10 Things Everyone Should Know About a Christian View of Homosexuality - Glenn Stanton

I've worked up a good lather in the so-called "culture war" around homosexuality and same-sex marriage for about two decades now. And I'm just as committed to the Christian view on sexuality as I am to engaging the issue in spirited and civil debate. However, to debate the issue seriously and truthfully, we must seek an honest picture of what our opponents actually believe — working from what we think they believe is neither helpful nor respectful.  While there are people of many diverse beliefs and convictions — including gay and lesbian people — who oppose same-sex marriage, here are 10 foundational truths that inform the traditional, orthodox Christian belief.

1. All humans are simultaneously sinful and loved.
All people, regardless of their story, are deeply and unconditionally loved by God, each created with profound dignity and worth, not one more than another. This is more than mere religious happy talk — it's truth whether one is gay, straight, or otherwise. But, all people are also stricken with a terminal illness: sin. Everyone. No exceptions and to the same degree. Our sin demands our repentance and needs forgiveness, and God's love and grace are where we find both. This is basic Christianity and the great equalizer of all people.

2. Jesus wasn't silent on homosexuality.
Some claim Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and therefore is neutral on the topic. Not true. Jesus was unequivocal in saying that to understand marriage and the sexual union, we must go back to the beginning and see how God created humanity and to what end. (See Matthew 19 and Mark 10.) Jesus holds up the creation story in Genesis not as a quaint Sunday school lesson, but as authoritative — reminding us that God created each of us male and female, each for the other. And the sexual union that God created and ordains is for husband and wife to come together in physical union, one flesh.

3. There is only one option.
Both Jesus and all of scripture approve of no other sexual union than that between a husband and wife. This is the uncontested historical teaching of Judaism and Christianity, and it is not something that true Christianity is free to adjust with the times. Yes, concubines and multiple wives are found in the Bible, but doesn't make them "biblical." In fact, they violate the Genesis narrative Christ points us to.

4. Male and female complete God's image on earth.
It is not just mere "traditionalism" that makes sex-distinct marriage the norm for Christians. It is a common grace God has given to all peoples at all times that is rooted in deeper theological reasons. The first chapter of the Jewish and Christian scriptures tells us that humanity is uniquely created to show forth the image of God in the world — to make visible the invisible. God does this not just in generic, androgynous humanity, but through two very similar but distinct types of humans: male and female. They are human universals, not cultural constructs.  When God said that it "is not good that the man be alone" (Genesis 2:18) he wasn't lamenting that Adam didn't have a buddy or was just lonely. He was saying that the male could not really know himself as male without a human "other" who equally shared his humanity but was meaningfully distinct right down to every bit of her DNA. The same is true for her in Adam. Taoists understand this in that the Yin cannot be Yin without its corresponding and contrasting Yang. In both Jewish and Christian belief, both male and female become fully human in their correspondence and contrast with one another. This does not happen solely in marriage, but it does happen most profoundly and mysteriously in marriage.

5. Sex is indeed about babies.
It is a new and culturally peculiar idea that human sexuality is all about intimacy and pleasure, but not necessarily babies. Babies and reproduction matter. And sure, while not every male/female sexual engagement is toward the end of procreation — intimacy and pleasure matter as well — it has been the overwhelming norm and desire in nearly all marital relationships throughout time. That some couples are infertile either by age or incapability does not diminish or challenge this reality. Infertility is the vast exception for male/female couples. It is the fact of same-sex unions, a human cul-de-sac. Heterosexual union reaches into and creates the next generation. To establish a sexual relationship without any interest in or openness to babies is contrary to God's intention for such relationships.

6. Children have a right to a mother and father.
Every person ever born can track his origin to a mother and a father. There are no exceptions, including those artificially produced. This was the first command God gave to the first two humans: to come together and bring forth the coming generations of new divine image-bearers. Nearly all cultures in all places in the world at all historical times hold as fundamental that every child should be loved and raised by a mother and father. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes a mother and father as a basic right of every child.

7. Same-sex attraction is not a sin.
To be human is to have a disordered sexuality. You do. I do. Everyone does. We all have some manner of sexual drive that compels us to disobey God's design for sexuality. But, while temptation is universal, it's different from sin. Scripture tells us that Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are, but did not sin (see Hebrews 4:15). Sexual sin is giving in to that desire in either mind or body. Faithful Christian discipleship cannot avoid temptation, but it strives to resist and master it with God's help. Doing so is not sin, but obedience and dependence upon Christ.  Many are indeed same-sex attracted, but live obediently within a Christian sexual ethic. It can be difficult, as it is for heterosexuals who are required to live in celibacy. Christianity requires that we each subjugate our sexual (and many other) desires to our faith commitment — and countless same-sex attracted believers do so willingly and joyfully.

8. Sexual intimacy is not a right.
Every Christian has limitations placed on his sexuality. For married Christians, it is exclusive to one's spouse. For single, engaged, and divorced Christians, it is abstinence, no exceptions. Is it unfair for so many to be forced into a life that cannot know the wonder and beauty of physical intimacy just because marriage is not an option for them? Is it fair for a Christian to be stuck in a loveless marriage? Christians have long understood that fairness is not really the question. Sex is not a right, but a gift — and the giver knows what is best for us.

9. Rewriting God's rules is never an option.
One of the marks of a Christian is his or her desire to be obedient to Christ's teaching. Certainly most of us would like to rewrite the scriptures to make life easier. I would change where Christ says that lust is the same as doing the deed. Christianity is a demanding faith. The scriptures define and change us, not the other way around. A biblical sexual ethic does not, indeed cannot, change with the times.

10. People are more than their sexuality.
To identify people by their sexuality is to reduce people to their sexuality. Every individual is so much more. A person's inherent and undeniable value is rooted in his membership in humanity, not his particularity, sexual or otherwise. To advocate for extending rights to someone based in particular and occasionally mutable desires, relationships, and behaviors — as important as they might be to the individual — is actually a violation of the principle of universal human rights.

Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme

by  Paul McHugh
within Bioethics, Culture, Science

June 10th, 2015

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.

For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.

A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.

Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.

The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.

At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits. As a result, we stopped offering that form of treatment in the 1970s. Our efforts, though, had little influence on the emergence of this new idea about sex, or upon the expansion of the number of “transgendered” among young and old.

Olympic Athlete Turned "Pin-Up" Girl

This history may clarify some aspects of the latest high-profile transgender claimant. Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion, is turning away from his titular identity as one of the “world’s greatest male athletes.” Jenner announced recently that he “identifies as a woman” and, with medical and surgical help, is busy reconstructing his physique.

I have not met or examined Jenner, but his behavior resembles that of some of the transgender males we have studied over the years. These men wanted to display themselves in sexy ways, wearing provocative female garb. More often than not, while claiming to be a woman in a man’s body, they declared themselves to be “lesbians” (attracted to other women). The photograph of the posed, corseted, breast-boosted Bruce Jenner (a man in his mid-sixties, but flaunting himself as if a “pin-up” girl in her twenties or thirties) on the cover ofVanity Fair suggests that he may fit the behavioral mold that Ray Blanchard has dubbed an expression of “autogynephilia”—from gynephilia (attracted to women) and auto (in the form of oneself).

The Emperor’s New Clothes

But the meme—that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time—marches on through our society. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension.

I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what’s real. I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla—enhanced now by Bruce Jenner’s celebrity and Annie Leibovitz’s photography—stand many victims. Think, for example, of the parents whom no one—not doctors, schools, nor even churches—will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald. These youngsters now far outnumber the Bruce Jenner type of transgender. Although they may be encouraged by his public reception, these children generally come to their ideas about their sex not through erotic interests but through a variety of youthful psychosocial conflicts and concerns.

First, though, let us address the basic assumption of the contemporary parade: the idea that exchange of one’s sex is possible. It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.

When “the tumult and shouting dies,” it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.

How to Treat Gender Dysphoria

So how should we make sense of this matter today? As with any mental phenomenon, what’s crucial is noting its fundamental characteristic and then identifying the many ways in which that characteristic can manifest itself.

The central issue with all transgender subjects is one of assumption—the assumption that one’s sexual nature is misaligned with one’s biological sex. This problematic assumption comes about in several different ways, and these distinctions in its generation determine how to manage and treat it.

Based on the photographic evidence one might guess Bruce Jenner falls into the group of men who come to their disordered assumption through being sexually aroused by the image of themselves as women. He could have been treated for this misaligned arousal with psychotherapy and medication. Instead, he found his way to surgeons who worked him over as he wished. Others have already commented on his stereotypic caricature of women as decorative “babes” (“I look forward to wearing nail polish until it chips off,” he said to Diane Sawyer)—a view that understandably infuriates feminists—and his odd sense that only feelings, not facts, matter here.

For his sake, however, I do hope that he receives regular, attentive follow-up care, as his psychological serenity in the future is doubtful. Future men with similar feelings and intentions should be treated for those feelings rather than being encouraged to undergo bodily changes. Group therapies are now available for them.

Most young boys and girls who come seeking sex-reassignment are utterly different from Jenner. They have no erotic interest driving their quest. Rather, they come with psychosocial issues—conflicts over the prospects, expectations, and roles that they sense are attached to their given sex—and presume that sex-reassignment will ease or resolve them.

The grim fact is that most of these youngsters do not find therapists willing to assess and guide them in ways that permit them to work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions. Rather, they and their families find only “gender counselors” who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions.

Those with Gender Dysphoria Need Evidence-Based Care

There are several reasons for this absence of coherence in our mental health system. Important among them is the fact that both the state and federal governments are actively seeking to block any treatments that can be construed as challenging the assumptions and choices of transgendered youngsters. “As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Obama.

In two states, a doctor who would look into the psychological history of a transgendered boy or girl in search of a resolvable conflict could lose his or her license to practice medicine. By contrast, such a physician would not be penalized if he or she started such a patient on hormones that would block puberty and might stunt growth.

What is needed now is public clamor for coherent science—biological and therapeutic science—examining the real effects of these efforts to “support” transgendering. Although much is made of a rare “intersex” individual, no evidence supports the claim that people such as Bruce Jenner have a biological source for their transgender assumptions. Plenty of evidence demonstrates that with him and most others, transgendering is a psychological rather than a biological matter.

In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.

The larger issue is the meme itself. The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.

But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.

Paul McHugh, MD, is University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry.

Who Does the Constitution Protect? by Dr. Frank Turek

Last week, one unelected judge, overturned the will of 1,317,178 North Carolinians when he declared North Carolina’s definition of marriage in violation of the United States constitution. Judge Max Cogburn, appointed by President Obama, said that the definition 61 percent of voters approved just two years ago violated the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment—the same rationale used by judges elsewhere to violate the expressed will of the people. This is beyond absurd.

It’s absurd rationally because everyone already has equal marriage rights. Every person has the same equal right to marry someone of the opposite sex. That law treats all people equally, but not every behavior they may desire equally. Same sex marriage and natural marriage are different behaviors with different outcomes, so the law rightfully treats them differently. One behavior perpetuates and stabilizes society, and the other doesn't.

These rulings are also absurd constitutionally. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1868 to prevent states from discriminating against newly freed slaves. At that time blacks and women didn't even have the right to vote, yet no one ever thought a court could use the “equal protection” clause to change state voting laws. So why do courts think they can use it now to change state marriage laws? Are we to believe that “equal protection” does not guarantee a woman’s right to vote but does guarantee a woman’s right to marry another woman? What planet are these judges ruling from?

Why do you think the Federal and State governments went through the arduous constitutional amendment process to give blacks and women the right to vote? Courts knew they couldn’t act as legislatures to fix the problem. Congress and State legislatures had to vote to add the 15th and 19th Amendments in 1870 and 1920 respectively.

There was no rational case to preclude people from voting because of their race or sex. But there certainly is a rational case to preclude changing marriage. It’s the one institution best capable of creating and then raising children by encouraging their mothers and fathers to stay together. It’s the basis of a civilized society. We can’t build and maintain a civilization through homosexuality or by equating it to what moms and dads do. You may claim that’s bigotry, but it’s really just biology. (Sorry, I didn’t set up the facts of nature. I have noticed, however, that conservatives attempt to change their behavior to fit reality, while liberals attempt to change reality to fit their behavior.)

Anyone who wants to change laws should convince their fellow citizens to do so at the ballot box, not through unelected judges. Unfortunately, activist judges won’t honor the ballot box. 41,020,568 people across more than half the states have voted to recognize marriage for what nature’s design says it is—the union of one man and one women. Yet just 23 unelected judges have overturned those 41 million people across about 20 states! I don’t care where you stand on the marriage issue: when 23 people substitute their personal policy preferences to overrule those of 41 million Americans, we are no longer free or equal.

Of the approximately 30 states that now have same-sex marriage (it changes every day), only one state has done it through popular vote (Maine). The people of Maryland and Washington narrowly voted not to overrule the same-sex marriage provisions their legislatures had approved. Eight laws were changed by state legislatures without popular input. Activist judges overruled the people in the remaining states.

As unwise as I think changing the institution of marriage is, I can at least respect the process when it is done democratically. For all their talk about equality, the other side does not respect democracy unless the vote comes out their way.

What do you think would happen if some federal judge wrenched a passage of the Federal Constitution out of context and summarily struck down Maine’s law democratically decided law approving same-sex marriage? Do you think the people preaching “tolerance”—including their cheerleaders in the media—would tolerate such judicial abuse? The airwaves would be blasting howls of unfairness and calls for judicial impeachment. Yet when the same thing is done to strike down marriage laws based in biological reality—laws passed by millions of voters—liberals celebrate that those voters have been disenfranchised. Saying that one judge’s vote counts more than the votes of millions of Americans is an unequal way to advance “equality.”

“Oh, but the Constitution evolves,” some say. “We don’t have to look at what was intended in 1868.”

If that’s the case, then why have a constitution at all? If judges can make the law say anything they want, then how can we govern ourselves? We can’t. It also means that none of our rights are secure (including new-found “rights” to same-sex marriage). What’s to stop some rogue judge from taking away your freedom of speech or religion because the constitution has “evolved” in just the way his liberal mind desires?

Oops, that’s already happened, as many bakers, florists, photographers, and conscientious people in other businesses have discovered. If you don’t agree to celebrate same-sex marriages, you will be sued, fined, fired, and perhaps even jailed. All in the name of “tolerance, inclusion and diversity.”

And parents, don’t think you have the right to educate your children with certain moral values in public schools. Same-sex marriage ends your parental rights there as well.

What? You voted and your values won? Sorry, your votes don’t count. Some people get more “equal protection” than you do. A judge said so.

The truth is, nowhere does the Constitution say that the courts are the final word on what laws mean or what laws are valid. We have three co-equal branches of government. We also have a federal government that is constitutionally subordinate to state governments on most issues, including this issue of same-sex marriage (that’s one thing the Supreme Court got right in last year’s DOMA decision).

America needs a state governor who still believes in America—a governor willing to take a page from President Andrew Jackson who once rebuffed a Supreme Court decision against the state of Georgia by telling Chief Justice Marshall, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." He called the decision “stillborn.”

America needs an Andrew Jackson governor—a statesman who peacefully but firmly tells the court, “Your decision violates the Constitution and the rights of my citizens to govern themselves. It will not be enforced in this state. If you want to change our laws, then respect our people and our Constitution by convincing us to change our minds in the voting booth.”

While that may create a constitutional crisis, our Constitution is already in crisis! What can be lost that hasn’t ready been lost? We will not regain our right to self-government or maintain ordered liberty if we continue to cede all power to the judicial branch or to the federal government.

Are there any statesmen left in America?

The Incorrect Assumption of Transgenderism....by Elizabeth Prata

The following article is taken from a blog entitled, "The End Time".  The author of both the blog and article is Elizabeth Prata.  Thank you Elizabeth for a very informative and God honoring article on a very culturally divisive issue.

"...what is in the mind cannot be questioned."

The above statement was from Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the author of "Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind".

It is from an excerpt from an Opinion-Editorial article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week by Dr. Paul McHugh, formerly head psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University. [HTStand to Reason Blog] from which the above was taken. Their title was "Why the First Hospital to Do Sex-Reassignment Surgeries No Longer Does Them"

I thought Dr. McHugh's point about anorexia and bulimia was especially poignant. The comment about the 20-fold higher suicide rate of surgically transgendered patients in latter years having 'no explanation' was also poignant.

Christians have the explanation. The explanation is, the trans-gender seeker person is vigorously rebelling against God and denying His sovereignty over creation, including their own creation as a man or a woman. Rebellion against God and denying Him always leads to despair- because rebels have no hope.

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Halifax, Canada: "The familiar stick figures remain, so as not to confuse anyone used to looking for them to point the way to a washroom. But now Capital Health has added a third figure to the signs on some of its single-stall bathrooms in Halifax to represent transgender people, in a move designed to signal a welcoming environment to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individual."

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Satan actively seeks moral decline. He seeks it in the individual and he seeks it in society. In attacking the family satan has had success in bringing about an acceptance of divorce, and an acceptance of homosexuality- at least as it's presented in the news and the media. The next frontier for acceptance of perversity is transgenderism, and polyamory (Multiple wives, or multiple partners under one roof.)  If satan can corrupt the marriage institution and pervert the nuclear family, thus normalizing terrible sin, he will have accomplished his goal, which is to rebel against God's holy standards. Getting an entire society to rebel is icing on the cake. (Romans 1:32).

Dr McHugh's information is of interest because transgenderism is the next frontier of satan's active battlefield. The cherry on top of the icing on the cake is that after getting individuals to fall, and after getting a culture to fall, is to get these perverted notions accepted by thechurch. It has been an onslaught lately.

Several weeks ago, a church identifying as Southern Baptist repudiated the biblical standard for sexuality and voted to keep a pastor who'd reversed his position on homosexuality as a sin. The reason for the pastor's change of heart? His son came out as gay, and rather than repudiate the sin in his son and go through the Matthew 18 process, the pastor chose to repudiate Jesus instead. His church voted to keep the gay-affiring pastor, thus the congregation repudiated Jesus also. In these cases I am reminded of Revelation 3:20. Jesus is outside the door of the church, knocking to come in.

The Presbyterian Church USA voted this week to change their constitution declaring marriage as a union between two people, rather than specifically between a man and a woman.

In the face of the swelling tide of gender role and sexual reversals, last week the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution stating in part, "The separation of one's gender identity from the physical reality of biological birth sex poses the harmful effect of engendering an understanding of sexuality and personhood that is fluid."

And this piece by Dr McHugh agrees, medically, biologically, and psychologically. Transgenderism is in the mind, it is a desire, an appetite. It is a disorder, not a biological reality.

Acknowledging transgenderism as a sin and not a disorder does not diminish the pain and anguish the gender confused individual possesses. However the glory of the Gospel is that Jesus died to pay for all sins, and to bring peace between Himself and sinners. Any and all sin, confusion, and anguish can be covered and helped by repentance and submission to the Great and Holy Comforter. He is a man of Sorrows Himself, understanding our pains and woes. He will help. Repentance, means a true rejection of one's sin, and in this case pleas to Jesus will be heard. It doesn't mean that one's anguish over sin will be immediately dissolved, but He sends a Helper in the Holy Spirit to aid us in resisting temptation. More than that He gives us HOPE, and changes our focus from self  to Him, that is always the greatest and most magnanimous place to start the path to true peace.

Here is Dr. McHugh

[P]olicy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.

The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight….

Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry's domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field….

We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as "satisfied" by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn't have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a "satisfied" but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.

It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription….

At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. "Sex change" is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.

For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (Jude 1:4)

And yet, our gentle Lord encourages us with this verse,

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20-21)

COLUMN: Homosexuality, Abortion, and Martin Luther King

COLUMN: Homosexuality, Abortion, and Martin Luther King