BIBLE GOD CALLS TRANSGENDERISM AN EVIL AND A SIN
The Bible speaks only of male and female. Jesus says God's plan from when the creation was all good and it remains the law, that man must go to woman in marriage and sexually become one flesh and this union only ends by death.
The Bible God says through Moses that a man must not wear something proper to a woman or a woman anything proper to a man (Deuteronomy 22:5). It seems to some that this is merely saying that people of one sex must not deceive the same gender by dressing up as the opposite sex. But that is a mere useless speculation. Why not just say, "A man must not pretend to be a woman"? Because that is not what is meant! Henri Daniel-Rops in Daily Life in the Time of Jesus wrote, “the same words, coat, cloak, and belt, are used indifferently for male and for female garments; and yet there must have been a difference, since the Law utterly forbade men to wear women’s clothes and women to wear men’s, and since it is clear from the Talmud that doing so gave rise to the suspicion of homosexuality.” The text is clear that a man is a man and must not try to look like a woman even though the clothes were virtually unisex.
The Bible simply condemns men and women who swap gender roles in certain ways. It never mentions gender dysphoria. But that silence in fact does not matter. If somebody says, "It is a sin to try and live as a gender that does not match the one that was decided you were at birth" that is simple. It is disingenuous to say, "This is not a condemnation of anybody taking that action over suffering crippling gender dysphoria." That is just trying to make the text look inapplicable at least when the subject is somebody with dysphoria. That is not exegesis - it is not interpretation.
Deuteronomy 23:1 forbids any man with damaged testes from entering the assembly. Why? I think it means those who had their testes removed. Some of them thought they wanted to be eunuchs for they felt they were born in the wrong body.
The Bible at Ephesians 5:29 says that nobody ever hated their own body but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does for the Church. This is hatefully accusing trans with gender dysphoria of being invalid when their experience is that they feel hate for how their body was sexed in the womb and how this is not their authentic self.
Paul said that effeminates cannot inherit the kingdom of God in 1 Corinthians 6:9. In the original Greek, this verse has it that effeminates and homosexuals are rejected by God (New Testament notes for the Catholic Edition, RSV, Nelson, London, 1966, page 246).
The Bible not only condemns trans but makes no provision for their wellbeing. At all! Trans erasure, denial of their existence, is a form of extreme abuse. Trans need to be validated sincerely as the sex or gender they say they are. A human being would not like to be treated as invisible or as a thing. That is what you are doing to trans by refusing to admit their sexed and gendered humanity. The Bible without clearly validating trans people is harmful. It is a book of its time when men were taken for men and women were taken for women and there was no other room for anything else. But it goes further than that. Its principles rule out trans rights.
These subjects are very toxic and controversial because women claim their rights are sex based and men claim their rights are sex based. One example is how a transwoman, especially one who is not going to have any medical intervention, may be excluded by women from changing rooms for women or women's sports. The Bible definitely does see rights as sex based.
Let us talk about cis and trans.
A cis person is one whose gender identity, their sense of being man/woman lines up with the male or female body they have. A trans person claims there is a mismatch. It is like a female mind in a male body. A male mind in a female body. The question is, does this imply that cisgender is the default and transgender is not? Both cannot be the default. This leads to transphobia. Maybe the answer is to forget about the body altogether and validate males as those who sense they are male and validate females as those who sense they are female?
The Bible knows of no category but male or female. The notion of trans male and cis male or trans female and cis female is out. Like the feminists, the notion of women being a subcategory of their own sex is ruled out. It is obvious that thou shalt not steal was very simple. A man claiming the words woman and she her or hers is accused of stealing from women. A woman claiming the words man and he him his is accused of stealing men's words. The affirmation that the man is not a man and the woman is not a woman is outlawed.
A Jesus who sees himself simply as a man, not a cis man, is erasing trans. It is obvious that Jesus presented himself as simply man. The Church says he was man but also God. Jesus had to have seen himself as man, no variation, just man. He affirmed this by calling himself Son of Man thus connecting himself to the male sex binary. I would take the doctrine of the incarnation, that God became a man on earth, as transphobic. The milder version that God's son took a human life and role on earth as a man is equally transphobic.
In 1998, Israel won the Eurovision Song Contest. The Israeli entry was sung by transgender woman Dana International. Dana was condemned like something depraved by many Orthodox Jews. We have seen how the Bible forbids transvestitism. Before gender-reassignment was possible that was all people who were convinced that they were in the wrong bodies could do. They had to console themselves by dressing as the opposite sex. So the Bible must be against transsexuals too. No exceptions were made in it for people who believed their bodies were the wrong sex. There were plenty of unsavoury attitudes advocated in the Bible by its God about rapes and silly genealogies but not a word of love or compassion for people with this problem. There is real hatred in this.
The Employment Tribunal Birmingham ruling, October 2019 refused to grant this anti-trans stance any protection. "Belief in Genesis 1:27, lack of belief in transgenderism and conscientious objection to transgenderism in our judgment are incompatible with human dignity and conflict with the fundamental rights of others, specifically here, transgender individuals." Dr David Mackereth v The Department for Work and Pensions & Anor. Secularism cannot remain secular if it accepts that transmen are not real men or transwomen are not real women and nonbinary identities need affirming too.
Marriage as in between a man as a real biological being and a woman as a real biological being is a core Christian teaching. That man can never be woman or vice versa is also a core teaching. Religious rights cannot come before human rights. Christian and biblical doctrine should not be protected. Protect trans not religious social constructs.
To say homosexual sex is unnatural is to say it is not a property of human nature. It is against the essence of what it is to be human. It's against a human essential property. The text that says that lines up with and is in the line of the Leviticus text which says that a man must not lie with a woman as with a man for it is an abomination. This text claims to be directly inspired by God. The idea is that a man has the wrong body for sex with a man. Catholics and Christians see transgenderism as linked to that. The transgender person who thinks he is in the wrong body for sex with a man according to the Church is correct. The only thing the Church objects to is how the person responds to that knowledge - he gets the body surgically altered to have the right body. The Church will see transgenderism as the logical outcome of accepting gay sex as morally good or at least not morally bad.
Many transwomen report suffering for they are not cis women. Many transmen report agonising dysphoria for they are not cis men. They know they are born in the wrong existence. The trans who say their dysphoria is down to them not being cis need listening to. Their suffering is so severe it cannot be imagined. The triggering from society and religion and must be horrendous. Trans rights activists seem to have little concern for these trans women who consider themselves cis women and need to be affirmed. Likewise there is little concern for trans men who consider themselves cis men and need to be affirmed. Some trans just need to be affirmed as the cisgender they identify as. They more than anybody else are attacked by Bible teaching.
They are accused of stealing cis people's roles and words and thus their rights. They are accused of dishonouring parents by not honouring the biology they got from them. Their need to reject their parents if their parents reject them must be affirmed. They are accused of bearing false witness and getting others to do that too by affirming them. They are accused of not respecting other by demanding that they treat them as cis and affirm them. The idea is that everybody must bend to their opinion of themselves. We reject that and affirm that regardless of the bad consequences for religious oppressive social constructs which deserve to collapse anyway, that a transman is a cis man if he says so and a transwoman is a cis woman if she says so. Or if they do not say it, treat them as cis if that is what they request.
Trans who feel that way include the growing number of children who insist they are only thought to be boys or girls but are actually girls or boys. They become medical patients for life.
These trans cannot possibly respect a God if there is one who did that to them or who put them in the wrong existence. We cannot respect them by offering them that God or telling them he loves them. They feel their body and their existence is a lie. Who then is telling the lie if he exists? God. And those who preach God are delivering the lie. They are complicit.
To tell a trans God made them that way fails to affirm the trans who say trans is not an identity and who say the sex assigned at birth was wrong. Assigned male then would mean you are female and need intervention to live as a female. Assigned female then would mean you are male and need intervention to live as the male you are. They are not trans as in identity for their identity is female or male.
Anyway saying God makes trans need not be a compliment to God.
And saying that God does not make mistakes can be turned around. It can turn itself around. And may happen if you put it out there for you are giving up control of it. If you give a person a knife that can be used to cut bread or the head off a puppy you cannot avoid responsibility for giving the knife. It is not your fault what the knife can do but it is your responsibility for knowing what it can do and handing it to somebody. That is why simply saying that God makes no mistakes is neither helping or hindering trans. In fact pretending it is helping to affirm is hindering. You are turning a grave issue that causes great suffering to others into your vanity project. You are feeding those who use "God does not make mistakes" to invalidate the experience of someone assigned the wrong gender. The argument itself has the problem of how it can go either way and then it has you voicing it trying to do the same thing.
To sum up, saying "God did not make a mistake with you" could just as easily be plucked from the air as, "God did not make a mistake with you which is why you are the sex you were born." So you turn the argument around. Or worse it also turns itself around.
In conclusion, the momentum to get the Bible treated as the dangerous quack hate speech that it is, is necessary to protect trans especially trans children.
