Young voices in the gender debate

School-age children are exercising their own freedom of speech in the nation’s gender debate and not all adults are happy about it. In Massachusetts, which is led by Maura Healey, one of the country’s two first lesbian governors, there were at least two student uprisings in the spring.

In March, 12-year-old Liam Morrison (left) from Middleborough, was sent home early from Nichols Middle School for wearing a T-shirt with a phrase school officials told him made some students feel “unsafe.” His shirt read, “There are only two genders.”

“I have been told that my shirt was targeting a protected class,” he told the local school board. “Who is this protected class? Are their feelings more important than my rights?” With the assistance of the Alliance Defending Freedom, an IBSA ministry partner, his family has filed a federal lawsuit against school officials and the Town of Middleborough.

When Pride Month arrived in June, there were schools still in session that celebrated it. On the designated day, some students at Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington opted out of wearing rainbow shirts instead choosing to wear red, white, and blue. Others tore Pride posters off the walls while chanting, “My pronouns are U.S.A.”

Healy expressed her disappointment and said, “It doesn’t represent who we are as a state.”

Of the estimated 1.6 million self-described trans and non-binary Americans aged 13 and over, 31% take cross-sex hormones and 16% opt for surgery, according to research by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) from the end of 2022.

Others forms of transitioning include dressing in clothing of the opposite sex (77%), hairstyle/ style of dress (76%), and changing their birth name (57%). That same research showed a surprising 62% said they had come out by age 25, with 31% having come out by age 17.

Pushback in the states

Since 2021, 20 states have passed laws prohibiting gender-reassignment surgery and hormonal treatment, most of them in the first half of this year. Illinois wasn’t one of them. Instead, in its spring 2023 session, the General Assembly passed a trio of bills that one assistant to the governor said were intended to make the state more “welcoming, affirming, and inclusive” to the LGBTQ communities.

In contrast, neighboring states such as Indiana passed laws requiring schools to notify parents if their child requests a pronoun or name change. And in Iowa, new laws prevent doctors from performing gender transition procedures on minors. They also prevent trans students from entering school bathrooms or changing rooms that don’t match their biological sex.

In 2023, 17 states have passed laws prohibiting gender-reassignment surgery and hormone treatment in minors bringing the total to 20 states: six states have placed bans on the use of bathrooms and other facilities segregated by sex for a total of nine. And four more states passed laws barring youths from competing in sports by gender identity, not their biological sex, for a total of 22. But, again, not in Illinois.

There is concern that judges will strike down these laws based on what some call the “dangerous politicization” of the transgender agenda. In June a federal court overturned an Arkansas law banning the provision of sex-change procedures to minors—off-label “puberty blockers,” opposite-sex hormones, and surgery. Judge James M. Moody Jr.’s verdict cited the Endocrine Society’s “widely-accepted clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of gender dysphoria” among reasons to overturn the restrictions.

In a June 28 Wall St. Journal op-ed by Roy Eappen, a practicing endocrinologist, and Ian Kingsbury, research director at Do No Harm, the two claim the Society has been co-opted by activists and that the guidelines are based on “flimsy evidence...despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary.”

They argued that in the U.S., “medical professionals are being cowed into silence and coerced into providing treatments they know are dangerous to children” by activist-controlled groups.

At the same time, the medical establishment in Europe has taken steps back from “gender affirming care” as it is practiced in the U.S., due to concerns over the physical and emotional wellbeing of children. England, Ireland, Sweden, and Finland have all put restrictions in place for treating minors, while health officials in Norway, Belgium, France, and Italy have also begun raising serious concerns.

Increasingly, the U.S. stands alone in its ready prescription of gender reassignment for minors.

Even some who have led the more radical forms of gender reassignment are acknowledging concern for minors. Blair Peters is a surgeon at Oregon Health & Science University who identifies himself as “queer” and performs irreversible transgender surgeries on pre-pubescent children. In a recent online video, he acknowledged the difficulty of obtaining consent from young children who fail to understand the risks and long-term consequences associated with such surgeries. He said they lack the understanding of the often life-long physical pain they will endure, limited use of the newly created organs, and still experimental nature of these surgeries.

“We’re kind of learning and figuring out what works,” said Peters. He described some of the surgeries as having a “really demanding post-operative care process.”

Caring for people

The evangelical church doesn’t often look for allies in secular culture, but in terms of pushback on wholesale acceptance of transgenderism, one measure of resistance is coming from beer drinkers. An ad campaign for Budweiser that featured transwoman Dylan Mulvaney may prove to be a tipping point in the culture. Budweiser lost 30% of its sales due to protests after the company platformed Mulvaney in April.

A leader in the Christian response to transgenderism describes the movement as one “that is won or lost by social conditioning.” Katie McCoy said. “We need to decide as (God’s) people whether we’re going to listen to the whims of culture and we’re going to follow after our own personal desires or going to see what God desires for us.”

McCoy is director of Women’s Ministry at Texas Baptists (BGCT) and the author of To Be a Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond (B&H Publishing, 2023). As a measure of its rapid social acceptance, she points out that in 2017, there was only one gender reassignment clinic in the U.S. By 2022 there were 50.

Leading the move to surgical reassignment is first a shift in language, such as self-selected pronouns. “Language is now seen as something that creates reality. It no longer reflects what it

Legal pushback in many states

is,” McCoy told Baptist Communicators at their annual meeting in April. “You can become whoever or whomever you want to be.”

Much of gender dysphoria in males can be traced back to pornography, McCoy shared. “It’s a secret in the trans community.”

She explained that we live in a post-Christian culture that still hangs on to some of the “virtues of Christianity but got rid of its exclusive claims.” They include the exclusivity of Christ and sexual ethics. “People want the Kingdom, but without the King,” said McCoy who also holds a Ph.D. in systemic theology from Southwestern Seminary where she served on faculty for five years.

Southern Baptists, through multiple statements, have affirmed that gender is God-given, self-evident, and not to be tampered with. But in these days of gender fluidity, a compassionate response is called for. This is especially challenging for pastors balancing truth and love in this environment,

Rob Collingsworth, director of strategic relationships at Criswell College and a member of the 2023 SBC Resolutions Committee, said the committee tried to approach the topic in a way that “balances grace and truth.”

While he believes Southern Baptists “hold genuine sympathy and care and compassion for those affected by gender dysphoria, we can also state very plainly that the long-term effects of gender transitions on children are devastating. While that may be a very controversial opinion in the world in 2023, that is a very uncontroversial opinion among Southern Baptists.”

The resolution declares “God created humans in His own image as distinctly male and female.” While opposing their actions, the resolution extends the love of Christ along with “compassionate care and tender mercy” to those with gender identity issues.

At the same time, it reminds them and the reader, that all are within the saving grace of Christ. It affirms government leaders who have made laws protecting minors from genderreassignment surgery and hormone treatments, while calling on those who have affirmed them to reject and correct their error.

Even in Illinois.

Law or policy banning genderreassignment surgery and hormone treatment in minors

Law or policy banning genderreassignment surgery and hormone treatment in minors is being considered

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Law or policy affirming genderreassignment surgery and hormone treatment in minors

SBC Resolution on Opposing Gender Transitions

Messengers to the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans approved the resolution “On Opposing Gender Transition.” Though non-binding, it is meant to as a declarative representation of SBC churches on the issue of transgenderism. Among its declarations are:

The Bible teaches that the differences between men and women are complementary, determined at conception, immutable, rooted in God’s design, and most clearly revealed in bodily differences (Genesis 1:28; Psalm 100:3), not in self-defined and ultimately false notions of “gender identity”;

These so-called medical interventions are not only spiritually destructive but also render otherwise healthy children sterile for life, impairing or destroying their fertility, reproductive organs, capacity for sexual pleasure, and at times causing lifelong medical dependency as well as unknown long-term consequences;

We call on legislatures to reverse any law or policy that supports “gender transition” interventions, undermines parental rights, or creates supposed sanctuary jurisdictions that facilitate these harmful interventions for minors;

We commend the legislatures who have undertaken just and praiseworthy action to protect children from “gender transition” interventions, have reaffirmed the rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, and have defended the free speech and conscience rights of religious believers from governmental efforts to coerce them into endorsing gender ideology;

We call on any members of the Southern Baptist Convention who are performing or actively supporting “gender transition” interventions to immediately repent and refrain;

We extend the love of Christ...to those experiencing identity or body-related distress and/or are currently undergoing or have undergone “gender transition” interventions.

Read more at SBC.Net/resource-library/resolutions