Mission America

Christian Commentary on the Culture

Male, Female or Other? The Assault of the 'Trans' Agenda

A book that’s been popular among teens in America for a decade is called Girl Goddess #9.

But please, don’t run out and buy it for the kids you know. Here’s why.

The book is a rambling, nearly incoherent collection of dark and depressing tales featuring sad kids in corrupted circumstances. That’s not how it’s presented, of course. This is all supposed to be “edgy.” But all the stories feature disturbing elements of child neglect and or corruption.

For instance, the story “Dragons in Manhattan” is about a little girl named Tuck who lives with two lesbians and one of them is her mom. As the story of this bohemian family unfolds, Tuck goes to school and feels ashamed of her household.

“No other kid at school lived with two women who slept in the same bed and kissed on the lips all the time.” And she suddenly longed to find her real dad. As a reader, your heart breaks at this moment of truth amidst a story of contrived chaos. But then Tuck takes off by her little self to California to search for him.

And what does she find at the end of her lonely quest? Her “dad” is really one of her two moms, who had a sex change operation following her conception.1 Everyone is smiling and it’s all okay, though, by the end of the story.

Our kids are lost in a free-fall culture, and are being sold poison packaged as perfume. As if foisting “gay” rights on them wasn’t enough, now they are supposed to accept the artificial change of a person’s biological sex as a good thing. The “transgendered” agenda is suddenly emerging everywhere.

In Fall , 2006, the New York City Board of Health announced they were considering allowing New Yorkers to alter the biological sex on their birth certificates without undergoing sex-change surgery and without medical treatment. Maybe this was a crazy whim by some wild-eyed activist, one is tempted to think. But no, this was a four year study by a panel of “experts.”

When public comment was invited, questions began flying. It seems four years wasn’t long enough for the experts to cover some very important bases, particularly about how this might infringe on the rights of others. Can a woman who suddenly “becomes” a man marry another woman? What about imposters, and the potential for abuse? What about housing these “transgendered” individuals in prisons? After adverse publicity, the “experts” who were making this proposal withdrew it—for the time being. There is no doubt it will be back, there and elsewhere.

Those individuals who have undergone sex-change surgery may alter their birth certificates, however. This is, in fact, law in many states now. Sometimes, you can go back and change history, it would seem.

Is the public up in arms about the gender variance movement, which is advancing rapidly, just as “gay” rights did in the last two decades? Not really. But it is no longer simply an adult issue. Amazingly, transgenderism is advancing quickly in our schools and in youth culture. And it will soon be legitimized at the federal level if current legislation passes.

Hate Crimes Law Will Include “Gender Identity”

The proposed federal “hate crimes” law —the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R. 1592 and S. 1105)—would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to existing civil rights’ statutes. This legislation will probably succeed under the new Democratic regime and that would be a huge threat to the rights of people to continue to verbally oppose homosexuality, cross-dressing and sex changes.

The bill is named after 21- year- old homosexual Matthew Shepard, murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. This homosexual college student’s tragic death has been inaccurately portrayed in school and campus plays, movies and in print as the result of the influence of the “religious right” when, in fact it was most likely a drug deal gone bad, with the two killers now serving life sentences, as they deserved.

But facts seldom get in the way of the virulent climate opposing orthodox Christian faith, heavily driven, again, by “gay” rights. The misinformation and outright bigotry against conservatives and Christians is especially intense in high schools and colleges. How has it gotten this far? Why aren’t parents objecting?

Schools Pushing “Trans” Agenda

I truly believed that the last straw, the “wake up” call, would be the push for equal rights in schools for “transgendered” teachers and students. And here and there, outrage has been the response on the local level.

In 2006, in a school near Toms River, NJ, a substitute kindergarten teacher in his 70’s who calls himself Lily McBeth came to school dressed as a woman after a sex change operation. Yet even after an outcry from local parents, the school board refused to fire him. He is still employed and still teaching.2

Last fall, a male high school teacher in Batavia, NY began dressing as a woman. Some parents asked to have their kids transferred to another class. The request was denied and the teacher could not be fired, because “gender identity” is protected as a disability under NY law.

In 2001, a male middle school principal in Wilmette, IL, returned to school after summer vacation as a woman, having undergone sex change surgery. The school did not fire him, but offered “counseling” to children and parents to cope with the change. A male art teacher in Eastchester, NY returned to school as a woman, and a Northbrook, IL science teacher also had female-to-male sex change surgery before returning to her/his teaching post.3

But it’s not just teachers who are being encouraged to alter God’s created order.

Cony High School in Augusta, Maine, adjourned at 8:30 am one morning a few months ago for a "Diversity Day," which included a workshop for freshman students called "Transgendering." It included a presentation by a former student who is now undergoing male hormone treatments and says she is a boy.4 Such programs have been routine for almost a decade in schools in Massachusetts.

And this spring in Fresno, CA, a girl ran for prom king.5

Media Spotlight: “Trans” Children

Suddenly this past year, numerous stories about children and teens who are gender switching have appeared and it’s always a “good” thing. Barbara Walters did a program in April on ABC-TV about a ten-year-old boy who was “born in the wrong body.”6 His derelict parents, supported by misguided doctors, have been allowing him to dress as a girl since he was three.

In yet the most recent outrage, we’ve recently learned that a 12- year- old boy in Germany has been given sex change hormones. He is believed to be the youngest sex change patient in the world.7

We will catch up quickly in the U.S. if current trends continue.Feature stories this past year have identified an unnamed boy entering kindergarten in Broward County, FL as a transgendered girl. There is at least one California school where teachers are fully embracing the “fluidity” of gender. Children are not to be grouped any longer as “boys” or “girls.” And medical professionals are on board. For instance, there’s gender variance outreach program at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. 8

For years, groups like PFLAG, Parents, Families and Friend of Lesbians and Gays, have been supporting sex change among teens and gender variance even among young children. A pro-family group in Massachusetts recently wrote the following:

“Right now, PFLAG and Planned Parenthood are busy holding seminars across Massachusetts encouraging parents to accept and help their ‘trans’ children. And how scary is this: PFLAG has the largest representation of any group on the new Massachusetts Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.” 9

That Youth Commission is funded by the Massachusetts state government, and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney by-passed his opportunity to dismantle it. Some have also described Romney, a Republican, as the “father of homosexual marriage,” since he ordered clerks to perform same sex marriages following the infamous Massachusetts 2004 court decision. The courts do not have the authority to make law, and the governor did not have the authority to force officials to violate it.

Yet the enormity of the disaster of legalizing “gay” marriage in that state cannot be overstated. For one thing, it has given tremendous credibility to the homosexual rights movement, especially in what is taught to kids in schools. Lawlessness abounds and everyone is doing what is right in his or her own mind.

Christians in Corrupt Public Schools?

Yes, some are outraged, but not enough, it seems, to slow this speeding train. The majority of Christians in this country still educate their children in these public schools. The products of such education are too often students who lose their faith, or who embrace a neopagan, false “christ.” That’s what I encounter most of the time at Mission America as I visit high schools and college campuses, and also as I talk to distraught parents whose teens are products of these environments.

One in five of 18 to 25 year olds in a recent Pew Research Poll said they were atheists or agnostics, which is double the number in the late 1980s. And 58% believe homosexuality should be accepted. This compares to just 50 % of over 26 year-olds- interviewed in the same survey.10 
So the younger kids’ views are being transformed quickly and radically.

The lead story in USA Today recently was, “Gay Teens Coming Out Earlier to Peers and Family.” In that story, Gallup Research was reported to find that 62% of 18 to 29 year olds consider homosexuality acceptable.11 The approval rates in this survey declined a few percentage points for each decade of age, pointing again to current youth indoctrination.

What I think we are not getting, is that the muscle of this movement may be beyond us. Can the church of Jesus Christ assess the situation and act quickly?

In some ways, Americans are quite behind the trend. Canada, Europe, Australia, and Great Britain are already way down the line in embracing sexual perversion and gender distortion, and in imposing legal penalties on objectors. But we are catching up quickly, and a federal “hate crimes” law, if passed, will seal the deal.

Deception Within Christian Churches

Why should we be surprised at the embrace of perversion by children and even their parents? Not only is the secular culture closing off every avenue for truth on this issue, but deception is flourishing within Christian churches, while silence reigns among the faithful.

We can to some extent applaud Spring Arbor University in Michigan for recently dismissing a fifty-five year old ordained Baptist professor who has been wearing a wig and a dress since 2005. I understand they did allow the situation to go on longer than it should have, but the school has eventually acted appropriately. This pastor has become a poster child for radical activists, filing a discrimination suit against the college in what is being described as a “carefully orchestrated” controversy.12

The boldness of compromise within the church goes to the very top.

I stood outside the convention center in Columbus, OH last September with a picket sign as Katharine Jefferts Schori was chosen as the first woman head of the Episcopal Church USA, my former denomination. She supported the ordination of a “gay” bishop and has said publicly she believes homosexuality is not a sin.13 She has also called on us to worship “Mother Jesus.”14

What is increasingly happening, and deliberately so, is that the public’s understanding of what “Christianity” is all about is being shaped by this lobby of sexual anarchy. We can’t continue to ignore that this is happening.

And so, in more and more public policy matters, you see that sexual orientation rights trump religious constitutional rights and the reason? We’re not the “good” believers. Biblical Christianity is being marginalized and may soon be illegal. In France recently, a member of parliament was fined the equivalent of $4,000 for making a statement in opposition to homosexuality, under that country’s “hate speech” law. When will Christians step up to the plate and help stop this nonsense?

If something has been labeled “hate,” it can then be outlawed. So the Ninth Circuit upheld a ruling against a student in a California high school who wore a T-shirt with a slogan opposing homosexuality. The reasoning was that it was a disruption and insulting to students who “are” homosexual, again implying it’s inborn.

What is the Christian church doing to prevent this? God has blessed us enormously in this country that, as believers, we can have great influence on this culture. We are surrendering that God-given opportunity.

The reality is that it this has to be fought, and it’s really everyone’s job. Satan knows how we are trying to dance away from this, so he has turned up the heat, and made ever more outrageous demands. The latest is for our children. And--we are silently handing them over, for the most part. This cannot continue.

Because from what I’ve seen, failure to address homosexuality on biblical grounds and to equip our people and our youth against secular lies, means we are losing people sometimes forever to Christ.

Our kids don’t believe the Bible is our authority, because they’ve been taught to doubt what it says about homosexual sin. Our youth don’t read and study the Bible, but use their time on more important things like “American Idol.” They don’t accept that this is an abomination, but rush to declare, “I’m not anti-gay,” and to showcase their homosexual friends. Further, they laugh along with sitcom writers about “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and cross-dressers. Satan wants us to first, laugh.

Of course, the faith that emerges from such hearts is one that doesn’t believe Christ is the “way, the truth and the life.”(John 14:6) Neopaganism goes hand in hand with Christian compromise.

So how can we address this? Just as we would never send children out in a boat without life vests, we must not let them free in this culture without being thoroughly armed and protected regarding this issue. That arming must be with the truth of knowing Christ as Savior, and believing His word.

Notes:

1. Francesca Lia Block, Girl Goddess #9, Harper Trophy Books, 1996, pp.36-93.

2. 365 Gay.com

3. Mission America

4. OneNewsNow

5. Transgender Prom

6. ABC News

7. WorldNetDaily

8. SFGate.com

9. Mass Resistance Posting for January 29, 2007

10. Pew Research

11. USA Today, February 8, 2007, pages 1-2.

12. OneNewsNow:Gender Bending Prof

13. Faith In America

14. Albert Mohler