Today’s Supreme Court case hopefully will expose a medical scandal of significant proportions, where minors are subjected to irreversible treatments without sufficient evidence of their benefits and without proper informed consent.
The Court’s ruling (due in June ’25) should call for a desperately needed reevaluation of these practices to ensure the protection and well-being of vulnerable youth.
At least, one can hope, and pray.
Tyler O’Neil is on the case.
It’s hard to wrap your head around just how grotesque it is that many medical associations and the federal government have adopted the idea that it’s healthy to sterilize children in an attempt to “affirm” a stated transgender identity. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will shed much-needed sunlight on this medical scandal of epic proportions.
Tennessee Solicitor General Matt Rice will explain how activists conspired to flip the Hippocratic Oath on its head. Meanwhile, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Chase Strangio—a female who says she identifies as male—will argue that Tennessee’s law banning Frankensteinian medical experiments on kids violates federal law by discriminating on the basis of sex.
The Supreme Court is hearing the case because of this discrimination argument. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld Tennessee’s law, finding that it doesn’t entail discrimination. But the Biden-Harris administration appealed that decision, and the Supreme Court took up the case—now known as U.S. v. Skrmetti after Jonathan Skrmetti, the Republican attorney general of Tennessee.
I’ve studied this issue for the last few years, reading several books on the topic, scouring the Internet etc., and I’ve come up with only one physiological reason for why Gender Identity Activists insist thatGender is on a spectrum. And, counter-intuitively for most people, that Sex is ASSIGNED at birth, as opposed to recognized at birth. This leads a growing number of Activists to claim that Sex, too, is on a spectrum. Because, since sex is ‘assigned’ it is therefore a social construct that can be reconstructed, thus leading activists to claim you can change your sex. And even more radically some say there are more than two sexes. Yep. That’s what many are now saying. [See video in my next post.]
But before looking at the physiological reason, let’s look briefly at the philosophy and some real world consequences of what I’m going to call Gender Ideology.
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Gender Ideologues have philosophical reasons for pushing Gender Identity and Expression as valid categories not only for civil rights protection but also because many of them seek a fundamental restructuring of society. That philosophy, with its desire to restructure society, is usually joined at the hip with a Critical Theory offshoot called Queer Theory (I should explore that theory in more detail at another time, but fair warning, by design, QT is an incomprehensible, convoluted mess.) For now let me briefly quote a satisfactory summary of QT from Wikipedia:
Queer theory and politics necessarily celebrate transgression in the form of visible difference from norms. These 'Norms' are then exposed to be norms, not natures or inevitabilities. Gender and sexual identities are seen, in much of this work, to be demonstrably defiant definitions and configurations.
Because this definition of queerness does not have a fixed reference point, Judith Butler has described the subject of queer theory as a site of ‘collective contestation’. She suggests that ‘queer’ as a term should never be ‘fully owned, but always and only redeployed, twisted, queered from a prior usage and in the direction of urgent and expanding political purposes’.
Fundamentally, queer theory does not construct or defend any particular identity, but instead, grounded in post-structuralism and deconstruction, it works to actively critique heteronormativity, exposing and breaking down traditional assumptions that sexual and gender identities are presumed to be heterosexual or cisgender. [emphasis mine]
Queerness in this sense is a very fluid way of assessing the world around us and interacting with it. Berkeley professor Judith Butler, QT’s most prominent theoretician, says, ‘Queerness’ ought to be characterized by “collective contestation.” This is all very much like other 20th Century Critical Theories, deriving as they do from a Marxist analysis of society and its ills. For example, Critical Race Theory like Queer Theory seeks to collectively overthrow “oppressive” narratives or discourses. In CRT racism is opposed. In Queer Theory that “oppressive” narrative is “heteronormativity.” (Remember Ms. Barnes?)
All this fluidity has as its goal the destabilization of cultural norms, especially Western Capitalist and Religious cultural norms.
If you’ve been following the recent social movements energized by the various Critical Theories, and after reading the Judith Butler quote above about “collective contestation,” you will understand why these various movements are so relentless to shutdown, shout down, and outright cancel, or “deplatform” any dissent. For many, fighting “oppression,” by any means necessary, is the animating dogma.
Previously relegated to feminist and gender studies departments of academia, QT has now “hit the big time.” In the Western world, QT is reforming cultural consciousness and shaping public policy.
Let me give just one example of the in-roads that Queer Theory has made in our popular culture by linking to the following 2016 CNN story “What It Means To Be Gender-fluid.”
CNN starts off the report by writing that gender identity and expression “can change every day or even every few hours,” and this fluidity “can be displayed in how we dress, express and describe ourselves.” Moreover, it added, “Everyone’s gender exists on a spectrum.”
Of course, as all of us recognize, “expression” is variable. But I want to highlight “identity” here. This view of humanity explicitly states that our subjective mental state is the overriding determining factor of identity. And this mental state, as mental states do, can change as often as our shifting moods or needs dictate. If adopted, this point of view renders any effort to form rational public policy hopelessly problematic.
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Here’s one example of the practical consequence of aligning society with a movement that idealizes disembodiment.
Public safe spaces for biological women, spaces that were constructed so that men and women could work and recreate together outside the home will be threatened if today’s disembody movement proceeds unhindered. Those safe spaces were constructed with full recognition of the specific biological differences, privacy concerns, AND, most importantly, differences in vulnerability between men & women. If gender ideology wins the argument public spaces like sex-specific intimate facilities, such as restrooms, locker rooms, etc., could be entered by a biological male identifying as a female on Tuesday morning, and then by Tuesday afternoon that same male could revert back to a male identity and access the nearest male restroom “in an emergency.”
Under this logic, saying you are a ‘trans-woman,’ with the right to enter female spaces, is a totally unfalsifiable assertion.
Real world safety concerns and Law Enforcement problems proliferate under these “Gender-Identity-Based Access Policies” (GIBAPs). Kenneth Lanning, who for 20 years worked in the Behavioral Science Unit and the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime at the FBI Academy in Quantico, describes this real-world problem:
Law enforcement officers and prosecutors will be less likely to record, investigate, or charge indecent exposure or peeping offenses in a GIBAP environment, because there is no objective standard for determining whether someone born a male can lawfully be present in a women-only facility. It would be more difficult to prove lascivious intent when self-reported gender identity drives access rights, and easier to accuse law enforcement personnel of discrimination. This is made even more difficult when that self-reporting need not be corroborated in any way whatsoever.1Expert Declaration and Report of Kenneth V. Lanning, Defendants’ and Intervenor-Defendants’ Brief, Exhibit M, 18.
Sometimes it is alleged that people like myself, or detective Lanning, are guilty of falsely ascribing impure motives to those who have actually gone through the ‘transitioning’ process and truly identify as Transgender. The truth is we are more concerned about the non-transgendermale sex offenders who are “driving a truck” through this very real GIBAP loophole in public policy. The examples are multitude!
As every law enforcement official knows, public restrooms are crime attractors. Women and girls are especially at risk in a GIBAP world. You don’t need a PhD in Criminology to know this. Again, it is not necessarily the Transgender person committing crimes but the opportunistic male predator who will in a world with “Gender-Identity-Based Access Policies” (GIBAPs).
Establishing criminal intent will be much harder in a world where biological males can self-identify “at any time” with the opposite sex and legally enter the safe spaces of women and girls.
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Here is another real world example. During an LGBTQ Presidential Forum in 2019 Joe Biden said the following:
"In prison, the determination should be that your sexual identity is defined by what you say it is, not what in fact the prison says it is."
Today, in the British prison system at least 1 in 50 male prisoners identifies as transgender. Because of a similar prison policy, like the one Biden supported, a convicted rapist and child molester in the United Kingdom was placed in a women’s prison and subsequently sexually assaulted four female inmates.
Is this totally subjective, gender fluid world, the world we want to live in?
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Apart from a Queer Theory saturated worldview, I can find only one physiological reason for why Gender Identity Activists propagandize in this way and why they say “sex is assigned” at birth. And that reason has to do with DSD’s or Disorders of Sexual Development (A categorization that Activists want to relabel “Differences of Sexual Development”).
Let’s look at those for a few minutes.
Sometimes these disorders (I refuse to call them differences) result in the formation of two sets of sex organs, or an incomplete development of reproductive organs. They are sometimes caused by genetic mutations and at other times by chromosomal or hormonal defects.
But because we have people with ambiguous genitalia and chromosomal irregularities this is considered grounds for throwing the whole classification system up in the air and dispensing altogether with the male – female binary. As I just outlined above there are real world consequences to going down this path of eliminating the male – female sex binary as the overriding identifier of sex.
Unbelievably some prominent Medical Associations are playing along too. I think they have become politicized by radical Queer Theory Subjectivism. More about that in future posts.
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I’m trying hard to be fair about this issue. So I don’t want to misrepresent Gender Ideologues. But in all my research I can find only one objective reason for why they say sex is assigned at birth. It’s the only reason why our grade school teachers were instructed to abandon the “biological sex” section of the Genderbread Person for the “sex assigned at birth” section of the Gender Unicorn. [See my post Our Schools and Gender Ideology.]
Gender Ideologues hang their hat on DSD’s which occur in 1 out of 5000 births.2This figure is found in Peter A. Lee et al., “Global Disorders of Sex Development Update since 2006: Perceptions, Approach and Care,” Hormone Research in Paediatrics 85 (2016): 159.
That’s it! That’s the only thing that grounds their ideology in anything remotely biological and scientifically objective. Everything else in their ideology is about the totally subjective lived experiences of the “disembodied”individual. Individual perception and desire are sacrosanct. Not to mention free floating. In other words nothing more grounded than “my truth and your truth.”
Again, I repeat what I said in my “What is Sex” post, since biological sex is grounded in an organism’s organization for reproduction, DSD’s are not mere differences, but disorders.
Here are some Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD’s).
Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) The most common DSD occurring in 1 out of 14,000 births is a recessive disorder caused by two parents who carry a faulty (mutated) gene which prevents the normal production of cortisol thus altering the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics of their child. This often leads to the virilization or masculinization of the female external genitalia producing obvious genital ambiguity. Internally these people develop and function as women.
Klinefelter syndrome: Instead of 46 chromosomes, someone with this syndrome has 47. They develop as males but with abnormal body proportions and enlarged breasts, infertility is common.
Turner syndrome: People with 45 chromosomes. Instead of having XX or XY they have only X chromosomes. They develop as infertile women because two X chromosomes are necessary for the normal development of ovaries. Causes numerous health and development problems, including but not limited to short stature, lymphedema, infertility, webbed neck, coarctation of the aorta, ADHD, amenorrhoea, and obesity.
Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome: “People with androgen insensitivity syndrome develop as normal-appearing but sterile women, lacking a uterus and oviducts and having internal testes in the abdomen.”
According to an article by Bonnie McCann-Crosby and V. Reid Sutton, “Disorders of Sexual Development,” in the journal Clinics in Perinatology 42 (June 2015): 403, a severe genetic mutation results in the testes never forming and therefore the body never masculinizes because of testosterone deficiency. These individuals develop as females who are infertile (because they lack a second X chromosome).
Ovotesticular disorder (also called true hermaphroditism) – A condition where an individual has both testicular and ovary tissue.
Mosaicism: People who develop from a single fertilized egg but because of a genetic mutation have a patchwork of genetically different cells. In other words two different sets of DNA, with some of the body’s cells being XX or a single X and some being XY. Klinefelter syndrome already mentioned is one kind of Mosaicism.
Chimera: When two different embryos combine early in a pregnancy. Again, some cells are XX and some cells have XY chromosomes. Fewer than 100 cases documented worldwide.
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Okay, after having waded through that, what should we conclude? These are disorders. Not differences. My brother was born with a cardio-vascular disorder which is why he died at the age of 21. His cardio-vascular system was incapable of working as designed and gave out way before the normal “expiration date.” Disorders of Sexual Development in almost all cases result in a short-circuiting of our reproductive system. It is a disorder. We should stop using DSD’s as an excuse for saying the male-female binary is obsolete.
Finally, and here is where the “assigned at birth” label gets attached, in the past when doctors were confronted with an infant having one of these disorders they had to make a careful judgment as to which sex the child was most likely to be comfortable with as the child matured. Sometimes in the past, but not so much today, actual surgical intervention occurred to assist the infants future development. Occasionally the doctor would “assign” either a male or female path forward, depending on the doctor’s professional judgement. Birth certificate sex was therefore “assigned” in these exceptionally rare cases.
This is why Gender Activists use their “assigned at birth” social construction language, providing some of the rationale for their ideology. (Apart from their philosophical rationale of course.)
Does that sound rational to you? Throwing out the male – female binary because a relatively low number of humans have one of these disorders, which occasionally necessitates a sex “assignment” by a medical professional, is not reasonable to me. Does that non-binary world sound reasonable to you?
It does if you want to fundamentally restructure society by tossing out all sexual norms, norms born out of biology and religious Truth.
Now of course most people are not agenda driven in this way. They just want to be considerate of “difference.” That’s completely understandable and loving. And we can still do that. We can still love people and embrace those with these disorders without buying into the radical social agenda being pushed on their behalf. And we can love people who are genuinely confused, who think it is possible and advisable to reject their biological sex.
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As a Christian I outlined some basic theology in my “Big Picture” post. One very important creational concept may be summarized by the word ‘integration.’ God’s bi-natured world was originally designed to be an integrated whole with the Living God residing at the center point of that integration. God designed Heaven and Earth to interlock and overlap in the temple garden. Temple theology in both the Jewish and Christian sense teaches that the life giving God powerfully dwells at the place where Heaven and Earth meet. Analogous to this, God created “fruit-producing” Male and Female imagers as God’s creative representatives on Earth. But for this to work as designed, Female and Male must act as God’s imagers (representatives) and live according to God’s Triune likeness, which is to say, as a loving community of equal persons. (This is where Christian Theology branches off from Jewish Monotheism).
Integration of God’s bi-natured world is key. Marriage, in other words, is vital to God’s creational project. It is a creational necessity. But as we all know, the world is out of joint, broken. At the personal level, our minds and bodies are often disconnected in practice. Promise made is not promise kept. We may know the right thing, but not do the right thing. Intention and Action are often divorced. To be God’s Wholly People, mind and body must work harmoniously to extend God’s purposes. The good news is God’s eschatological1Eschatology is the study of God’s future for the Creation. goal through Christ to put this fractured “world organism” back together again. The two halves of God’s created order will retain their difference and yet be united in the purposes of God. As originally intended. Unity with diversity. Spirit and Matter, Soul and Body will coexist in loving, fruitful harmony. Heaven and Earth with be joined. That’s Christian Creation Theology. What God has purposed to be joined, let no one seek to separate.
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Morning Sun, Blue Ridge Parkway blueridgemountain_man
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Now let’s discuss some science.
I’ll need to bring up something surprisingly controversial these days, the male – female binary. But first let’s briefly discuss organisms.
The most salient feature of an organism is its organization. The various parts must integrate for the good of the whole or the organism will have a very short life, if at all.
As a complex organism, humans have a variety of systems all designed for the purpose of promoting & sustaining life. For example, we have a cardio-vascular system, each part of which must work cooperatively to supply the rest of the body with a much needed resource, oxygenated blood. If one part of the system breaks down because of disease, we don’t call it a difference, we call it a problem. But when the system is working as designed the different parts interact for the welfare of the organism as a whole. The cardio-vascular system works in concert with the oxygen gathering respiratory system to bring about human well-being.
Like many of God’s creatures, humans are dimorphic, which means morphologically we exist in two distinct forms. We have little difficulty speaking about other dimorphic species. Farmers and breeders easily distinguish male and female bovines or canines. But recently some of us get tongue tied when it comes to human morphology rendering them incapable of stating the obvious; we were created male and female.
Why the different forms? In a word, reproduction.
Each half of the female-male binary makes up just one half of a total reproductive system. When the scripture writers say, the two become one flesh, that’s what they are referring to. The two halves of one reproductive whole come together sexually for the purpose of making more imagers of God. Not to be entered into lightly, this creative act is an awesome and noble responsibility! In the modern world, the casualness with which we regard this noble God-like creative responsibility is surely a symptom of a deeper malady.
You can’t explain maleness or femaleness without reference to the other. They are inter-defined. And you won’t have a species without reproduction. These integrated parts must operate for the sake of the whole or the reproductive system breaks down and the species doesn’t replicate.
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Ok. Let me bring in the experts here. Lawrence Mayer, scholar-in-residence in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who was for 25 years the psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the man called by the editor of the New Atlantis, “the most important American psychiatrist of the last half-century” reviewed the scientific literature on sexuality and gender identity and wrote the following:
The underlying basis of maleness and femaleness is the distinction between the reproductive roles of the sexes; in mammals such as humans, the female gestates offspring and the male impregnates the female. More universally, the male of the species fertilizes the egg cells provided by the female of the species. This conceptual basis for sex roles is binary and stable, and allows us to distinguish males from females on the grounds of their reproductive systems, even when these individuals exhibit behaviors that are not typical of males or females.2“Lawrence S. Mayer, M.B., M.S., Ph.D., and Paul R. McHugh, M.D., “Sexuality and Gender Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” Special Report, New Atlantis 50 (Fall 2016): 89.”
There is no other rational, objective way of classifying the two sexes than this.
In biology, an organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction. This definition does not require any arbitrary measurable or quantifiable physical characteristics or behaviors; it requires understanding the reproductive system and the reproductive process. Different animals have different reproductive systems, but sexual reproduction occurs when the sex cells from the male and female of the species come together to form newly fertilized embryos. It is these reproductive roles that provide the conceptual basis for the differentiation of animals into biological categories of male and female. There is no other widely accepted biological classification for the sexes.3“Lawrence S. Mayer, M.B., M.S., Ph.D., and Paul R. McHugh, M.D., “Sexuality and Gender Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” Special Report, New Atlantis 50 (Fall 2016): 90.”
Males donate genetic material. Females receive that material and gestate the resulting offspring. Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner could never produce an unfertilized egg or gestate offspring and so was never a female. Nor ever could be. Bodies organized to perform specific reproductive tasks reveal what sex you are. Not your mind. Or your deepest desires. Your sex is not assigned. With rare exceptions, every cell in your body is “sexed” with either an XX chromosomal structure or XY. Biological processes “sexed” you. And, as a Christian I would add, those processes were guided by God, mediated of course through your biological parents. For as I’ve said many times during weekly bible study at the church I attend, “God does not dance alone.” Humans participate in the unfolding purposes of God.
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:13 (NRSV)
The male gamete (sperm) is either a Y sperm or X sperm and at fertilization the female gamete (egg) receives an XX (female) chromosomal composition if it was fertilized by an X sperm or an XY (male) chromosomal composition if it was fertilized by a Y sperm. Only in rare cases, due to a chromosomal or hormonal defect, does this finely tuned system break down.
Assuming normal development about six weeks later the human embryo starts to develop gonads. If the embryo has an XX genetic structure, gonads called ovaries develop. If the embryo has an XY genetic structure, gonads called testes develop and begin the male/female differentiation process in earnest. There is no third gonad. Only two. One set takes the human down the female development path. The other set takes the human down the male development path. These are the only two biological “regulators” of sexual differentiation. Ovaries and Testes secrete sex-specific hormones that further differentiate female from male. The creation of sex-specific reproductive organs come next. Then what is known as “secondary sex differences” begin to develop through birth and on to puberty where differences of size, shape, bone length and density, fat distribution, musculature, etc., become pronounced. Men and women are different from the cellular and molecular level up to the most obvious physiological level.
And it’s a beautiful thing.
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Unfortunately some people are born with less than 10 fingers. Or with muscular dystrophy. Or any of a number of birth defects due to genetic mutations, or prenatal environment abnormalities. We don’t say these are merely differences, but we say these outcomes resulted from a breakdown in human development. We don’t have a problem saying so in these areas, but somehow today when it comes to sex or gender we have a huge problem stating the obvious.
We should respect and care for those who have these disorders but let’s not ignore the obvious. We should embrace them and recognize their often heroic efforts and celebrate the tenacity with which many of them live their lives, but we should not lie to them or pretend that they don’t have a problem. Any common sense understanding of human flourishing tells us that a person with 6 fingers or someone confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their life will live, however heroically, with many more difficulties than normal.
Correspondingly, the rare person with a Disorder of Sexual Development (DSD) for example, someone born with malformed or ambiguous genitalia, should not be told this is just a difference. And to use those disorders as evidence to justify a Gender Fluid, Non-Binary “Queer” philosophical agenda masquerading as a civil rights crusade, a crusade that leads you to shout “smash heteronormativity” is beyond absurd.
A physical inability to accomplish an essential reproductive task is not a difference. It is a biological disorder of the reproductive system. And now speaking as a Christian, an unwillingness to acknowledge God’s bi-natured creational design is a spiritual disorder. All of us are unaligned with God’s purposes to some extent, which is to say we are all spiritually disordered, but some disorders are more obvious than others. An unwillingness to recognize maleness and femaleness as normal, as part of God’s original design, is one of them.
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Many years ago I was listening to a radio talk show when an elderly man called in to ask a question. For some reason the host asked the guy how old he was and he said “87 years old” at which point the host sidekick, a young woman of maybe 25, interjected with typical youthful exuberance: “you’re 87 years young!” Without hesitation the old curmudgeon responded: “kiss my ass.” Now that wasn’t very nice of him. Especially when speaking to a woman. But it was honest. He knew he was no longer young and vibrant. No matter what he desired or how he might express that desire, every passing day, every sudden movement, every memory, every forgetful moment, told him who he was. He wasn’t buying the “you can create your own reality” the giddy sidekick was selling. Trying to make him feel better she only revealed youthful naivety and perhaps a shallow subjectivism. But he knew better. The undeniable disorder we call death was crouching at the door.
Life happens. And then life breaks down. Disorders develop, sometimes slowly over a long life, sometimes quickly, as in the womb. And death happens. If not physical death, death of possibilities, death of a fully formed human life where an integrated body and mind operate at peak efficiency, at least for many seasons. Ignoring this reality is unhelpful, unhealthy and delusional.
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So what is “sex”? Sex is the biological classification of an organism according to its reproductive role. There are only two, male and female. Sex is determined at conception and recognized not “assigned” at birth. We distinguish between the sexes based on the bodies we were given by our parents (and God). It is not just certain parts, like genitalia, but every cell in our body is “sexed” either male or female and cannot be changed by hormone therapy or surgery. Swapping out a body part doesn’t change who you are. We are who we were created to be. We ignore that reality at our peril.
Gender Ideology is in direct conflict with biology & Christian anthropology.
So why do Gender Activists and astonishingly some medical organizations say that “sex is assigned at birth?” I’ll take a closer look at their rationale in an upcoming post.
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I’m a Classic Christian and think Gender Ideology is anti-creational to the core. This blog is about “God’s Good Creation.” That’s why I’m writing about Gender Ideology. And “speaking up” as I’m confident Jesus would.
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]
If you would like more detail on how my Christian worldview informs my understanding of Sex and today’s Gender Ideology please read the following posts.
