How do you solve a problem like a tranny? How do you catch a gender and pin it down?
Those are the questions keeping Russell D. Moore up at night. And so Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, took to the pages of the Washington Post to ponder the “transgender question” in the wake of California’s decision to protect transgender students from discrimination.
“Ultimately,” Moore writes, “the transgender question is about more than just sex. It’s about what it means to be human.”
Exactly! Wow. This guy actually gets it. The root of the matter is basic human dignity. I mean, what kind of person wouldn’t want to protect transgender teens, a group of kids who are often misunderstood and face ridicule and harassment?
But Moore continues, “Laws such as those in California will quickly test the boundaries of society’s tolerance for a psychological and individualistic definition of gender. There are reasons, after all, why societies put boys and girls in different bathrooms, men and women on different sports teams. When gender identity is severed from biological sex, where does one’s self-designation end, and who will be harmed in the process?”
Uh oh. I take it back. He doesn’t get it. But don’t worry, it’s not like he has anything against transgender people.
“As conservative Christians,” he writes, “we do not see transgendered persons as ‘freaks’ to be despised or ridiculed.”
Aww, how sweet. I mean, seriously, coming from him, this is practically a Valentine. Because he basically thinks that transgender people are the anti-Christ.
Or if not the anti-Christ, at least anti-Christ.
“The transgender question means that conservative Christian congregations such as mine must teach what’s been handed down to us, that our maleness and femaleness points us to an even deeper reality, to the unity and complementarity of Christ and the church,” he writes. “A rejection of the goodness of those creational realities then, is a revolt against God’s lordship.”
Got that? If you’ve got a beef with your genitals, then you’ve got a beef with God. And God don’t make junk. Or give you the wrong junk. Or something like that. Because … God.
Look, I know that the Christian church is all about the difference between “maleness and femaleness” and is hot to keep those categories separate and unequal forever and ever, amen. But people are not transgender just because they’re confused and are just rebelling against God. Moore’s Washington Post piece completely disregards individual experiences and circumstances, not to mention religious belief or lack thereof, and characterizes all transgender people as people who just need to get right with God.
“[W]e will love and be patient with those who feel alienated from their created identities. We must recognize that some in our churches will face a long road of learning what it means to live as God created them to be, as male or female. That sort of long, slow plodding and sometimes-painful obedience is part of what Jesus said would be true of every believer: the bearing of a cross.”
In other words, we will never accept you as a human being worthy of dignity or protection. We will, however, acknowledge your suffering and applaud your courage to live your life in constant pain because we say you should.
Because when all is said and done, gender is a binary. You’re either male or female and if you aren’t sure which one you are, just look between your legs to see if you have a flibbertigibbet, or whatever kids are calling it these days.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.