Get Real (Answers to Dysphoria)
The US Supreme Court just finished oral arguments concerning Tennessee’s statewide ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for youth seeking to change their sex.
Though the Court won’t rule on the ban until spring, it appears likely that it will uphold the right of Tennessee and another 24 states that currently refuse such ‘medical’ treatment for children claiming to be the other sex.
We can be happy about that possibility. We can pray that the Court will uphold common-sense morality. Like ethnicity, sex is immutable. We must defend ferociously the dignity of every male or female’s civil rights. That does not apply to funding risky and unproven medical interventions to do the impossible, e.g., to ‘change’ one’s sex.
Like Sweden and the UK, the USA is finally beginning to refuse false solutions to the complexity of sexual dysphoria.
My question for all Christians who wince at men posturing as women and vice-versa: what is our answer? Are we prepared to be a community that knows how to accompany those who believe they are trapped in the wrong body in prayerful fellowship?
We have created a culture that permits confused young children to cultivate other sexual ‘selves.’ I believe that this is as much of a social phenomenon as it is a psychological and spiritual distortion. (Educators and clinicians throughout our country believe that sex is mutable and that a dysphoric child should be encouraged to ‘trans’ identify to ward off more significant distress, especially suicide.)
OK, got that. I have been to countless seminars where really smart Christians rearticulate this cultural nightmare, again and again. Yet they offer no answers to the child in distress.
It’s not enough to refuse him or her sexual reassignment. How does a sexually lost child reintegrate his or her original sexual dignity?
That is the most relevant question in this entire ‘trans’ mess. What are our answers? How do we prevent a child from adopting such a personal delusion in a culture that insists on fake answers?
We need empowered counsel if we are to refuse puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgery to those seeking sex change.
Do we have any true answers? Does Jesus and His Church?
What persuades one to begin to refuse his or her sexual birthright at three or four years old? Equally, what helps confirm his or her unique sexual identity as male or female without resorting to heavy-handed stereotypes?
As we await the Supreme Court decision on whether states are free to refuse false solutions for children at odds with themselves, we must contend for real answers to wounded children in our midst.
Common sense morality hinges on common sense restoration.
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There is a psychologist in California, who wrote a book about working with boys with gender dysphoria. If the boy did not identify with a male caregiver, he was given a mentor who matched the biy’s temperament. The boys were also given very clear guidelines, such as, “Boys don’t wear dresses.” The psychologist had much success working with boys if done before puberty. Gender identification is set by the time a child is four years old, but can be changed if done early. The boys had picked a female to become like, but with intervention changed..
Thank you, brother, you are right: „It is better to light a candle than to complain about darkness!“ Those trapped in whatever worldly, post-biblical mindset, most of all need to believe and experience that God is a wonderful, loving God and that He has given, word and body and law for a good purpose. That He has given Himself. That it cost Him everything. Back to the bedrock of Christ.
Faith enters where the gospel is preached.
Is that too simple an answer?
I pray that common sense regarding this issue prevails when the Supreme Court rules next year. Thank you!
Yes! This! The questions you're raising are right and good in this hour. If we believe that Christ's body is the hope of all bodies, none excepted, then how will we show up in this crisis? Christ's disfigurement must mean something practically for those disfiguring their maleness and femaleness. How does this translate into boots on the ground responsiveness? I'm asking too.
Please follow up on this article. We need practical, hope for ourselves to help, and to offer to our loved ones who are caught in the whole “woke” mindset.