Most Bible-believing Christians would agree that a major spiritual battle is raging. Countries that once had a Christian foundation are wilfully throwing aside the laws of God as rampant humanism is in the ascendant. Tragically, even within the Church at large there are serious trends in the same direction.
All this accords with prophecy, as Paul declares in his second letter to Timothy: “men will be lovers of themselves…proud…unholy…despisers of good…lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:1-4). It is also consistent with Paul’s exposition in Romans of the reasons for the wrath of God, which is “against men who suppress the truth…who exchange the truth of God for a lie…who serve the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:18-25).
Truth, however, has a habit of rising above the slimy morass of error, written as it is not only in God’s word, but also into the very fabric of his Creation (see Romans 1:20). This, I believe, can be seen in several recent episodes.
Episode 1: Academics Confess
Recently, a secular Gender Studies professor made an astonishing confession. Dr Christopher Dummitt, of Trent University, Ontario, stated clearly that experts in that field (including himself) who have denied the reality of biological sex differences are wrong.
Significantly, he has had to turn to an online ‘free thinking’ journal, Quillette, to publish his critique, so entrenched is postmodern ‘gender theory’ in peer-reviewed journals. Speaking of the claim that “just about every identity was a social construction”, he says, “I basically just made it up…In my defence, I wasn’t alone. Everybody was (and is) making it up…I should have known better”.1
The beliefs underpinning current gender theory can be traced back to the rise of postmodernism in universities and colleges, a mode of thought summarised by Dr Max Werner of the University of Utah: “there is no underlying meaning or truth within or imposed upon the things of our world”.2 Though it has come to permeate much of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, it is a view that, thankfully, Dr Werner criticises as a ‘dead end’.
Episode 2: Researchers Caught in Crossfire
The practical outworking of postmodernist thought can be seen in an unresolved controversy at Bath Spa University. James Caspian, a 58-year old psychotherapist with 16 years’ experience of working with transgender people, had become aware of many who had undergone sex-change ‘transitioning’ but later regretted it and sought to reverse it. He noted that some have crippling levels of depression following ‘transition’, in some cases leading to contemplation of suicide.
As a postgraduate researcher, Caspian applied to register a project to investigate the issue in depth. His proposal was rejected by the University’s Institute for Education ethics committee. Amongst its reasons, he was told that the University “sees no point in causing unnecessary offence”.3 Caspian is greatly concerned that trans activists are endangering the lives of many by suppressing inconvenient evidence. Much of their thinking, he says, “comes from queer theory: it’s what you feel like and think you are that is the truth. So if you think you are a woman, you are.”4 He asserts, rightly, that such activism has been largely accepted by policy writers in the NHS and the Department for Education.
Truth has a habit of rising above the slimy morass of error, written as it is not only in God’s word, but also into the very fabric of his Creation.
Episode 3: Science Confirms Reality
In October 2013, two years before Caspian began his battle, Dr David Page, Professor of Biology at MIT, asserted that sex differences really do matter. He pointed out that both the X and Y chromosomes function throughout the entire body, not just within the reproductive tract. He maintains that medicine and research fails to take into account this most fundamental difference: we aren’t unisex, and our bodies know this – every cell of our roughly 10 trillion cells ‘knows’ it at the molecular level.
Page has established that the genetic difference between a man and a woman is 15 times that of the difference between two men or between two women, and that male/female genetic difference expresses itself in proneness to disease.5 Then in May 2017 the Weizmann Institute of Israel announced that about 6,500 genetic differences between males and female had been discovered, for example, that “gene expression for skin hair is higher for men than for women, for muscle building it is higher in men, whilst that for fat storage is higher in women.”6
In the first chapter of Genesis we read “God created man in His own image…male and female He created them”, and in the second chapter that he created the first woman separately, out of material from the first man. It should be no surprise then that science confirms both genetic similarity and genetic difference in humans. In another sense it is quite remarkable to find congruence between a very early pre-scientific explanation and the latest intricate DNA analysis.
Episode 4: Impacts of Trans Drugs Exposed
Also flying in the face of gender theory and queer theory is perturbing evidence about the impacts of gender modification drugs. According to the Food and Drug Administration of the USA, between 2004 and 2019 there have been over 41,000 adverse reactions to Lupron and other similar drugs used as ‘puberty blockers’ by gender clinics. Of these, nearly 26,000 were classed as serious, including over 6,000 which ended in death.7
Numerous calls for extreme caution in the use of such drugs have come from the medical profession and the research community. Examples include Dr Ken Sinervo, an Atlanta-area gynaecologist specialising in endometriosis surgery, who reports having seen many women suffering memory loss and joint pain after Lupron treatment,8 and endocrinologist Dr Michael Laidlaw who points out that blocker treatments actually cause a disease, called hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. He says, “We’re talking about what in nature is a rare condition.”9
In the UK, Professor Biggs of Oxford University has pointed out that girls receiving puberty blockers experience progressively serious inhibition of bone density. He cites a 2018 report of a study carried out by the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, in which bone density was measured over three years for 31 gender-reassigned children. He says, “The authors state reassuringly that bone density did not decline in absolute terms. This is misleading, because growing children need density to increase” (i.e. no absolute change is a decline in real terms).10 The Professor’s damning indictment of the clinic is clear from the introduction to his article:
I will argue that the experimental study did not properly inform children and their parents of the risks of triptorelin…My conclusion is that GIDS and their collaborators at UCL [University College London] have either ignored or suppressed negative evidence.
We are not unisex – and our bodies know this. Every cell of our roughly 10 trillion cells ‘knows’ it at the molecular level.
Episode 5: Principled Voices Speak Out
Yet the ‘trans’ bandwagon rolls on, apparently undeterred. A Church of England primary school in Essex responded to a parental request about their 8-year old boy wishing to ‘transition’ into a girl by inviting the trans activist group Mermaids to deliver a training session to teachers and governors. The vicar, John Parker, as a governor, was present when the session occurred in May 2019. At the end of the session when he politely attempted to query what he considered to be legal and scientific falsehoods, he was aggressively shut down.
He later said, “I am an Oxford biologist by background so I was gobsmacked by what was being said from a biological perspective. I also knew some of the legalities of the situation and knew that the whole governing body and staff were being misled…From a Christian point of view, it went against everything, not just in terms of speaking the truth, but also allowing freedom of speech and freedom of discussion and disagreement.”11
In June a post on the transgender theme, replete with execrable spelling errors and a major contradiction, appeared on the school’s website. It offered links exclusively to activist websites such as Mermaids and Stonewall, but none to those with alternative views. Lacking formal support (indeed, being undermined by the head teacher, the Diocesan Director of Education and even his Bishop), John Parker eventually resigned in September as Rector of his parish. There are real casualties in this battle and they need our prayers!
Conclusions
There can be no doubt that there are people who experience genetic malfunctions and/or psychological difficulties, who deserve our compassion and remediation. However, no-one is helped by perpetrating postmodernist myths that undermine personal identity, other than those who are making a career out of it. The fundamental principle for the healthcare profession is ‘First do no harm’.
As Dr Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians, says, “To indoctrinate all children from pre-school forward with the lie that they could be trapped in the wrong body disrupts the very foundation of a child’s reality testing. If they can’t trust the reality of their physical bodies, who or what can they trust? Transgender ideology in schools is psychological abuse that often leads to chemical castration, sterilization, and surgical mutilation.”12
That the secular world persists in its distortions is deeply worrying, if unsurprising. That elements of the Church are complicit simply beggars belief. But, inevitably and thankfully, the ‘truth will out’ – for those who seek it (Acts 17:27; Rom 1:19-20; Rev 3:20). May we be of those who continue to “hold out the word of life” in the midst of this crooked and warped generation (Phil 2:14-16), for whoever has eyes to see and ears to hear.
References
1 Dummitt, C. I basically just made it up: Confessions of a social constructionist. Quillette, 17 September 2019.
2 Werner, M. Postmodernism’s dead end. Quillette, 23 September 2019.
3 Bath Chronicle, 27 September 2017.
4 Caspian, J. My battle with the transgender thought police. Spiked, 22 February 2019.
5 Human genetics revolution tells us that men and women are not the same. DNAeXplained, 24 October 2013.
6 Researchers identify 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and women. Weizmann Institute of Science. 3 May 2017.
7 Thousands of deaths linked to puberty blockers for gender confused kids. LifeSiteNews, 25 September 2019
8 Why puberty blockers are a clear danger to children’s health. The Federalist, 14 December 2018.
9 O’Neil, T. Medical expert: Doctors are actually giving trans kids a disease. PJ Media, 25 August 2019.
10 Biggs, M. The Tavistock’s Experiment with Puberty Blockers. University of Oxford, 29 July 2019.
11 Vicar resigns after being ‘silenced’ over a Church of England school’s plan to keep an eight-year-old pupil’s sex change secret from parents. Mail on Sunday, 27 September 2019.
12 Cretella, M. I’m a paediatrician. How transgender ideology has infiltrated my field and produced large-scale child abuse. Daily Signal, 3 July 2017.