You see it every day on social media: young men and women in their late teens or early 20s sharing about reversing their gender reassignment. They’re called detransitioners.
Popular culture may say they don’t exist, but their numbers are growing as attested by their growing presence online. They either medically or surgically changed their sex with or without their parents’ permission, often as children. Now they say, they didn’t understand the ramifications of that decision, were rushed and given poor guidance or in many cases none at all, and have had their lives shattered.
As part of a growing pushback to gender transitions among very young people, many states have passed legislation regulating or prohibiting medical practices that have produced ready prescriptions for puberty blockers and quick surgical procedures to change teens’ bodies to the opposite sex. But not in Illinois. Not yet.
In this environment, the church is faced with ministering to children exploring alternate identities in the LGBTQIA+ alphabet, and to the confused parents who are not finding understanding or support in the school system or medical community.
Identifying the problem
It’s a scene that wouldn’t have played out a decade ago, but our culture has been rapidly changing to embrace gender inclusive acceptance at all levels of society.
According to the latest Gallup poll, 7.2% of adults in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ, up from 3.5% in 2012. But it’s not just adults. Among Gen Z, those born between 1997 to 2012 or ages 11-26, 20.85% identify in that category. For more, download the list of compiled statistics, “Young people in transition.”
Working with Komodo Health, Reuters analyzed U.S. health insurance data and found between 2017-2021 at least 121,882 children ages 6-17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The trends were similar when compared with Medicaid data.
In the last decade, the Southern Baptist Convention has addressed transgenderism at its annual meeting in at least three resolutions including a statement passed unanimously at this year’s meeting in New Orleans. The resolution was co-authored by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professors Denny Burk and Andrew Walker.
Walker told Baptist Press that although the gender transition movement is growing in the U.S., there is also growing concern—and not just among Christians—about certain medical procedures, especially when it comes to children.
“We’re watching in real time that transgender movement come crashing down,” Walker said. “There are too many cracks in the foundation.” He called transgenderism “unbiblical” and “at odds with what God says about the creation order.”
The transgender movement picked up momentum when the American Psychiatric Association removed the condition known as “gender identity disorder” from its list of disorders in 2013, changing the classification to the milder “gender dysphoria.”
Many claim doctors were all too eager to jump on the cultural bandwagon. One such case is that of a 25-year-old woman in North Carolina who is suing the medical team that started her on the male hormone testosterone at age 17 and performed a double mastectomy the following year. The woman, Prisha Mosely, now says she was suffering from mental health issues when, after a few two-minute consultations, doctors misdiagnosed her and began treatment. She claims they were only after money.
In the video Identity Crisis, produced by the Independent Women’s Forum, Mosley shared how she first learned about transgenderism online at the age of 15. “The trans community really love-bombed me,” said Mosley. “I really hated myself. I was convinced that everyone around me hated me.” When they started “celebrating the fact that I was born in the wrong body, I felt cared for and genuinely loved.”
After having a double mastectomy, she left her parents to move to Florida to live with a trans person she met on the Internet. Soon after her mental health began to suffer. The relationship turned sour and then she was sexually assaulted.
Once not interested in having children, her fertility is likely lost due to the large doses of male sex hormones she was given. It’s a loss she now mourns.
Mosley said emotionally, “I honestly feel like loving me is a lot to ask…. Every other woman is a better option than me because they have their original body, and they didn’t try to live a lie.… They didn’t try to mutilate themselves.”
Of the estimated 1.6 million self-described trans and non-binary Americans aged 13 and over, 31% take cross-sex hormones and 16% opt for surgery, according to research by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) from the end of 2022.
Others forms of transitioning include dressing in clothing of the opposite sex (77%), hairstyle/style of dress (76%), and changing their birth name (57%). That same research showed a surprising 62% said they had come out by age 25, with 31% having come out by age 17.
Pushback in the states
Since 2021, 20 states have passed laws prohibiting gender-reassignment surgery and hormonal treatment, most of them in the first half of this year. Illinois wasn’t one of them. Instead, in its spring 2023 session, the General Assembly passed a trio of bills that one assistant to the governor said were intended to make the state more “welcoming, affirming, and inclusive” to the LGBTQ communities.
In contrast, neighboring states such as Indiana passed laws requiring schools to notify parents if their child requests a pronoun or name change. And in Iowa, new laws prevent doctors from performing gender transition procedures on minors. They also prevent trans students from entering school bathrooms or changing rooms that don’t match their biological sex.
In 2023, 17 states have passed laws prohibiting gender-reassignment surgery and hormone treatment in minors bringing the total to 20 states: six states have placed bans on the use of bathrooms and other facilities segregated by sex for a total of nine. And four more states passed laws barring youths from competing in sports by gender identity, not their biological sex, for a total of 22. But, again, not in Illinois.
There is concern that judges will strike down these laws based on what some call the “dangerous politicization” of the transgender agenda. In June a federal court overturned an Arkansas law banning the provision of sex-change procedures to minors—off-label “puberty blockers,” opposite-sex hormones, and surgery. Judge James M. Moody Jr.’s verdict cited the Endocrine Society’s “widely-accepted clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of gender dysphoria” among reasons to overturn the restrictions.
In a June 28 Wall St. Journal op-ed by Roy Eappen, a practicing endocrinologist, and Ian Kingsbury, research director at Do No Harm, the two claim the Society has been co-opted by activists and that the guidelines are based on “flimsy evidence…despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary.”
They argued that in the U.S., “medical professionals are being cowed into silence and coerced into providing treatments they know are dangerous to children” by activist-controlled groups.
At the same time, the medical establishment in Europe has taken steps back from “gender affirming care” as it is practiced in the U.S., due to concerns over the physical and emotional wellbeing of children. England, Ireland, Sweden, and Finland have all put restrictions in place for treating minors, while health officials in Norway, Belgium, France, and Italy have also begun raising serious concerns.
Increasingly, the U.S. stands alone in its ready prescription of gender reassignment for minors.
Even some who have led the more radical forms of gender reassignment are acknowledging concern for minors. Blair Peters is a surgeon at Oregon Health & Science University who identifies himself as “queer” and performs irreversible transgender surgeries on pre-pubescent children. In a recent online video, he acknowledged the difficulty of obtaining consent from young children who fail to understand the risks and long-term consequences associated with such surgeries. He said they lack the understanding of the often life-long physical pain they will endure, limited use of the newly created organs, and still experimental nature of these surgeries.
“We’re kind of learning and figuring out what works,” said Peters. He described some of the surgeries as having a “really demanding post-operative care process.”
Caring for people
The evangelical church doesn’t often look for allies in secular culture, but in terms of pushback on wholesale acceptance of transgenderism, one measure of resistance is coming from beer drinkers. An ad campaign for Budweiser that featured transwoman Dylan Mulvaney may prove to be a tipping point in the culture. Budweiser lost 30% of its sales due to protests after the company platformed Mulvaney in April.
A leader in the Christian response to transgenderism describes the movement as one “that is won or lost by social conditioning.” Katie J. McCoy said. “We need to decide as (God’s) people whether we’re going to listen to the whims of culture and we’re going to follow after our own personal desires or going to see what God desires for us.”
McCoy is director of Women’s Ministry at Texas Baptists (BGCT) and the author of To Be a Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond (B&H Publishing, 2023). As a measure of its rapid social acceptance, she points out that in 2017, there was only one gender reassignment clinic in the U.S. By 2022 there were 50.
Leading the move to surgical reassignment is first a shift in language, such as self-selected pronouns. “Language is now seen as something that creates reality. It no longer reflects what it is,” McCoy told Baptist Communicators at their annual meeting in April. “You can become whoever or whomever you want to be.”
Much of gender dysphoria in males can be traced back to pornography, McCoy shared. “It’s a secret in the trans community.”
She explained that we live in a post-Christian culture that still hangs on to some of the “virtues of Christianity but got rid of its exclusive claims.” They include the exclusivity of Christ and sexual ethics. “People want the Kingdom, but without the King,” said McCoy who also holds a Ph.D. in systemic theology from Southwestern Seminary where she served on faculty for five years.
Southern Baptists, through multiple statements, have affirmed that gender is God-given, self-evident, and not to be tampered with. But in these days of gender fluidity, a compassionate response is called for. This is especially challenging for pastors balancing truth and love in this environment,
Rob Collingsworth, director of strategic relationships at Criswell College and a member of the 2023 SBC Resolutions Committee, said the committee tried to approach the topic in a way that “balances grace and truth.”
While he believes Southern Baptists “hold genuine sympathy and care and compassion for those affected by gender dysphoria, we can also state very plainly that the long-term effects of gender transitions on children are devastating. While that may be a very controversial opinion in the world in 2023, that is a very uncontroversial opinion among Southern Baptists.”
The resolution declares “God created humans in His own image as distinctly male and female.” While opposing their actions, the resolution extends the love of Christ along with “compassionate care and tender mercy” to those with gender identity issues.
At the same time, it reminds them and the reader, that all are within the saving grace of Christ. It affirms government leaders who have made laws protecting minors from gender-reassignment surgery and hormone treatments, while calling on those who have affirmed them to reject and correct their error.
Even in Illinois.