Disregarding The Body – Podcast
The Crisis of our Time
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art
Companion Posts
+++
Starting Again
I was born in the sixties. But I am not a child of the 60’s. My family was lower-middle class, and by the standards of the time, traditional in most every way. Dad was a minister. If he or mom had lived into their 90’s they would not have imagined the social changes we have witnessed in the last 20 years. It would be too easy to say the sexual revolution of the 60’s caused all this change, as some conservatives maintain. But the roots of this change go back much further than the swinging 60’s.
So I’m embarking with some misgivings on a survey of cultural history. There are deep intellectual and cultural traditions that have shaped our everyday lives. We’ve come to a point in the Western world where the statement “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is comprehensible to many public leaders, at least in public. That phrase would be completely incomprehensible to my parent’s generation, in public or private, not to mention every preceding generation. It is still incomprehensible to many, if not most people today. But if you express your bewilderment in public, say at many workplaces in the Western world, increasingly the odds are you will be regarded as stupid, immoral or worse. You may be reprimanded for your irrational “phobia.” You might even have your career derailed. If you broadcast your view on a public forum, say Twitter, expect the Twitterati to pounce with the ferocity of a caged unfed Tiger. In certain parts of the world you may even be charged with a hate-crime for your expressed incredulity at the latest massive cultural shift. (See the following posts, here & here.)
As a 60’s poet might say, “The times they are a changin.”
The tectonic cultural shift in the last 20 years is quite breathtaking. Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, we have gone from year 2000 where the majority of Americans were opposed to gay marriage to today where normalization of Transgenderism is fast approaching.
A long and winding road brought us to this point. I want to offer a thoughtful and hopefully generous exposition, from a Classic Christian point of view, of how we got here. As I go, I’ll be documenting some disturbing current events. (Read my next post). I hope that even those who disagree with Classic Christianity will find here a fair and readable assessment of our state of affairs. (post continues page 2)
Sex Week at Harvard: And the Pursuit of Sensation
At one of America’s most prestigious universities, Harvard is hosting its 13th annual “Sex Week” — featuring, among other events, a workshop on “BDSM and kinks” led by a self-described “queer-trans Jewish certified sex educator,” Jamie Joy. This is where American academia has led us: a campus culture that claims to liberate young minds but instead distorts the most basic truths about human sexuality.
For years, universities have been the incubators of gender ideology and the sexual revolution’s latest iterations. The result? An environment where the denial of the created order is celebrated as enlightenment. When the stewards of higher learning host events that teach students how to pursue pleasure without purpose and few limits, it becomes clear that the pursuit of truth has been replaced with the pursuit of sensation.
Among the featured sessions this year: a discussion on dismantling the so-called “cult of virginity.” In other words, rejecting chastity as outdated and oppressive.
But the Christian understanding of sexuality isn’t about shame or repression; it is about reverence. Sexual self-gift belongs within the covenant of marriage because it is meant to express the deeper truth of our embodied nature: we are made for communion, not consumption.
It is tragic that the same institutions once founded to seek wisdom now confuse freedom with indulgence. Harvard’s “Sex Week” is not progress. It is a symptom of a culture that has forgotten what it means to be human.
Read the full report here: Campus Reform: Harvard to host BDSM, kinks workshop as part of 13th annual ‘Sex Week’.
+++
Celebrate God’s Good Creation
Pushing Back Against the Glamorization of Polyamory
A Cultural Moment of Confusion
Polyamory is having a cultural moment. Television series, influencers, and even academic voices are urging us to view multi-partner relationships as enlightened, inclusive, and “authentic.” What used to be seen as a symptom of instability is now promoted as an act of courage. But beneath the marketing lies a pattern of harm—emotional, psychological, and spiritual—that no amount of rebranding can erase.
What the Research Reveals
As a recent Institute for Family Studies article argues, the research on relationship stability and human flourishing overwhelmingly points in one direction: exclusive, monogamous commitment provides the strongest foundation for love, family, and social trust.
Polyamorous arrangements, by contrast, tend to amplify jealousy, insecurity, and transience—each person always half-in and half-out, always guarding the heart against inevitable fracture. These are not mere cultural preferences but reflections of what human beings are: creatures made for faithful, embodied union, not perpetual negotiation.
The Children Caught in the Crossfire
And what of the children who grow up in such environments? When the boundaries of parental love are constantly shifting, and the circle of attachment expands and contracts with adult desire, children are left to navigate uncertainty they did not choose. Stability, predictability, and fidelity—the soil in which trust and identity take root—are replaced by emotional flux.
No ideology can change the fact that children need permanence, not a rotating cast of caregivers. The data confirm what natural law and Scripture have long affirmed: that a child flourishes most fully within the secure love of his or her mother and father joined in faithful covenant.
Covenant, Not Contract
From a Christian perspective, this isn’t simply about sociology or statistics—it’s about theology. Marriage, in Scripture, is not a contract of convenience but a covenant of total self-gift. It mirrors God’s own unwavering love for His people: exclusive, faithful, and fruitful.
The prophets describe Israel’s infidelity in marital terms because covenantal love cannot be divided without distortion. Christ, the Bridegroom, does not share His Bride with others. The Church is loved wholly, not fractionally.
Theological Clarity in an Age of Confusion
Polyamory, then, is not only emotionally unstable—it’s theologically incoherent. It denies the very symbolism our bodies were created to express: that real love gives itself to another completely, not partially; that fidelity is not a limitation but the condition for joy.
The Christian vision of love is not endless novelty but steadfast communion—the kind of love that binds itself to another “for better or for worse,” and in doing so, becomes an image of divine faithfulness.
Recovering the Truth About Love
We are called to recover this vision—not as mere nostalgia for an older moral code, but as a recovery of the truth about ourselves. Our bodies and our souls both bear witness: we are not made for dispersion but for covenant, not for multiple lovers but for a love that mirrors the One who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Read the full piece at the Institute for Family Studies:
👉 It’s Time to Push Back Against the Glamorization of Polyamory
+++
Reality Restored: A Federal Court Upholds the Truth About Sex and the Human Body
On October 22, 2025, a federal judge in Mississippi handed down one of the most significant rulings yet in the legal struggle over “gender identity” mandates. In State of Tennessee et al. v. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, Judge Louis Guirola declared that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had exceeded its statutory authority when it redefined “sex discrimination” to include “gender identity” under the Affordable Care Act.
The ruling does more than settle a technical dispute about regulatory authority. While the court’s purpose was to determine whether HHS exceeded its legal authority, its conclusion coincides with a deeper truth I affirm as a Christian — that our bodies are not social constructs or psychological projections, but part of the created order.
The law, in this instance, has returned to reality.
The Case: Tennessee v. HHS
In 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a sweeping regulation titled “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities.” The rule reinterpreted “sex discrimination” to include five categories: sex characteristics, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex stereotypes.
That redefinition would have required states, hospitals, and insurance providers that receive federal funds to cover or perform “gender-affirming care” — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries — regardless of conscience or medical judgment.
Fifteen states, led by Tennessee, sued. They argued that the rule went far beyond the authority Congress gave HHS in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination “on the ground prohibited under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.” And as the court noted, Title IX’s meaning of “sex” is biological, not ideological.
The plaintiffs weren’t asking for special treatment. They were asking that federal law mean what it has always meant: that “sex” refers to male and female — not to self-declared identities.
What the Court Decided
Judge Guirola’s 26-page opinion is a model of clarity. He ruled that HHS’s 2024 rule:
- Exceeded its statutory authority under Title IX and the Affordable Care Act.
- Misapplied the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which concerned employment discrimination under Title VII, not healthcare or education.
- Was unlawful in its entirety and therefore vacated nationwide.
The opinion states plainly:
“Congress only contemplated biological sex when it enacted Title IX in 1972. Therefore, the Court finds that HHS exceeded its authority by implementing regulations redefining sex discrimination and prohibiting gender-identity discrimination.”
The judge further held that the refusal to perform or cover procedures for “gender transition” is not discrimination “because of sex.” As he explained, if a doctor performs mastectomies for women with breast cancer but declines to perform them for patients with gender dysphoria, the distinction is not based on the patient’s sex but on the diagnosis itself.
In other words: medicine is about biology, not ideology.
Bostock Doesn’t Apply Here
The court’s analysis directly confronts HHS’s reliance on the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling, which found that firing an employee for being homosexual or transgender violates Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination.
But Bostock explicitly limited its holding to employment law and said nothing about education, healthcare, or the broader cultural questions now before us. Title IX, unlike Title VII, contains explicit sex-based distinctions — for locker rooms, dormitories, sports teams, and bathrooms. Those provisions would be meaningless if “sex” were redefined to mean “gender identity.”
As Judge Guirola noted, interpreting “sex” as “gender identity” would create legal chaos. Schools could no longer maintain separate facilities for men and women. Sports competition would lose integrity. In the healthcare context, even legitimate medical distinctions — like sex-specific treatments — could be labeled “discrimination.”
That is precisely what the rule attempted to do, and why the court struck it down.
A Restoration of Constitutional Balance
Beyond the immediate issue of gender policy, this ruling restores a key principle of constitutional government: agencies do not have unlimited power to redefine law by executive fiat.
Quoting recent Supreme Court precedent (Loper Bright v. Raimondo), the court affirmed that statutes “have a single, best meaning fixed at the time of enactment.” Agencies are servants of Congress, not substitutes for it.
This is a vital reminder that the administrative state cannot function as an ideological laboratory for social experiments. The judiciary has begun to reassert the boundaries of delegated power, curbing the long pattern of executive agencies imposing cultural revolutions under the guise of “civil rights enforcement.”
The court’s language is unmistakable:
“Agencies do not have unlimited power to accomplish their policy preferences until Congress stops them; they have only the powers that Congress grants.”
That line deserves to be remembered.
Reality, Restored to Law
The court’s approach to statutory interpretation is refreshingly rooted in reality. Citing 1970s dictionaries, Judge Guirola observed that “sex” was universally understood to refer to biological distinctions between male and female. There was no concept of “gender identity” in 1972 law — because there was no such category in common understanding.
As simple as that sounds, it’s revolutionary in today’s legal landscape. The court refused to participate in the linguistic shell game that has corrupted public discourse. It chose to honor what words actually mean.
The Cultural and Moral Stakes
This case is not just about regulatory overreach or administrative law. It’s about truth-telling in a time of cultivated confusion.
For over a decade, we’ve watched federal agencies, medical institutions, and activist networks work to erase the distinction between man and woman — replacing embodied reality with subjective identity. In medicine, this ideology has demanded that doctors violate conscience, that parents affirm medical harm, and that the state compel participation in a collective fiction.
From a Christian Viewpoint: Creation and the Meaning of the Body
From a Christian perspective, this ruling affirms something far deeper than statutory interpretation. It affirms the created order.
Scripture tells us that humanity was made “male and female” (Genesis 1:27), and that this distinction is not arbitrary but sacramental — a sign of the divine image itself. As Notre Dame Professor Abigail Favale has written, the difference between man and woman “is not about completion, but communion.”
When law denies that created truth, it participates in what St. Paul called “the exchange of the truth of God for a lie.” The lie of our age is that the self is sovereign, that the body can be remade at will, and that nature itself must yield to the will of the autonomous individual.
This ruling marks a step back from that precipice.
Rejecting the New Gnosticism
Modern gender ideology, at its core, is a revival of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism — the belief that the material world is an obstacle to true identity, that salvation lies in self-knowledge detached from embodiment.
The court, perhaps without intending to, has reaffirmed the opposite: that embodiment is integral to who we are. Our bodies are not meaningless matter to be “corrected” by technology; they are the visible expression of the person God created.
When the judge wrote that Title IX’s use of “sex” referred to biological distinctions, he was defending more than a word. He was defending a vision of human integrity — one that law, medicine, and theology once shared.
Law and Compassion: Not Enemies but Allies
Critics will call this ruling “cruel,” claiming it denies care to transgender patients. But compassion severed from truth is not compassion — it’s abandonment. To affirm someone in a self-damaging illusion is to cooperate with harm.
True compassion tells the truth even when it hurts. The court did not deny anyone’s humanity; it denied the government’s power to redefine humanity.
Christians must remember: Love without truth is sentimentality. Truth without love is cruelty. But love in truth is the only path to healing.
This ruling doesn’t forbid care; it forbids coerced compliance with an untruth.
The Broader Implications
This decision will likely be appealed, but its reasoning aligns with the broader judicial trend of rejecting agency-driven redefinitions of “sex.” Other courts — particularly in the Fifth and Sixth Circuits — have already pushed back against the Biden administration’s interpretations of Title IX and the Affordable Care Act.
If upheld, the Tennessee ruling will shape how federal law treats sex distinctions in medicine, education, and beyond. It signals the end of a bureaucratic era in which ideology could rewrite biology by regulation.
For Christians and others who believe in the moral coherence of creation, this is not a moment for triumphalism but for thanksgiving and vigilance. The cultural pressure to conform to unreality will not disappear overnight. But truth has a way of resurfacing, and in this case, through the language of the law.
Conclusion: Living in the Truth
Judge Guirola closed his opinion with a reminder:
“Neither Defendants nor this Court have authority to reinterpret or expand the meaning of ‘sex’ under Title IX.”
The law is at its best when it reflects the created order rather than attempting to erase it. For years, American jurisprudence has been asked to pretend that male and female are mere social scripts. This ruling breaks that spell. For now.
In the words of St. Irenaeus, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” To be fully alive is to live in the truth of what we are — body and soul, male or female, created and loved by God.
Source: THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF MISSISSIPPI
+++
Stay Human