The Gender Agenda

The Gender Agenda

Text. Matthew 19:4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’

What is transgenderism?  Just a couple of decades ago very few people would have heard the word, never mind know what it meant.  Let’s with a quiz!  Just one question: What is a WOMAN?  Well, now that really is the big question.  In the USA, Ketanji Jackson, a nominee for the US Supreme Court, the highest court in the land was asked by a Senator, Marsha Blackburn, this same question.  “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Blackburn asked during the hearing. “No, I can’t,” Jackson said after confirming the question. The progressive judge claimed she was unable to provide a definition because “I’m not a biologist.”  Well, I’m not a biologist either, but I know what a woman is. I’m married to one!  On LBC Radio, on Friday 8th April 2022, the Rt Hon Emily Thornberry MP, Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales said, “Some women will have penises…” 

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

So, our subject in this talk is TRANSGENDERISM. To be ‘transgender’ is to cross over from being a man to being a woman, or being a woman to being a man, (as if such a thing were even possible). But as we shall see it is more than that, it is underpinned by a dangerous, religious ideology.  

Transgenderism really hit its zenith in 2015, when ‘Glamour’ magazine named ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner one of their 2015 Women of the Year for his/her work as a “Trans Champion.” Bruce Jenner, was a male American decathlete who won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal and in 2015 became the most prominent athlete to publicly declare himself as a trans woman. The publicity around that event, and around that person, propelled transgenderism into the media spotlight.

It’s in your face, and it’s not going to go away, and we need to decide on a Christian response. In his book, ‘God and the Transgender Debate,’ (Published by ‘The Good Book Company), Andrew T Walker gives us biblical principles to help us respond in a Christian manner, – he is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Apologetics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and most of the Christian material on-line seems to have had his input.  I’ve relied heavily upon his work when researching for this talk. Walker sets the tone of the debate when he writes, …There has rarely been a time in history when mankind has displayed such an open and wanton rebellion against God’s right to rule over humanity than in the modern transsexual movement.”

1. The Modern Ethical Dilemma.

And the latest dilemma? Am I a man or a woman,  what are my feelings telling me today?  It is a classic example of dualism, a form of gnosticism, the pitting of feelings against reality, with ‘feelings’ having the dominant role.  It really is ‘mind over matter’ – a mystical, transcendental experience, seeking some satisfaction in mutilation of the flesh, the supreme surrender to the worship on the ego – the self.   

Yet nowadays, there is a political movement, a huge pressure-group of people who are promoting ‘transgenderism.’  In their definition, it is the notion that there is a difference between your biological sex and your gender.  You can be born as a man, and yet believe that you are a woman, and vice versa.  You can be ‘confused about your gender.’  You can be ‘gender fluid.’  Think of the implications.

• Men using women’s toilets because they ‘identify as women’ – and how many women would feel comfortable going to the toilet, using the facilities, knowing that a big hairy bloke in a skirt is standing next to them?  In an extreme case, a male prisoner who ‘identified as a woman’ was moved to a women’s prison, where he sexually assaulted a number of woman prisoners.  
• Men dressed/identifying as women, competing in women’s sports, and of course winning medals, making women’s sports a complete farce.  Recently, the winner of a women’s college level swimming contest in USA was a man called Liam. Males claiming to be females sending female athletes to hospital. …. 
• Sex-change operations paid for by the national health.  Such operations require inflicting wounds, some of which will never heal.  
• Ridiculous situations, like when a woman who becomes a ‘man’ and sets up home with a man who has become a woman, and they decide to have children, and the so-called ‘father’ becomes pregnant…   Tampons put in men’s toilets and abortion rights for biological males.
• Parents who don’t have babies, they have ‘theybies’ – they wont assign any sex to their baby, will dress boys in dresses and girls in boys clothes, in the ridiculous notion that they can decide their preferred gender when they are older. Children too young to know what a puberty blocker is directed by adults into renouncing their birth sex. Public libraries using tax £££s to have young children read stories by drag queens.

Madness? YES, but modern society is buying it all. The soap operas are indoctrinating the masses to accept this foolishness, political correctness dictates that Mother and Father are replaced by Parents 1 and 2, Bride and Groom replaced by ‘the Wedding Couple’ and Ladies and Gentlemen are no more.  Christians need to be aware of these matters and need to know how to react, with firmness, biblical faithfulness, and loving concern.

2. Science and Transgenderism.

The mantra of the Covid lockdowners was ‘FOLLOW THE SCIENCE.’ But when it comes to Transgenderism, the science is certainly NOT to be followed! Transgenderism requires a complete denial of biology – and last time I checked biology was still a science.  Let’s think about some of the branches of science where transsexualism conflicts…

• Transgenderism and anatomy. There is no ‘transgender gene.’ Physiologically and psychologically we are different.  Someone once wrote a book, entitled ‘Men and from Mars, Women are from Venus.”  Implication was that we are poles apart – like we are from different planets!  Certainly our physical makeup is different.  Our brains work differently – so that men can never find things in cupboards, and women find it hard to read maps!  The male body has a greater bone mass, and has a bigger capacity to oxygenate itself.  There are differences in the chromosome structure.  Women have a genetic code that consists of two X chromosomes.  Men have a genetic structure that differs, with an XY code.  
• Transgenderism and pathology.If a man was to dress as a woman, call himself by a woman’s name, and have hormonal treatment and surgery to adjust his physical appearance to be more like a woman’s – and he died and was buried, and 500 years later an archeologist discovers his bones – he’ll be declared as a man – not as a woman.   
• Transgenderism and psychiatry.  Transgenderism as a mental illness.  In 2015, Dr. Paul R. McHugh, at that time the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, that ‘transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.’  It was standard medical and psychiatric understanding at that time. I wonder if he  or one of his colleagues would write that nowadays. Incidentally, he also conducted research that showed that the suicide rate among transgendered person at that time was 20% higher than average.  That’s important, because the risk of suicide is often used as an emotional weapon by those who don’t want you to question their gender identity or sexual orientation. (“You Christians, your hurtful remarks, calling people sinners, and telling them that their lifestyle is an abomination – is it any wonder young people are committing suicide…”) 
• Transgender and psychology.  One of the most pernicious aspects of the transgender agenda is that parents – usually a mum – will decide that their little child is displaying symptoms of gender dysphoria, – perhaps their little boy being girlish, or playing with girls, or liking a doll  whatever… and little boys and girls, as young as five are being encouraged to think that they are not living in the correct body.  Too young to decide what time they want to go to bed, they are allowed to decide what gender they identify with, and are taken along to a doctor or a clinic, and are dressed up as the opposite sex, – they are given gender-appropriate toys, their name is changed. Their school teachers are made to go along with this charade, and when puberty approaches they are given puberty blocking hormones, and later body – mutilating surgery to remove the outward physical evidences of their natal sex.  Here’s a story I read on Twitter, a thread posted by someone calling herself Athena…

Athena.  At 15 years old, I told my parents I thought I might be trans and was referred to a psychologist once my PCP was informed.  Then, at 16 years old, after only 5 months of therapy, I underwent a double mastectomy for gender dysphoria. I started hormones after the surgery.  None of that was enough for me, I still felt incomplete and desperate.  At 17 years old, I had implants put in my face to appear more masculine. At 19 I detransitioned. I had my facial implants removed, I stopped testosterone, and I now deal with horrible health issues.  I have my breast reconstruction surgery this month and I’m hoping to move forward in life and continue advocating for children and other detrans people. After my transition, I am left with immense scarring, countless health issues, nerve damage, and possible infertility. I am autistic and had trauma previous to transition, my doctors and psychologists were all informed of this but still chose to tell my parents and myself that without transitioning I would end up committing suicide due to my gender dysphoria.

Glenn Stanton, of Focus on the Family wrote an article last year in ‘The Federalist’ in which he notes that the largest and oldest clinic worldwide dealing with gender dysphoria does not recommend the pre-pubescent treatment of the disorder:-

A 2012 article published in the Journal of Homosexuality and later re-printed in the medical text “Treating Transgender Children and Adolescents: An Interdisciplinary Approach” explains: “Because most gender dysphoric children will not remain gender dysphoric through adolescence, we recommend that young children not yet make a complete social transition (different clothing, a different given name, referring to a boy as a ‘her’ instead of a ‘him’) before the very early stages of puberty.”

These leading Dutch scholars explain that not facilitating such changes in children this age protects the overwhelming majority of children who eventually overcome their dysphoria quite naturally. This protects them from “having to make a complex change back to the role of their natal gender” because these young people have “indicated how difficult it was for them to realise they no longer wanted to live in the role of the other gender and to make this clear to the people around them.”

The doctors add: Parents are furthermore advised to encourage their children, if possible, to stay in contact with children and adult role models of their natal sex as well, [and] we advise them to encourage a wider range of interests in objects and activities that go with the natal sex.

Clearly, they do not encourage treating children as if their early pre-pubescent dysphoria is reality. This is the advice from what has become  known in the clinical literature as “The Dutch Protocol.” It was developed and practiced at one of the largest gender clinics in the world, the Centre of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria at the University of Amsterdam.

In that same article, Stanton references Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and editor of the journal ‘Archives of Sexual Behaviour.’ Dr. Zucker was selected to chair the American Psychiatric Association’s Workgroup on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders that developed the clinical criteria on gender dysphoria for the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States. Zucker also helped write the “standard of care” for gender dysphoria for the World Professional Association of Transgender Health.  In a 2020 article in the journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Zucker contended that mental health clinicians, parents, paediatricians, and teachers should resist the move toward unquestioned affirmation of a child’s gender dysphoria.  Zucker wrote, In my view, there are reasons to be skeptical about the merit in recommending an early gender social transition as a first-line treatment. … If one peruses carefully the follow-up studies of young children with gender dysphoria (or traits of gender dysphoria), the majority of such children do not have gender dysphoria when followed up in adolescence or adulthood. (Op.Cit)

That’s what ‘the science’ really is!  But more importantly, what is…

4. The Biblical Teaching. The Biblical position on gender, is that there are only two genders, male and female, and God made them that way, we don’t get to choose. Cf Genesis 1-2.God made creation ex-nihilo, out of nothing and the peak of that creation was mankind, made especially to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  So:-

1. He created us in His own image.  Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them..  Our MALE AND FEMALE gender is part of God’s image.  Taken together, as men and women, we are, in this very first mention, declared to be in the image of God, and it must indicate the importance of the male/female binary.
2. He created us to COMPLIMENT EACH OTHER. Have you noticed that in creation, the picture seen in the first two chapters of Genesis is one where divinely orchestrated binaries are fixed, intentional blessings for the benefit of creation and of mankind: Heaven and Earth, Night and Day, Land and Sea, Male and Female. Genesis 2:21-23 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. 23 And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”
3. He created us as SEXUAL beings.  24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Now all of that is God’s plan, God’s design for humanity.  Our BODIES are GOOD. God looked at his creation, and he declared it to be good – so our bodies are not, as the Greeks and the Gnostics believed, a prison from which the soul needs to escape, nor as pagans believed, mere moving corpses, fit only to be mutilated in the worship of some pagan deity, demanding sacrifice, (child sacrifice or adult mutilation). In fact, God values our human body so much that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  God, in the person of his son took on human flesh, became a MAN, with male distinctiveness, honouring humanity.  And because his body was broken at the cross, because he was marred and wounded and mutilated and put to death, for me, for you, we do not need to mutilate our bodies to find purpose and satisfaction and salvation and victory.

And of course, as Christian believers we look forward to the resurrection, for Jesus rose from the dead, guaranteeing that we too will rise, – on the last day, when the trumpet shall sound, with PHYSICAL BODIES, to live with him, in God’s presence forever and ever, in the new heaven and the new earth, our bodies made like unto his glorious, resurrected body!

And our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit – the dwelling place of God the Holy Ghost, and we are being made Holy, our ‘journey’ is a journey into God’s holiness, to be holy as he is holy – to one day be made perfect in glory.

5. How to Witness to a Transgender Person.

As Christians, we don’t deny that some people are suffering and hurting.  SIN HURTS!  The sinfulness of mankind causes pain, and misery and sickness and death.  it has done so since Genesis 3, and will do so until Christ returns.  

There are people who genuinely think that they have been born into the wrong body.  The answer to that is not to adjust their body to make it conform with their broken minds, but to deal with their broken minds and lives.  And that is the nub of the issue.  Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder, the result of the fall, which needs to be treated as such.  There is another similar disorder, again where a sufferer thinks they are born into the wrong body, and believes that he or she is a disabled amputee in an able-bodied body.  He needs serous psychological help, not to have a healthy arm or a leg taken off.  How much worse then to physically mutilate a person by removing reproductive organs, when what the person really needs is psychiatric and spiritual help – they need the gospel.

How do Christians relate to a transgender person, or a person who is confused about their gender?  There may soon be a barrier to any such conversation; the desire among LGBT lobbyists, and our national parliament to ban ‘conversion therapy.’  Last week the UK Parliament had done a double U-turn on its proposed ban on so-called ‘Conversion Therapy.’  Conversion therapy is defined as any attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s a very broad definition, and when the bill is brought to parliament it will criminalise a lot of what takes place in personal evangelism, the application of the law of God, and prayer for conviction of sin, for example.  The Christian Institute points out, “Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to ‘go and sin no more’. But saying the same thing to a practising homosexual could mean breaking a planned new conversion therapy law.”  

Not just homosexuals – for if an unhappy, hormonally confused teenager, watching the media and new media videos about gender identity, were to come to his/her pastor, and express anxiety about his/her gender identity, that pastor would be forbidden by law from giving him/her proper biblical advice and counsel.  Even if that person is simply struggling with feelings that they do not want, and they are looking for guidance.  Isn’t it madness, that Conversion Therapy Bans will prohibit doctors, pastors, even parents from affirming that a child’s objective bodily anatomy is the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity, while at the same time encourage treatments that attempt to change a child’s physical appearance to align with their subjective feelings? For example, the the regular injection of puberty blocking hormones or surgical removal of unwanted body parts. So CTBs prohibit ordinary, simple conversations about what the Bible says about human sexuality, while giving the green light for boys to ‘convert’ to girls and vice-versa.  Perhaps that is the kind of ‘conversion therapy’ that should be banned.  But then, like many Christians, I believe that the real objective of such legislation is to normalise homosexuality and transgenderism and to further stifle debate and discussion on these issues.  Perhaps that’s the point, – perhaps that’s the agenda behind the push for such legislation in the first place.

It’s important for Christians to be clear about the nature of conversion. Christian conversion is NOT the product of THERAPY.  Here’s the Heidelberg Catechism, LD33 Q8 What is the true repentance or conversion of man? A. It is the dying of the old nature and the coming to life of the new.  That radical inward change is not achieved by good advice, by the administration of drugs or by non-clinical therapies, nor is it achieved by attempting to cast demons out of an afflicted person.  It is the sole work of God the Holy Spirit, quickening and regenerating the soul in response to the Word of God.

The Bible is ALWAYS our bottom line in any ethical issue.  The Bible is the INSPIRED and INFALLIBLE Word of God, and it contains the answer to every moral and ethical issue, not just today, but no matter what sinful minds may throw at us in the future.  On this and every other issue the Bible is our bottom line.  Walker:  A Christian worldview informed by the Bible can fully explain why people experience feelings of gender dysphoria. The Christian worldview is one that acknowledges that creation has been disrupted and is not the way it once was, nor how it will eventually be in the New Creation (Genesis 3; Romans 8; Revelation 21).

• Transgenderism damages our society. It removed thousands of years of understanding about make and female.  If what you are is determined by your sinful mind, rather than your physical make-up, nothing will remain stable in society.  Walker:- The transgender debate questions whether men and women, mums and dads are really real. … Erasing the biological significance of our maleness and femaleness destroys the script that God knit into human existence for how the sexes interact with one another and how children know the difference between a mother and a father.
• Christians should be passionate about truth, and compassionate toward sinners. It is the gospel that saves, and we must firmly and forcibly declare it. Walker:- At a time like this, Christians need the courage to defend a true vision for human flourishing based on the biblical understanding of being made in His image. We must … continue to say that, since God made us, he gets the ultimate say in who we are. …But all the conviction in the world won’t matter if we act or speak without compassion. Jesus did not aim to win debates. He sought to love people. So must we as his followers. As we ground our convictions in God’s unchanging, perfect, Word, we must speak with compassion in our hearts.

Finally. 

6. Can you be ‘transgender’ and a Christian?  

Jesus makes it very clear in his response to the Pharisees, that God created us in his image, to glorify him, as male and female.  This is the basis of all human relationships, it is God’s plan for man, and anything else is broken-ness and sinfulness – and that is why Jesus died at the cross, so that broken sinful men can be forgiven, and given a new life, where God’s purpose has been restored.  In an article in ‘The Critic,’ author Matthew Roberts reports on a letter sent to Boris Johnson, by two ‘prominent Christians’ – Steve Chalke and Ronan Williams, urging the PM to include transsexualism in his proposed ‘Gay Conversion Therapy’ ban.  They write, ‘To be Trans is to enter a sacred journey of becoming whole: precious, honoured, and loved, by yourself, by others and by God.’  There you have it, – transgenderism is a religion in itself.  It is a ‘sacred journey’ But as Roberts points out in his article, it is a vastly different religion from Christianity.  Transgenderism’s journey is following the heart, the sinful, polluted heart, that in its unregenerate nature is in rebellion against God.  For Chalke and Williams the self is god and must be obeyed.  Christianity is the direct opposite of transgenderism, for Jesus taught his followers that they should deny themselves, even when that means taking up a painful cross, and carrying it, and to seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.  Transgenderism is one of the awful outworkings of the warning of Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. 

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https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/23/judge-nominated-to-supreme-court-on-the-basis-of-her-sex-cant-define-woman/

https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/god-and-the-transgender-debate quoted in https://www.thegoodbook.com/blog/news/2017/07/28/transgender-debate/

What’s in a Name? Why Christians Should Be Wary of the Word “Transgender”

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/10/science-is-on-the-side-of-those-resisting-transgender-ideology-in-schools/