Why Gender Matters 2: Good Grief
I did not grin over skater Adam Rippon’s campy exuberance nor fawn over commentators Johnny Weir’s jewels during the Winter Olympics. I grieved. Here are two strong, disciplined men who acted like girls, preening before cameras in full make-up and elaborate hairdos, gushing clever trash like ‘I’m a glamazon bitch ready for the runway’ (Rippon) and inviting us into his (Weirs’) room crammed full of women’s clothes and accessories, twice as many as his female counterpart. These guys are cartoonish violations of womanhood.
And America loves them. Time Magazine tagged Rippon the ‘winner of the Olympics’, though he placed 12th in his competition. These are our ambassadors to the world: out and proud and lauded at every turn. To the degree that we laughingly embrace their fractured personas, we contribute to their disintegration. And to a generation’s. Rippon and Co. are converting the lukewarm into gender anarchists.
Are you complicit? Do you not know that your giggling advocacy of gender-benders grieves the heart of God? He who made us in His image detests it when humanity forsakes its integrity, its ordination as either male or female and mocks both instead. Do you no longer take God at His Word? In order to show Himself and His creation strong, the God of Israel warned His nation to forego the confusion of the gender-bending Canaanites: ‘A woman must not wear a man’s clothing, not a woman, a man’s’ (Deut. 22:5), and ‘No-one who has emasculated himself by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord’ (23:1). If the Olympics are any indication, we are now subject to a prideful, shameless parade of persons who defy the Creator by investing in false, demonized selves which enslave them and the vulnerable.
We need truth on which to sober and straighten up if we are to face rightly our prideful, disintegrated comrades. My favorite book on homosexuality and truth remains Dr. Robert Gagnon’s The Bible and Homosexual Practice, from which I quote: ‘Genesis 1-3, Lev. 18:22; 20:13, and Romans 1: 26-27 all suggest that same-sex intercourse was rejected on the grounds that it violated the anatomical and procreative sexual complementarity of male and female in creation—by definition an instance of pride, a supplanting of God’s design in creation for sexuality in favor of one’s own design.’
Those who appeal to merciful Jesus will find no softening of His commitment to the integrity of male and female in the Father and Son’s creation of humanity: ‘Jesus unreserved embrace of the creation account and his bold appeal to it establishes His commitment to one and only one model for sexual reunion…on matters relating to sexual ethics, Jesus adopted stricter, not more lenient, demands than most other Jews of His time…His expectations regarding sexual purity exceeded both the Torah and the tradition prevailing in His day’ (Gagnon).
So we turn toward Jesus: sobered, we need to care about what matters to Him. That means foregoing our own interests (Phil. 1: 21) and reconfirming our commitment to humanity aspiring to gender integrity. When we encounter popular perversions, I urge you not to laugh but rather to grieve over the prideful rebellion that hurts people and desecrates the Holy One. Cry out for the gentle wooing of His mercy, which invites each Rippon and Weir to turn to Him and so overcome our common enemy (2T 2:26).
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