The push of the transgender agenda by media, news organizations and government is promoted as simply a matter of human rights and fairness. But is that the real issue, or is something considerably different at work? And what insight does the Bible offer about this issue and society’s acceptance of it?

Understanding a Disorder

Dr. Paul McHugh, longtime chief psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital—which pioneered sex-change surgery until experience demonstrated it wasn’t beneficial—states in a Wall Street Journal editorial that “policy 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” (“Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution,” June 12, 2014).

He describes those who feel they are the opposite sex to be suffering “a mental disorder in two respects.” The first, he explains, “is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality.” And the second “is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes”—including, but not limited to, a dangerously high suicide rate (ibid., emphasis added throughout). 

He describes the transgendered as suffering “a disorder of ‘assumption’ like . . . anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.” And we don’t encourage these to lose more weight or get liposuction!

One thing that’s horrible about the widespread acceptance of transgender surgery, and advocating it for ever-younger people, is that, as McHugh writes, “when children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings.”

Further, Johns Hopkins University’s tracking of those who underwent transgender surgery found that “their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery,” leading the institution to cease doing such procedures. 

Dr. McHugh also cites a long-term study in Sweden, which “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 non-transgender population.”

And a recent report by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention stated that more than four in 10 transgender Americans had attempted suicide.

Transgender advocates have persuaded several liberal American states to pass laws banning psychiatrists, “even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor.” In other words, mental health professionals are forbidden by law from actually helping children afflicted with this disorder—they are only allowed to encourage them to remain in their conflicted state of mind!

This legal climate has led misguided physicians in some states to administer puberty-delaying hormones to gender-confused children to make later sex-change surgeries less traumatic.

But “given that close to 80% of such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated,” explains Dr. McHugh, “these medical interventions come close to child abuse. A better way to help these children [is] with devoted parenting.”

“At the heart of the problem,” he concludes, “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 a civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

But this particular disorder has become a tool of those promoting “anything goes” when it comes to sex and sexual practices.

Moreover, it appears that the ultimate goal of many activists is to eliminate the concept of gender altogether (search “When the Binary Burns” at ucg.org).

Those who follow God are to be lights to those in need of God’s healing.

In Defiance of the Creator of Human Sexuality

Of course, this goes directly against God who created mankind. His Word, the Bible, tells us right up front: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them … And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply …’” (Genesis 1:27-28).

Our Creator is the One who established human beings as being either male or female—with a key reason being so that they can reproduce and multiply those who are made in His image (compare Genesis 5:1-3). Moreover, He designed human family and marriage to represent an ultimate spiritual relationship (see our free study guide Marriage and Family: The Missing Dimension to learn more).

And God wants the male-female distinction to remain. In His inspired Word, He rebukes the blurring of gender lines, declaring: “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 22:5).

Some have argued that mere transvestitism wouldn’t be loathsome to God—that this must be referring to a pagan worship practice. Yet there is no hint of this here, so it’s best that we take this instruction exactly as it’s stated. Still, there is a connection to paganism.

Many of the false philosophies we see today can be traced back to ancient Babylon and, even before that, to the lies of the serpent in the Garden of Eden—Satan. And he is the one who introduced sexual shame and corruption.

Where to now?

Think about all this in the context of the culture war being waged in the present time. Satan still has those who would assist him in his quest to debase and destroy mankind through the elimination of heterosexual marriage, family roles and the concept of gender altogether.

The lie in Eden and Babylon is still with us today—in merely another form. There are even those who deny their fleshly reality and claim to be something else. And there are others who want to live entirely in an unreal world of gender fluidity or as neither male nor female.

People caught up in the confusions of culture and society today need healing and relief. Our Creator God understands that we each have struggles, human failings and hardships to overcome. Those who follow God are to be lights to those in need of God’s healing.

If you’ve supported ideas about gender that aren’t biblical, God calls on you to repent. And He forgives. If you are one who struggles with gender identity, seek Him with your whole heart for the healing of your mind—and also seek out professional help from counselors who perceive this problem correctly.

The number of transgender individuals is still relatively tiny, but the number of those embracing and condoning this problem is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Where will the window of what’s acceptable shift to next? Things still unspeakable today may be the headlines of years soon ahead. Riki Wilchins, the transsexual activist quoted in the article “When the Binary Burns,” sees the work of transgender advocates as important to the goal of eradicating the male-female structure of society, noting that they have “finally and perhaps unwittingly opened the gender Pandora’s Box, and over the next few years all sorts of unexpected non-binary things . . . are about to come popping out.”

May God through Jesus Christ “deliver us from this present evil age” (Galatians 1:4)—soon!