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:
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.
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.
Modern culture is haunted by a fantasy: that our bodies don’t matter, that they are clay to be reshaped at will, or husks to be cast aside when they no longer serve us. Liel Leibovitz, in a strikingFirst Things essay, names this trend “the promise of disembodiment”—and shows how dangerous it truly is.
“Those of us who know that we were created in God’s image have no choice but to acknowledge our bodies, those awkward earthly vessels that matter and cannot be manipulated as if they were raw material for our disembodied wills.”
From abortion to assisted suicide, from the sexual revolution to today’s transgender movement, the same underlying assumption appears again and again: the body is not sacred. It is merely a tool, an accident, or worse—a hindrance.
Leibovitz observes:
“Take away this belief in the sacred character of the body and it becomes not a temple but a speed bump.”
And once our bodies are seen as speed bumps, it becomes easier to justify all kinds of destruction. Babies in the womb are “clumps of cells.” The elderly and the sick become “burdens.” Male and female cease to be God-given realities and are recast as fluid “identities” invented in the imagination.
Why the Lie Is So Appealing
The disembodiment lie seduces because it offers a counterfeit freedom. If my body is irrelevant, then I can define myself however I wish. I can erase biological sex, evade the natural consequences of sex, or reject life itself when it no longer feels worth living.
But this “freedom” comes at a terrible cost. As Leibovitz warns, it is really an escape from reality itself:
“When you do away with the sanctity of the body, you invite tyranny, because you are no longer bound to acknowledge what is real, only what is willed.”
This is not just a philosophical mistake. It is a spiritual rebellion. To reject the body is to reject the Creator who formed us from the dust and breathed into us the breath of life (Gen. 2:7).
The Christian Response
The Christian worldview stands in radical opposition to this false promise. Scripture declares:
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).
Jesus himself affirms this when he says, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4).
St. Paul reminds us, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you…? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).
In other words: the body is not an afterthought. It is sacred. It is integral to our personhood. It is destined for resurrection glory.
Why This Matters Now
We live in a culture where disembodiment is the new orthodoxy. Children are taught they can “change” their sex. Courts and legislatures increasingly normalize euthanasia. The abortion industry insists that unborn life is expendable. And technologies—from artificial wombs to digital fantasies of “uploading consciousness”—offer new variations of the same old lie: that we can escape the body.
But Christians must speak clearly: these are not paths to freedom. They are forms of bondage. To despise the body is to despise the very goodness of creation. To mutilate the body is to mutilate the image of God.
As Leibovitz writes:
“The rejection of the body is the rejection of limits, and the rejection of limits is the rejection of responsibility. And where responsibility vanishes, so does love.”
This last point is crucial. A world that despises the body cannot sustain love, because love, as humans, requires embodiment. It requires showing up in the flesh, bearing burdens, honoring the vulnerable, cherishing the other as they are given to us.
The True Promise: Resurrection
The gospel gives us not the false promise of disembodiment, but the true promise of resurrection. Christ himself was raised bodily from the grave. His glorified flesh is the guarantee of our future. The destiny of the Christian is not escape from the body, but the redemption of the body (Rom. 8:23).
The big lie of disembodiment ends in alienation, confusion, and death. You won’t find love there. The truth of the gospel ends in communion, clarity, and eternal life.
So let us reject the false prophets of disembodiment. Let us instead proclaim and live the truth: our bodies matter, because God made them, Christ redeemed them, and the Spirit indwells them.
