genesis 1 and 2”
i. Texts:
Genesis 1.26-28; 2.7, 21
ii. “There
is much to unpack here, but for our purposes, the Lord is showing us that
manhood and womanhood are the product of his super-intelligence, and his desire
to be glorified by unity (one human race) in diversity (two sexes).”[24]
iii. “We
cannot thus see manhood and womanhood are evolutionary outcomes, but rather as
the very intention of God from the beginning of our world.”[25]
iv. “This
passage shows us that manhood and womanhood are essential properties. We do not see them as fluid, but in
fundamental terms as fixed.”[26]
v. “The fact that Genesis 2 reveals God as the
maker of the sexes leaves us with the unmistakable conclusion that they are
called to own their God-given identity as a matter of obedience. They cannot,
for example, fulfill the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 without living in
marital union. They must act as a man and a woman in their God-created
marriage; they have the joyful duty of being “naked and not ashamed” in
one-flesh union (Gen 2:24). The man and woman have no way to fulfill this
mission without full-fledged recognition of their distinctive design, their
complementary physiology. Manhood and womanhood as essential realities are the
ground for the survival and growth of humanity, the enactment and sustenance of
marriage, and the faithful pursuit of the missio dei in its early form:
populating and ruling the earth coram deo.” [27]
vi. God
creates male and female (Gen 1 and 2)
1.
Ordered toward reproduction (one of their tasks)
2.
Ordered toward this goal in different but
complementary ways
vii. Transcendent
goal: be an image of God’s relationship with his people
1.
“Gender identity and gender expression is about
God’s glory and about maintaining the God-created distinctions on earth that in
turn point to the ultimate distinction between God and his bride.”[28]
2.
“It is not just Hosea and Ephesians 5 that
highlight the symbolic and doxological nature of gender roles. The Pentateuch itself explicitly
identifies the parabolic nature of human marriage and of male-female
interpersonal relations when it portrays Israel, God’s covenant partner, as
‘whoring after’ and ‘committing fornication with’ other gods (Exod 34:11-16;
Lev 20:4-6; Num 15:38-40; Deut 31:16).”[29]
3.
“The stress in Genesis 1-2 on the way males and
females image God and the Pentateuch’s depiction of YHWH’s relationship with
Israel as a marriage pushes the reader to view one’s biological sex and gender
identity and expression as first and foremost about God. The rest of the OT highlights this
parabolic purpose of sex and gender distinctions in books like Hosea (chs. 1-3;
cf. Judg 2:16-17; Isa 1:21; 57:3; Jer 2:2, 20; 3:1; 3:8-11; 31:31-32), and then
the same is carried into the NT (see Matt 9:15; 12:38-39; 16:1-4; Mark 2:19;
8:38; Luke 5:34), most clearly where Paul portrays the church as Christ’s bride
(Eph 5:22-27; cf. Rev 19:7-9; 21:9).
To the level that we flatten the
inborn distinctions between maleness and femaleness we flatten the distinction
between the sovereign savior and the saved, between the exalted and the needy,
between the blameless one and the sinner. We take glory away from God and his Christ when we act as
though distinctions between men and women are non-existent. And we hurt the entire community both
in the way we fail to point them to the gospel righteousness and in the way we
open them up for God’s just wrath.”[30]
b.
Fall: “The fall of Genesis 3 represents an
attack—a successful one—on God’s plan for the sexes.”
·
The judgments handed down to Adam and Eve are
centered in their respective spheres of dominion-taking capacities
c.
Law: “God forbids cross-dressing in the old
covenant law.” (Deuteronomy 22.5)
i. “Separating
Deuteronomy from Genesis 1-2 leaves Deuteronomy without meaning. Connecting the two texts, however,
brings fresh light. God created
men to present themselves as men and women to present themselves as women. The Israelites glorified their Maker by
their personal presentation.”[31]
ii. “With
every law in the OT, we should, therefore, be able to boil it down into a
single principle of love [Rom 13.8, 10; Matt 7.12]. In Deuteronomy 22:5, loving others and God means that people
will maintain a gender identity that aligns with their biological sex and will
express this gender in a way that never leads to gender confusion in the eyes
of others. We should always be
able to distinguish boys from girls.
When our biological sex aligns with our gender identity and our gender
expression, we express love for both God and our neighbor.”[32]
iii. NOTE:
P. J. Harland responds to those who interpret Deuteronomy 22.5 in cultic or
military terms.
1.
Against the cultic interpretation:
“First, Dt 22 contains no other cultic legislation. Of course one must not make too radical
a distinction between sacred and secular, but even in this collection of
miscellaneous regulations a cultic rule would be out of place in a section
which deals with sexuality and the protection of life. The context therefore suggests that the
motivation is to be found not in the cult, but in the realm of marriage, the
family and sex.”[33]
2.
Against the military interpretation
“However,
this seems to read too much into the text. The immediate context of Dt 22:5 is
not of warfare, since 22:6 is not explicitly linked to military life, and if
the purpose of the verse was to maintain discipline in the army, would not the
prohibition have been more clearly linked to a military context? As it stands the rule is general and
not tied to specific circumstances such as war or cult. No explicit military connection is
made. The term keli can, but need not, refer
to a weapon, and may just mean a utensil or garment. The suggestion that Dt 22:5 is about military rules seems a
little far fetched. It is credible
to believe that this was a serious problem for Israel?”[34]
3.
“In short the prohibition of the wearing of
clothes of members of the opposite sex was not given for cultic or military
reasons, but to safeguard the division between male and female.”[35]
d.
Jesus: “Jesus affirms the goodness of man and
woman in Matthew 19.”
i. “Marriage,
however, depends on men being men, and living out God’s plan for them, and
women being women, and living out God’s plan for them. If we wanted to use modern terms here,
Christ—not shockingly—held an ‘essentialist’ or ‘integrity’ perspective on the
sexes.”[36]
ii. “This
passage has great import for understanding gender dysphoria. We are not free to remake marriage, as
Jesus teaches; we are not free to remake the sexes, for marriage depends upon
the essentialist foundation of two sexes.
The text does not speak directly against the inborn instinct to cross
gender boundaries, but it does help to build a foundation, a backdrop, by which
to reason our way to a biblical perspective on ‘gender identity’ and gender
dysphoria. Those looking to the teaching
of Christ himself for a softening of old covenant theology find none; instead,
Jesus not merely underlines the ancient witness, but adds the fullness of his
doctrine-norming authority to it.”[37]
e.
Apostolic Witness: “Paul calls men and women to
represent their given sex in 1 Corinthians 11.”
i. “This
passage has sparked much discussion, and rightfully so. It is material to our purposes, for it
shows us that the new covenant vision of the sexes is precisely the same as the
old covenant vision, in that it accords with essentialism. Men and women are not the same. They
are united as God’s creation but distinct from one another.”[38]
ii. “Paul
clearly taught that men and women are called to own their God-given sex in
order to glorify their maker by the power of Christ in them. We do not know, of course, the specific
hair length that the apostle desires in his teaching on differentiation between
the sexes. We feel some cultural
tension here. But we must be
careful not to press too quickly the ‘First-Century Teaching Only” button
here. An apostle of the new
covenant cut in Christ’s blood reinforces the kind of sex distinctions found in
the formation of humanity and the teaching of the old covenant. It is to the glory of God that men and women display the distinctiveness of
their sex. This is a matter of obedience;
it is also a matter of joyful, satisfied, God-blessed Christian living.”[39]
iii. New
Covenant teaching maintains role distinctions between man and women
1.
Instructions to husbands and wives: Ephesians
5.22-32; 1 Peter 3.1-7
2.
Instructions to local churches regarding
corporate worship, teaching, and leadership: 1 Corinthians 11.1-6; 14.33-35; 1
Timothy 2-3; Titus 1.5-16
3.
“It also calls for men to live as men, women to
live as women, and for the young to be trained to live out the gender role
related to their God-given sex (Tit 2:2-6). Paul exhorted Timothy to respect and encourage older men as
fathers, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as
sisters, in all purity (1 Tim 5;1-2).
All this instruction assumes that we can rightly identify those who are
men and those who are women.”[40]
f.
Eternal State—eternality of sexual
differentiation
i. John
Frame’s answer to the question, “Will We
Be Male and Female in Heaven?”[41]
“Scripture
doesn’t explicitly address this question, so we should not be dogmatic in
trying to answer it. But some broad Biblical principles may lead us in one
direction or another.
“We might be
inclined to answer “no” to this question because of Jesus’ statement in Matthew
22:30 that resurrected saints will neither marry nor give in marriage. In the
resurrection, earthly families will be overshadowed by the great family of God
(cf. Luke 20:36).
“I am,
however, inclined toward an affirmative answer: (1) Those who appear after
death in Scripture always appear similar to their earthly forms (1 Samuel
28:11-15; Matthew 17:1-13; 27:52ff.; Revelation 11:1-12). I would assume that
the men continued to appear as bearded (if they wore beards on earth), speaking
with masculine voices. This fact seems to yield some presumption, at least,
that we retain our sexual characteristics after death.
“(2) Even
angels (whom Jesus says we will resemble in the resurrection) tend to appear in
Scripture as men, rather than as women or as asexual beings (Genesis 18:2, 16,
22; Joshua 5:13; Hebrews 13:2).
“(3) Jesus’
resurrection body also resembled the form He bore on earth, even down to the
wounds in His hands and side (John 20:25, 27), although His new existence is
mysterious in many ways. At the resurrection appearances, I have no doubt that
the disciples saw a male figure.
“(4)
Sexuality, as we have seen, is part of the image of God, part of what it now
means to be human. It is possible that this resemblance might in the next life
be replaced with other kinds of resemblance. (“Image of God,” we will recall,
covers much territory.) But if we lose our sexuality, why should we not also
lose our arms, eyes, and brains?
“(5) Our sex
organs and secondary sexual characteristics have functions other than
procreation. They also image different attributes of God and express the
variety of human personality. Sex, after all, is not just reproductive
capacity. Stereotypes aside, men and women do differ in personality and in the
distribution of their spiritual gifts. The body of a godly woman often serves
as an appropriate accompaniment to her personality, reinforcing our impression
of her inner meek- ness and quiet strength. Similarly for men, mutatis
mutandis. We would, I think, sense something odd if Mother Teresa’s
personality were found in the body of, say, Sylvester Stallone, or vice versa.
“So here’s a
weak vote in favor of the affirmative: I rather suspect that we will
still be male and female in the resurrection.”
ii. Daniel
Heimbach also discusses this issue in his essay “The Unchangeable Difference:
Eternally Fixed Sexual Identity for an Age of Plastic Sexuality”[42]
“The
argument that God’s promise of bodily resurrection presumes the essential
nature of human sexual identity has additional scriptural validation in
accounts given by those who recognized Jesus after His resurrection. It also
finds validation in Paul’s revelation of an immediate connection or
relationship between sexual activity and the bodies we have now and the purity
of the eternal bodies we look forward to having after the resurrection.
Following Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples recognized the same male human
being they knew and loved before the crucifixion. Peter boldly declared that ‘God
has raised this Jesus [i.e., the very same man] to life, and we are all
witnesses of the fact’ (Acts 2:32). After Jesus’ resurrection, angels also
testified to His continuing male identity when they said, “This same Jesus, who
has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have
seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).
“These
accounts show that all who saw Jesus after His bodily resurrection just assumed
that He remained a male human being. As strong as this evidence may be, we must
acknowledge that it is indirect. The evidence is based on natural assumption
with no clear evidence to the contrary. But there is further evidence in the
New Testament that goes beyond conjecture. We also have direct evidence of
continued sexual identity after the resurrection in something Paul explains to
new believers in Corinth. Writing to the Corinthians Paul says something about
a link that is both strong and direct:
The
body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the
body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us
also. Do you not know that your bodies are mem- bers of Christ himself? Shall I
then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!
—1 COR. 6:13B-15
“Here
by divine inspiration Paul links sexual sin involving the bodies we have now
with the purity that must and certainly will characterize the bodies we will
have after the resurrection. Our sexual organs themselves, in Paul’s bold
language, are said to be “members of Christ” and thus are parts of our future
resurrection bodies—bodies that in their entirety God ‘will raise’ from the
dead—bodies that in their entirety God wants us to use now for His glory and
that someday He will also perfect for His glory through the resurrection. The
logical connection Paul makes here between our pre- and post-resurrection
bodies makes absolutely no sense (there is no logical lever connecting one with
the other) unless human sexual identity does in fact continue to characterize
human embodiment on both sides of the resurrection.”[43]
g.
Biblical Summary: Concluding thoughts from
Strachan
·
“All through the Bible, we are confronted with
an essentialist vision of the sexes.
From the first pages of the Scripture, to the witness of the old
covenant law, to the words of Christ, to apostolic counsel from the apostle
Paul, we learn that God cares about his people owning their God-given sex. In no era do the people of God have
freedom to blur the sexes; at no point in holy writ does God soften or modify
his anthropological design due to overwhelming neo-pagan cultural pressure.”[44]
2.
DEFENSE: Answering Objections
3.
OFFENSE: Critically Probing the Internal
Consistency and Practical Implications of Transgender Ideology
·
Note: The following stresses the negative consequences flowing from
Transgender ideology. There is a
place for “prudential” types of arguments as well as deontological
arguments. Consider the example in
Daniel chapter one. The
argument Daniel makes is a prudential argument:
Please
test your servants for ten days, and let us be given some vegetables to eat and
water to drink. Then let our appearance be observed in your presence and
the appearance of the youths who are eating the king's choice food; and deal
with your servants according to what you see. Daniel 1.12-13
This is a not a
"we must obey God; not man" argument. Rather, it is an appeal
to pragmatic issues. There are times when these types of arguments can be
used and used effectively. This is not to deny that explicit Scriptural
arguments ought to be used. And at times we should speak of our
fundamental religious commitments as constraining our obedience--this happens
in Daniel chapter three when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego simply refuse to
bow before the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar.
The words of Old
Testament scholar Christopher Wright are also worth considering:
“It is interesting
that a consequentialist view of ethical decisions is found precisely in the
Wisdom literature, which tends to be grounded in creation rather than a
redemption theology.”
“Possibly the most
interesting example concerns the Wisdom tradition’s sexual ethic. It is in full accordance with the law,
of course, but it is not explicitly sanctioned by law. Whereas the law simply says, ‘Do not
commit adultery, on penalty of death’, the Wisdom teacher says, ‘Do not commit
adultery because of the appalling consequences that you will expose yourself
and your whole family and property to.
It isn’t worth the risk’ (cf.
Pr. 5; 6:24-35; 7). Common sense
itself warns against what the law prohibits.”[45]
a.
Hurts and undercuts women’s rights
i. “To
protect women’s rights, we must be able to say what a woman is. If postmodernism is correct—that the
body itself is a social construct—then it becomes impossible to argue for
rights based on the sheer fact of being female. We cannot legally protect a category of people if we cannot
identify that category.”[46]
ii. Not
just a philosophical abstraction
iii. Ashley
McGuire—Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish
Male and Female—“the unintended consequences for women”[47]
iv. Example:
Kimberly v. Vancouver Rape Relief Society
1.
Fight to keep a biological man out of a woman’s
rape crisis center
2.
Kathleen Sloan—prominent liberal feminist and
pro-choice activist
“The threat that the gender
identity movement poses to women is that ‘gender’ is detached from the
biological differences between males and females (present in all mammalian
species) and consequently male supremacy and the oppression of women is
obscured and ultimately erased… Without being able to name humans male or
female, women have no hope of being able to protect ourselves from the violence
men commit against us, much less overturn the patriarchal misogyny that has
oppressed and terrorized us for millennia.”[48]
3.
“The gender identity movement, she [Sloan] said,
is just and abstraction of Descartes (in)famous line, ‘I think, therefore I
am.’ Today, she argued, it’s
become, ‘I think, therefore I demand that society recognize who I say I am
based on my subjective interpretation.’”[49]
b.
Undercuts human rights
i. Remember
Professor Elliot Crozat’s contention about the postmodern, antirealist
conceptions of transgender ideology…
“Hence, there are no objective natures, no human nature, no male nature,
no female nature, and no such thing as human flourishing that results from the
proper functioning of the essential properties and capacities of a human
nature.”
ii. But
this postmodernist view is at odds with the concept of rights in general.
“If the concept of natural human rights is sensible, then reality is not
a mere construct; there must be something objectively real and valuable to
serve as the basis of these rights.
“Objective rights do not exist on the postmodernists worldview,
regardless of how vigorously one believes in them. For a postmodernist to believe in objective rights is like
believing in centaurs (the character of Greek myth that are half-man and
half-horse). One can believe in
them, but doing so makes no significant difference in the world. Consequently, the supporter of transgenderism
cannot deny human natures and rights but at the same time assert the right to
define himself or to use a preferred restroom. Nor can he legitimately claim that his rights are violated
by gender dichotomist policies. To
do this is intellectually inconsistent, and perhaps an example of a
performative contradiction.”[50]
iii. Deep
internal contradiction between transgender philosophical presuppositions and
the quest for rationally grounded human rights.[51]
c.
Redefines the nature of family relationships. Nancy Pearcey states:
o “When
gender is de-naturalized, parenthood will also be de-naturalized.”[52]
o “Until
now, the family was seen as natural and pre-political, with natural
rights. That means it existed
prior to the state, and the state merely recognized
its rights. But if the law no
longer recognizes natural sex, then it no longer recognizes natural families or
natural parents, only legal parents.
You, as a mother or father, have only the rights the state chooses to
grant you.”[53]
d.
“Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity”—SOGI laws—lead to an increased
interference by the government into public philosophy and law
i. “By
sheer logic, SOGI laws must deny the
importance of biology.”[54]
ii. “These
legal changes do not affect only homosexual or transgender people. In the eyes of the law, no one has a natural or biological sex
now; all citizens are defined not by
their bodies but by their inner states and feelings… Your basic identity as
male or female, husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter, sister or
brother no longer follows metaphysically from your biology but must be
determined by an act of will.
“But
whose will? Ultimately, it will come down to who has the most
power—which means the state.”[55]
iii. SOGI
laws—presented as opening up rights to a discriminated class
1.
But, in truth, SOGI laws serve to impose certain
philosophical assumptions upon all…
2.
Under threat of punishment and civil sanction.
iv. “Every
social practice is the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it
means to be human. When a society
accepts, endorses, and approves the practice, it implicitly commits itself to
the accompanying worldview. And
all the more so if those practices are enshrined in law. The law functions as a teacher,
educating people on what society considers to be morally acceptable.”[56]
e.
Harms children by legitimizing unhealthy medical procedures and
penalizing alternatives that recognize the reality of gender desistance
i. Washington Post (2012) article
“Transgendered at Five”
ii. Transgender
activists plan of action: (Anderson, 120-121)
* Form of treatment…
1.
Social transition—new clothes, name, pronouns
2.
Puberty blockers
3.
Around 16—cross-sex hormones (the rest of their
lives)
4.
Age 18—sex reassignment surgery
iii. NOTES…
1.
Age for each phase is getting lower
·
July 2016 Guardian
reported that “a doctor in Wales is prescribing cross-sex hormones to children
as young as 12…” (Anderson, 121)
2.
“There are no laws in the United States
prohibiting the use of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for children, or
regulating the age at which they may be administered.”[57]
iv. These
medical practices are not driven by science but by a postmodernist ideology.
§
“That postmodern view is filtering down to even
younger ages. The mother of a
twelve-year old told reporters, ‘Some days Annie is a girl, some days Annie is
a boy, and some days she’s both.’
When the pair went shopping for Annie’s graduation outfit, they
purchased both a dress and a suit because they were not sure which gender the
child would align with for the evening.
The article helpfully explains, ‘Annie believes gender is more of a mental
trait rather than physical.’
Gender has become a purely mental trait with no grounding in physical
reality.”[58]
v. Dr.
Michelle Cretella—board certified pediatrician and president of the American
College of Pediatricians writes in the Journal
of American Physicians and Surgeons in 2016:
“To be clear, this ‘alternate perspective’ of an innate gender fluidity
arising from prenatally ‘feminized’ or ‘masculinized’ brains trapped in the
wrong body is an ideological belief that has no basis in rigorous science.”[59]
vi. What
is known? What does the evidence
show?
vii. The
fact of gender
desistance among children as they move into late adolescence.
§
“Experts on both sides of the pubertal
suppression debate agree that within this context, 80 percent to 95 percent of
children with GD [Gender Dysphoria] accepted their biological sex and achieved
emotional well-being by late adolescence.”[60]
§
Dr. Kenneth Zucker—psychologist who ran the
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto along with its Gender
Identity Clinic for 30 years—described by Ryan Anderson…
§
“He is perhaps the most frequently cited name in
research on gender identity and the editor of the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Zucker has been at the forefront of developing treatments for people
with gender dysphoria, and he headed the group that wrote the entry on gender
dysphoria for the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official handbook of the
American Psychiatric Association.”[61]
§
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Zucker noted…
“But the follow-up studies I’ve
done, and others too, show [that] a substantial majority of kids seen for GID
Gender Identity Disorder] in childhood show desistance—that is, when they’re
older they don’t want to be the other sex. We just published a study of 25 girls we first saw in
childhood and found that only 12 percent seem to have persistent gender
dysphoria when they’re older. We
find similar rates of persistence in boys.”[62]
viii.
The fact of the side-effects of puberty-blocking hormone therapies…
some known and some unknown
Ryan Anderson summarizes the
research on this issue in this way:
“No one really knows all the potential consequences of
puberty blocking as a treatment for gender dysphoria, but there are some known
effects of puberty suppression on children who are physiologically normal, and
these carry long-term health risks. Children placed on puberty
blockers have slower rates of growth in height, and an elevated risk of low
bone-mineral density. Some other possible effects are ‘disfiguring
acne, high blood pressure, weight gain, abnormal glucose tolerance, breast
cancer, liver disease, thrombosis and cardiovascular disease.’ And, of course, all of the children who persist in their
transgender identity and take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will be
infertile.”[63]
ix. The
fact of the
“self-fulfilling nature” of transgender activists’ protocols for puberty
suppression
·
“In a follow-up study of their first 70 eligible
candidates to receive puberty suppression, de Vries and colleagues documented
that all subjects went on to embrace a transgender identity and request
cross-sex hormones. This is cause
for concern. There is an obvious
self-fulfilling nature to encouraging a young man with GD [Gender Dysphoria] to
socially impersonate a girl and then institute pubertal suppression. Given the well-established phenomenon
of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating a girl alters the
structure and function of the boy’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that
will make identity alignment with his biologic sex less likely. This, together with the suppression of
puberty that further endogenous masculinization of his brain, causes him to
remain a gender non-conforming prepubertal body disguised as a prepubertal
girl. Since his peers develop into
young men and young women, he is left psychosocially isolated. He will be less able to identify with
being male and more likely to identify as ‘non-male.’ A protocol of impersonation and pubertal suppression that sets
into motion a single inevitable outcome (transgender identification) that
requires a life-long use of synthetic hormones, resulting in infertility, is
neither fully reversible nor harmless.”[64]
x. Transgender
ideology subjects children to experimentation with life-long consequences
“The
treatment of GD [Gender Dysphoria] in childhood with hormones effectively
amounts to mass experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are
cognitively incapable of providing informed consent. There is a serious ethical problem with allowing
irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too
young to give valid consent themselves.”[65]
[4]
American Psychological Association, “Answers to Your Questions About
Transgender People, Gender Identity and Gender Expression,” (2014), 1—online: http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.pdf.
[15]
Cass Bliss, “Here’s What It’s Like To Get Your Period When You’re Not A Woman” HuffPost Personal (August 20, 2018)—online:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nonbinary-period-menstruation_us_5b75ac1fe4b0182d49b1c2ed?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003.
[21]
Elliot R. Crozat, “Reasoning About Gender” Evangelical
Philosophical Society Website (2016), 3. Online: http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/art-Crozat%20(Reasoning%20about%20Gender-final).pdf.
[23]
Albert Mohler, “Why the ‘Concordance Reflex” Fails in Sexuality Debates,” The Gospel Coalition (September 10,
2014). Online: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/concordance-reflex-sexuality-debates/.
[24]
Owen Strachan “The Clarity of Complementarity: Gender Dysphoria in Biblical
Perspective” The Journal for Biblical
Manhood and Womanhood 21.2 (Fall 2017), 35—Online: https://cbmw.org/topics/complementarianism/the-clarity-of-complementarity-gender-dysphoria-in-biblical-perspective/.
[28]
Jason S. DeRouchie, “Confronting the Transgender Storm: New Covenant
Reflections on Deuteronomy 22:5” The
Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 21.1 (Spring 2016), 64—Online: https://cbmw.org/topics/transgenderism/jbmw-21-1-confronting-the-transgender-storm-new-covenant-reflections-from-deuteronomy-225/.
[41]
John Frame, “Men and Women in the Image of God” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by John Piper and
Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1991), 232—Online: https://document.desiringgod.org/recovering-biblical-manhood-and-womanhood-en.pdf?ts=1471470614.
[42]
Daniel R. Heimbach, “The Unchangeable Difference: Eternally Fixed Sexual
Identity for an Age of Plastic Sexuality,” in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, edited by Wayne Grudem
(Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2002), 281-287—online: http://www.waynegrudem.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Biblical-Foundations-for-Manhood-and-Womanhood.pdf.
[51]
For more on the general issue of grounding human rights see John Warwick
Montgomery, Human Rights and Human
Dignity (Dallas,Texas: Probe Books, 1986 and Paul Copan, “Grounding Human
Rights: Naturalism’s Failure and Biblical Theism’s Success” in Legitimizing Human Rights: Secular and
Religious Perspectives (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013)—Online: http://www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/Paul_Copan-Grounding_Human_Rights_in_Menuge_2013.pdf.
[59]
Michelle A. Cretella, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 2016), 51.
Online: http://www.jpands.org/vol21no2/cretella.pdf.
[62]
Alix Spiegel, “Q & A: Therapists on Gender Identity Issues in Kids” NPR (May 8, 2008). Online: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90229789.
[63]
Ryan T.
Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New York: Encounter Books, 2018), 128. Anderson
is relying on the research of Paul W. Hruz, Lawrence B. Mayer, and Paul R.
McHugh, “Growing Pains: The Problems with Puberty Suppression in Treating
Gender Dysphoria,” New Atlantis 52 (Spring 2017)—online: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20170619_TNA52HruzMayerMcHugh.pdf.
