GOD’S WORD AND TRANS-GENDER

an edited version of an article by Dr Peter Saunders

of the Christian Medical Fellowship

YOU may think there are few things more self-evident than the fact that humans are of two distinct types, male and female.

Females have XX chromosomes, female hormones and distinct sexual organs.  Males have XY chromosomes, male hormones, and very different sexual organs.  Don’t they?

But now we are told that gender is simply a social construct, the product of a biased society; that gender has no biological basis at all; that gender roles are forced upon people.  That it’s all simply a result of the way that people are being brought up.  And that gender is fluid.

When feminist and same-sex icons like Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell get called ‘trans-phobic bigots’ and are barred from speaking in British universities for expressing the view that ‘trans women’ are not real women then the situation is serious.

Real pressure is being put on people (1) to adopt a new ideology, (2) to use new language, (3) to affirm the beliefs of trans-gender people and (4) to take part in surgical and hormonal gender reassignment.  Some lobby groups want these things to be legally enforced.

The problem is increasing.  A family doctor in a British university town recently told me, “I’m seeing one gender conflicted teenager every day.  They all want to be referred to the gender reassign-ment clinic in London and they are all on anti-depressants.  What should I do?”There has been a huge increase in the number of children and teenagers referred to that clinic, with numbers doubling each year.  The same thing is happening all over the UK and in the Western world.  This new ideology seems to be quite contagious.  And now schools are accused of ‘sowing confusion’ in the minds of children by over-promoting transgender issues.

So what is transgender?  Is a ‘trans woman’ really a woman trapped in a man’s body?  Or is such a person a man with an unshakeable false belief that he is a woman?

As recently as 2013 doctors called this condition ‘gender identity disorder’.  Many doctors, like me, feel it should still be called that. We believe that to give sex hormones and gender reassign-ment surgery to transgender people is not only clinically inappropriate but an abuse of professional privilege.

But some doctors, driven more by cultural pressure than scientific evidence, have changed their minds.  They think we should offer hormones and surgery.  So what’s going on?  Let us be clear on two things.

First, there is such a thing as ‘intersex.’  It is where there are abnormalities in a person’s chrom-osomes, hormones, or external or internal genitalia.  Dozens of these conditions are recognised by doctors.  And there are fairly clear guidelines about how to treat each one.  Intersex is not transgender.  The chromosomes, hormones and genitalia of transgender people are either male or female.

Second, there is a real medical condition known as ‘gender identity disorder’.  It is now called ‘gender dysphoria’.  It is rare, affecting fewer than one in 10,000 people.  These people feel deep distress over the sex they were born with and they try to resolve such feelings by identifying with the opposite sex.

So this is the key question.  If there is a disconnection between the body and mind, then do you shape the body to fit the mind or do you shape the mind to fit the body?  Do you try to help a person be reconciled with their body through counselling and psycho-therapy?  Or do you give hormones and use surgery to mould a body to be like that of the chosen gender identity?

Well, it depends on whether you think the real problem is in the body or the mind.  And I, like many other doctors, am in the latter category.  I think we are being seduced and even coerced to think that the body, rather than the mind, is the real problem when there is no scientific evidence to back that up.

Everyone can see that a woman with anorexia nervosa is not fat.   But she has an unshakeable belief that she is.  So she radically diets and regularly purges herself.  How do we help someone in that situation?

Well, we certainly do not affirm her belief that she is fat.  Nor do we encourage her to diet .  Nor do we offer her liposuction.

Anorexia nervosa has a lot of similarities to gender identity disorder.  You have a person who is deeply dissatisfied with the body they have been given.  And they may be obsessively preoccupied and distressed by it.

A high proportion of people who suffer from this disorder also have other mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, personality disorders and autism.  For many these problems are not resolved with gender reassignment.  In fact hormones and surgery deal only very superficially with what is often a very deep psycho-social problem that does not lend itself to quick technological fixes.

How should Christians respond to the phenomenon of transgender?

First, we need to see it through the lens of creation.  The Bible is unashamedly binary.  Genesis 1 verse 27 tells us that God created man in his own image – male and female.  This is consistent with what we see in nature.  Male and female are not the same.  The differences are genetic, hormonal and physical.  Researchers have identified 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and women.

Second, we must appreciate that we live in a fallen world where our collective rejection of God (Genesis 3) has affected us at all levels; physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual.  Hence we find conditions like intersex and transgender.  People affected by these conditions need to be treated with the love and respect we are to show to all who are made in God’s image.  We are all tainted by the consequences of the fall.  We are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness.

Third, we must not capitulate to transgender ideology.  Loving people does not mean we must affirm their false beliefs, use their chosen name, admit them to the facilities they choose, allow them to compete as the opposite sex in sports events, and offer to them hormones and gender reassign-ment surgery.  That is not love.  It is actually a form of abuse.  You might get called a transphobic bigot or worse.  But the Bible, science and common sense are on your side.  God created us male and female.  It is that simple.

Fourth, we must grasp the gospel opportunity transgender presents.  Jesus welcomed all people but in so doing he did not endorse all their beliefs and behaviour.  Rather he called them to repentance and faith – to a life of obedience enabled by the Spirit, to be transformed by the renewal of their minds (Romans 12:1,2).  And he called them to find their identity not in their chosen gender, or anything else, but in him.

Fifth, we need to be better informed about gender identity disorder.  Helpful resources are available, for example: Gender Dysphoria by Rick Thomas and Peter Saunders, and Transgender by Vaughan Roberts.

And six, pray.  Pray for love and wisdom.  And pray that all may see what the Bible says about who we are.

Peter Saunders  July 2017