What sort of philosophy leads a seemingly intelligent person to conclude that a boy can be a girl, a girl can be a boy, men and women can identify as whatever gender appeals to them?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #157 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
I don’t remember much about my 0-6 years of life, nor do I remember that I understood the difference in a boy or a girl, in part because I’d just learned I was a boy and what this meant. In grade school, I remember beginning to understand the difference in a boy and a girl, then not liking girls much because, well, they were different. You know, the “ooh” factor; girls had cooties.
Later in junior high school, I recollect beginning to understand that girls are not only different but different in certain interesting ways. I did not know much about this, but Dad gave me a “Birds and the Bees” talk a couple of times.
Dad was a part time barber, so whenever he concluded I’d benefit from a life lesson, he decided I needed a haircut. When you’re in a barber chair you can’t get away. Trapped in a barber chair in an otherwise empty barber shop is a perfect place to hear about the “Birds and the Bees.”
Of course, in the natural process of things, in high school, I decided those ways in which girls were different from boys were downright attractive and a source of endless fascination. God knew this. He planted these inclinations in me and every other human being because he created us male and female, and he did this so that we would be blessed with male/female companionship—remember, “It’s not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18)—so that we would find enjoyment in male/female marriage relationship, and eventually so that we would in the words of the Old Testament book of Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” (1:28), i.e., we’d perpetuate the human race.
Now if you are normal, typical, balanced, healthy, you resonate with what I’m saying. You get it. You likely remember similar maturing thoughts, emotions, and bodies in your youth. Best of all, you too understand the difference in a boy and a girl.
Some of you, like me, were privileged to be present in the room at the birth of your own child, either as the mother delivering the newborn or as the bamboozled new father. You saw for yourself that boys and girls are born with their distinguishing biological differences, and while we couldn’t see them, also born with distinguishing emotional, psychological, and maybe other divinely appointed differences.
Given all this, why are there people walking around today who claim they cannot define the difference in a boy or a girl or a man or a woman? Remember US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson who during her confirmation hearings was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn, “Can you define ‘woman’?” Jackson said, “I’m not a biologist. I’m a judge.” She was still confirmed as a Justice.
People say they cannot recognize the difference in the sexes and argue neither can medical professionals. In this view, only the newborn babe can later “say what or who they are.”
So, we are now treated to the insanity of sex education in kindergarten and elementary school, not just the differences in boys and girls, but age-inappropriate teaching, blatantly encouraging children to question their own sex, or what is now called gender.
Obviously, there are moral and scientific implications to this, but there are also practical, educational implications. Time spent on gender nonsense is time not spent on reading, writing, and arithmetic, history, science, and certainly not character or civics education. We trade essential instruction that would benefit students’ futures for elective, unseemly instruction that is not only nonessential but harmful.
Gender fluidity is the cultural soup du jour.
It’s the latest craze that’s morphed beyond political correctness to indisputable orthodoxy. Dissent is not permitted. If you ask questions, based upon common sense, biology, a few thousand years of human history, or even religious conviction, you’re a bigot, a hater.
Proponents (especially activists) of gender fluidity believe biology is not destiny. In their view, biological sex is mutable, something “assigned” at birth. One’s “real sex” is determined by one’s feelings about gender, conveniently presented as an ever-lengthening spectrum of choices (some social media are offering 112 gender choices).
This gender transition, we are told, liberates and makes the person whole. Except it does not. Neither do any of the other hybrid gender identities ostensibly resulting from the newly declared fact of gender fluidity.
We know that people who experience gender dysphoria often endure genuine painful depression, detachment, fear, anxiety, and distress. Nothing in this podcast suggests gender dysphoria is not real, consequential, or concerning. Certainly, no perspective here suggests people struggling with gender dysphoria are crazy, weird, perverted, or otherwise undeserving of caring and kindness.
Think about this. Gender dysphoria is not sinful. It’s a feeling, some say rooted in mental disorder, some in emotional and psychological confusion, but gender dysphoria is just feelings, a subjective confusion, and only that unless acted upon.
People with discordant thoughts about sex and gender need compassion not condemnation. They need love, help, caring, and hope.
This podcast is about gender fluidity and the ideology that has grown up supporting it. That ideology is fast becoming a kind of orthodoxy activists are marketing with religious zeal. Corporations, academia and athletics, health and medicine, the military, and governments have climbed on the bandwagon, all in the name of inclusiveness and non-discrimination.
But let’s think biologically. Approximately 37.2 trillion cells comprise the adult human body. That’s T for trillion, another incredible testimony of the omniscience and omnipotence of our Creator God.
“Each cell of the body contains a full set of chromosomes.”
“Humans have 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. We inherit 23 chromosomes from our mother and 23 chromosomes from our father. The chromosomes in the first 22 pairs are identical in a normal cell and they are the same in both genders. The 23rd pair is the sex chromosome and therefore determines the sex of the individual. This chromosome is either XX for female or XY for male.”
“Whatever set of chromosomes a person has when they are born cannot be changed. This is because chromosomes are in all the cells that make up our bodies. To change a person’s chromosomes would mean changing trillion of cells! There’s no technology…that can change a chromosome in all of a person’s cells.”
“While the condition of gender dysphoria…is real and deserves sympathy, it does not erase the fact of biological sex. Human beings are male or female down to the level of their DNA, and males and females have different biochemistry even before they are born.”
Consequently, sex is not “assigned” at birth. It begins with conception and can be determined on ultrasounds prior to birth. Sex is literally hard-wired in the human design via the trillions of cells in the human body.
So, one’s sexuality is deeper than anatomy, appearance, feelings, or expression. Our sex is part and parcel of who we are, and it cannot be changed no matter what drugs or hormones we might take and no matter what surgical procedures, including extensive gender reassignment surgery, we might choose to endure.
Remarkable intellect Thomas Sowell once observed, “Reality does not go away when it is ignored.” No amount of Pride parades including transgender people, no number of President Biden’s appointment of trans bureaucrats is ever going to change reality.
Scripture says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). This is truth for God is truth. Transgenderism is an attack on the truth of divine design.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.