The Fallacy of Celebrating Transgenderism in Our Schools

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By Joe Renfro. Ed.D.

In the Western world we are observing a progressive revolution, which was especially germinated from the thinking of the 1960s, although it had roots back much farther. It is a new morality that attacks most all of the premises on which our basic structures have been established, such as the Ten Commandments, traditionally basic to moral creeds basic to the value system basic to the Western world since the spread of Christianity in the first few hundred years, opening up the Christian Advent from the Judeo-Christian worldview. 

One observation is the movements of the great fallacy of celebrating the teaching of transgenderism in our schools. Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If our founding fathers had a successful philosophy of government, which obviously they did, then it is very fair that we look back to the classroom to see what they taught.  It was a curriculum of the Classics and the Bible.

The August 1, 2022 Washington Times and the iPatriot, August 2, 2022, had an article entitled, “Portland Public Schools defends teaching transgender ideology to kindergartners.”

It seems that Oregon’s Portland Public Schools is defending its decision to teach kindergartners that boys can have vulvas and girls can have penises…  The school district is using a grade-by-grade curriculum to teach children starting at age 5 about transgender ideology, sexual orientation and the role of “white colonizers” in marginalizing LGBTQ people, according to presentation slides…In one PowerPoint slide for kindergartners, the curriculum labels a cartoon image of male and female genitalia as “person with a penis” and “person with a vulva,” instead of “boy” and “girl.”

“Any kid can have any type of body,” the presentation states, adding that boys can have vulvas and girls can have penises.

A spokesperson for Portland Public Schools told The Washington Times in an emailed statement that the district’s health education, gender and sexuality curricula “are aligned and consistent with anti-bias education and Oregon law.

“We make certain that our curriculum is LGBTQ+ inclusive for students who identify as transgender, gender non-conforming, gender-queer, and queer to create a safe and inclusive environment for all of our students,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that families have the legal right to “opt-out” of any part of a sex education class.”

The celebrating of transgenderism is spring board for the LGBTQ movement – LGBTQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or sometimes questioning), and others. The “plus” represents other sexual identities including pansexual and Two-Spirit. The first four letters of the acronym have been used since the 1990s.  This thinking has combined with others allies of sexual perversion, but in recent years it has and is expanding as a central ingredient of the Leftist thinking. This progressive thinking is not a movement toward progress at all.

The forces of Marxism, woke thinking, socialism, critical race theory, black lives matter, anarchy, etc. all find accord together, much of this from the teaching in our schools.  In our educational thinking there is developing great identity crises in individual students, educators and the society as a whole.

Sex is the issue that is basic from the free love of the 60s to the so-called sexual revolution of our day, and the modern world view being prorogated and celebrated by the promotion of transgenderism in our school. 

Virtually the entire human race recognized this obvious truth that from the beginning of human life on earth until around 2013 that the union of male and female was basic. But the powerful LGBT lobby pressured and intimidated the notoriously weak-kneed American Psychiatric Association changed the thinking and de-pathologizing gender identity disorder in the fifth edition of its “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (so-called “DSM-5”), psychiatrists’ official “bible” for diagnosing mental illnesses.

In fact, the American Psychological Association (APA) declared that “polyamory,” “swinging,” and “relationship anarchy” are “healthy and ethical.” 

Back when I did my work on my Masters in Education in the 70s at USC, homosexuality was categorized as a mental illness, but now it is classified as a normal lifestyle, and it has gone even further, as much of our educational leadership even now is applauding sex change in children often from the pre-school age on up. Many educators are celebrating and promoting of transsexualism in our schools.  Thus, was transgenderism or transsexualism, which was once regarded as a real negative problem, a vexing mental disorder, was suddenly declared to be perfectly normal, and virtually the entire “mainstream media” are exuberantly reported it and promoting it as well.

One obvious factor, of course, is that in today’s increasingly godless, immoral and “postmodern” culture, there are simply lots of broken and deeply disturbed adults who are, right now, “teaching” America’s children. This is not speculation; they publicly advertise this reality on social media sites like Tumblr and TikTok, as the Twitter account “Libs of TikTok” amply documents.   It is very evident that these forces are being used by the enemies of our land to undermine the family, the Church, and the state through progressive communism and other totalitarian world-views.

In our schools the curriculums are basic.  Reading, math, arithmetic, social studies, science, history, and other basic courses have been required in the development of educating our youth, but it is disturbing to see that transgenderism is being added to the curriculums in many of our primary and secondary schools in America.

Sex and gender are different terms.   Sex is throughout the Bible, but the Bible says nothing about gender.

In respect to one’s biological sex—male or female according to chromosomes (XX/XY) and physiology (both internal and external, e.g., genitalia and reproductive organs) are basic. Throughout human history, biological sex has been the primary indicator of ontological sex; that’s to say, we identify a person as male or female based on his or her physiology.

One’s gender is concerned with the psychological, social, and cultural manifestations of maleness and femaleness. This is obviously a much broader category than biological sex. Each one of us has characteristics in various areas that may seem to be somewhat like the opposite sex.  In fact, many of the so-called Christian virtues are often classified more as feminine than masculine, but this is not a call for attempting sex change.

Human Life International observed that just as homophiles have deliberately attempted to confuse the terms “sex” and “gender” and use them interchangeably, they have done the same with the terms “transgender” and “transsexual.”

Merriam-Webster’s describes a “transgendered” person as a person who “identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth.”

It identifies a “transsexual” person as “a person who tries to look, dress, and act like a member of the opposite sex; especially: someone who medically changes himself or herself into a member of the opposite sex.” However, this definition from a supposedly authoritative source is inaccurate and unscientific; no matter how much surgery a person undergoes, and regardless of how much he or she appears to be a member of the opposite sex, the person will always remain genetically a member of his or her original sex. DNA testing is the absolute last word on identifying various species and their characteristics, including their sex ? and nobody can change their DNA. Men will always be XY and women will always be XX.   The thinking of transgenderism is a fallacy, and to seek to promote it is destructive!

In an article, “ Why Do Christians Need to Oppose Transgenderism?” by Nathan Cherry in The Reformed Advisor, June 25, 2014 he observed that…

When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s    Portman Clinic, 70-80 percent of them spontaneously lost those feelings…

A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery (191 male-to-females, 133 female-to-males) from 1973 to 2003. The overall rate of death was higher than expected, with suicide being the leading cause. Those who had the sex-change surgery were almost 20 times more likely to take their own lives than the non-transgender population. They were also more likely to seek in-house treatment for psychiatric conditions.

At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered, says McHugh. ‘’Sex change’ is biologically impossible,’ he adds. ‘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.’”

So why is our society rushing headlong to encourage such confusion that leads to disastrous results? Why are states banning therapy to help sexually confused people?

The only answer I have been able to devise is that at the heart of these efforts is a rejection of the God-ordained male-female design. Our society is becoming so angry with God, so anti-God that they are willing to injure and harm hurting, confused people just to spite God. By rejecting God’s design man has signaled that the boundaries of sex and sexuality that God established are of no consequence and will be every pushed and flaunted. Essentially, we’re talking about good old-fashioned rebellion.

Confusion is in the air, as multitudes do not know who they are.  They are seeking all kinds of ways to find who they are by the way they dress, by seeking to change their sex, use all kinds of weird hairdos, tattoo themselves in all kinds of way, go through surgery to try to switch their sex, and on and on, as we are plagued with an identity crisis in our land, producing dysfunction, disorientation and confusion.  In terms of both gender identity and sexuality, confusion reigns. 

In an article in Issues In Perspective, “Sex Education In Our Public Schools: Confusion And Apostasy,” by Dr. Jim Eckman, October 19, 2019 he observes that The Bible offers a two-part solution to this crisis:

First, the solution to this identity crisis is found in Jesus Christ. There are two aspects of our identity in Christ:

(1) As humans, we are created in the image of God, which establishes our infinite worth and value as humans. It is the baseline for the value of humanity at every stage in development. That weighty truth establishes one aspect of our identity.

(2) The Bible also makes clear that when we place our faith in Christ’s finished work on Calvary’s cross, we are a “new creation, the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our new identity is that we are “in Christ,” a powerful and profound phrase used 242 times in the New Testament.

The power of sin and the power of death have been broken (see Romans 6). When we place our faith in Christ, we are declared righteous by Almighty God (justification): Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to our account. Further, we are adopted into God’s family, with all the rights and privileges of being a joint heir with Christ (see Galatians 4 and Romans 8). God is now our heavenly Father and we are His children. We await the wondrous family gathering of all the brothers and sisters of God’s family in His coming kingdom.

Finally, we are being transformed into the image of Christ (Galatians 4:19, Romans 8:29). We now belong to Jesus, who bought us with the price of His shed blood and we are indwelt by His Spirit (1 Corinthian 6:19). Galatians 2:20 perhaps best summarizes our new identity in Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The struggles, tensions and confusion about personal identity are resolved in Jesus Christ. To be “in Christ” is the vital center of the new identity offered by God.

The second corrective is a review of our Creator’s view of marriage and sexuality.  The Creation Ordinance of God clearly connects the “image of God” concept with gender and human sexuality (“male and female He created them”, Gen. 1:26-27) and the institution of marriage and the family (Genesis 2:18-25):  Marriage, as a “one-flesh” union, is monogamous, heterosexual and establishes a covenantal relationship (see Malachi 2:14). 

It is also an archetype of Christ’s relationship with His church (Ephesian 5:32).  Sexual intimacy within the marriage bond is intended by God to manifest the joy and fulfillment of other-centered sexual expression and love between a husband and wife.  It is the ultimate expression of femininity and masculinity within the marriage bond. 

Sexual intimacy also enhances and strengthens the marriage roles so clearly pronounced in Ephesians 5:22-32 and Colossians 3:18-19.  The Song of Solomon and Proverbs 5:15-19 represent poetic expressions of sexual intimacy in the one-flesh union God creates in marriage.  They are to be read, enjoyed and celebrated by both sexual partners in a God-centered, Ephesians 5:32 marriage.

There is without doubt an attack against the Judeo-Christian morality from academia, and most liberal sexual mores are basic weapons the Leftist thinking promotes with things so detrimental as transgenderism being promoted and taught in our schools, even to the most young among us.

There is a poison that one can buy, and it will kill a plant when sprayed on the foliage on down to the roots.  You can spray it on the roots, and the plant will die, on the stalk and the plan will die, or on the leaves, and the plant will die. This spray could be compared to the situation of the attack on our Christian heritage, and one very poisonous kind in the teaching of the transgenderism.  We need to stand against this fallacy, and stop being a silent majority, for soon we won’t be a majority and we will be very much silent, for the plant of our religious freedom and all other freedom will be enslaved to the totalitarianism of the Leftist morality or rather immortality!