Diversity Training

A few days ago I became one more person to be corporately indoctrinated into a culture of open and encouraged licentiousness. This training was not for racial, ethnic, or other cultural tolerance or acceptance, but it was for exposure to and acceptance of transexuality.

You read it correctly; transexuality.

The main reason why my office (total of about 50 people) received this training at this time is that we have a man who is, or is soon to be, “in transition” between genders. My purpose in writing this article is not to make a social, political, or familial commentary centered around Western or American civilization. My primary reasons are to (a) recount the information that was said and how it was presented to me, and to (b) share my thoughts after having been involved in this indoctrination.

Shortly after seeing a notation on my calendar for a meeting and not finding any e-mail or communication about the reason for the meeting, I asked one of my supervisors as to its purpose. She referred to it as “sensitivity training” but was not forthcoming with anymore details. This statement was enough to get my hackles to rise as well to heighten my curiosity. I soon found out that we were being trained on the issue of “gender identity” which is corporate/political language referring to something related to the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, or Transgender (GLBT) lifestyle.

I started mentally preparing myself for what I might hear and be exposed to. I was ready to hear the word “tolerance” or synonymous words used frequently as well as I was prepared to take notes so that I could accurately represent what went on. I was tipped off by a co-worker, and brother in the Lord, that one of the overarching themes of the training was the concept that the issue of someone being transgendered is a physiological condition. This means that, in the mind of those providing the training, it is a reality based on nature, not the nurture, of an individual.

So, pen in hand, I went into the training/indoctrination session, and I emerged 90 minutes later with a very different reaction than I had anticipated…but I will get to my reaction later.

Here are some of the presuppositions that were communicated (basically presented as facts, whether or not they are). One of the key things that you’ll notice is that much of the concepts or arguments are based upon the initial definitions.

• A transsexual is a person who is undergoing or who has previously undergone a “sex change” with or without an operation.
• The term “transgender” refers to anyone whose gender identity or gender expression falls “outside of the stereotypical gender norms.”¹
• Gender identity is how someone perceives themselves. If I think of myself as a man, that is what I am (and visa versa).
• Sex is defined as the physical form and function that a person is born with that is determined by chromosomes (xx for women or xy for men) and it is influenced by hormones and is evidenced by anatomy.
• Gender is defined as a component of ones identity, or the maleness/femaleness of a person. Basically, this is how a person sees his or herself.

Therefore, a transsexual is a person who falls into the following categories:

1. An individual with the physical identity of one sex and the gender identity (mental) of another.
2. A person born with the body of a male or female but the gender identity of the other.
3. A person who is taking or has taken steps to align both identities.

Are you confused yet? I was and I still am. It is confusing to say the least. However, it is clear that there is one big thrust, and that is separating the factors that deal with maleness or femaleness. Separating gender from sex and making them two distinct and, basically, necessarily unrelated is pivotal to any of the ideas that were being communicated. It seems utter foolishness to make distinctions that hold basically equal weight, although it was later communicated that the “gender” distinction trumps the “sex” distinction.

In order to develop the groundwork for the presupposition of gender identity, the person who led our training said that in most cultures maleness and femaleness are expressed in distinct ways. For example, in some cultures, the men are the hunters and protectors and the women are the soft caretakers, but this “can vary from culture to culture.” Really? Perhaps I am mistaken, but I have never heard of a culture, except on Star Trek or some other fictional story, where the women were the strong protectors instead of the men.

It was then presented as a scientific fact that gender identity is “set” in a person between 18 months and three years of age. I was greatly troubled by this statement, and so I hastily scrawled a question in my notes, “How do we know this?” The scientific reasoning behind this “fact”, as it was communicated to me, came as a result of one very tragic story and a scientific observation. The story is as follows:

A set of identical twin boys were born in the 1960’s. The boys were circumcised, but the doctor botched one of the procedures so much so that the boy’s genitals were, basically, destroyed. After this occurred, the parents were presented with different options for how to proceed. The option that they went with was to have the boy surgically altered to appear as a girl. They gave the boy girl clothing, girl toys, and treated him as a girl because, as far as they were concerned, he was a girl now. However, this child wanted to play with boy toys and wanted to act as other boys do. Fast forward to this child who is now a very troubled, rebellious, and confused teenager, and the parents decide to tell this child the truth. Other than being enraged, the child decides to be surgically altered back to look like a boy. The tragic recounting of this story concluded with the fact that at age 39, this man committed suicide.

The scientific observation is that, supposedly, a certain portion of the brain (where, allegedly, the gender identity information comes from) of transsexual women (men who perceive themselves as women) is more similar to that of the average woman than the average man. Therefore, they guessed that something happens while the child is in the mother’s uterus (heightened stress of the mother) that causes various enzymes to get into the child that causes this change of the brain.² Again, I don’t know whether or not this is “provable”, and that is not even my main concern, but it sounds woefully far fetched. One of the correlating facts that they used was there seemed to be a spike of transgendered people following armed conflicts (World War II, Korea, and Vietnam). The hypothesis is that women who were concerned for their husbands had excess stress that then transferred to the child in the womb creating this transgendered person, or an environment where this can take place.

One question arose in my mind, and that was that if it were common to have this occur after periods of time when husbands were gone fighting and the wives were both unsure if the husband would come home as well as having to assume all of his domestic duties, why was this not more common in previous times? Just looking at the historical nature of the biblical accounts of the Hebrew people, there was almost an annual ‘season’ of war that was frequent enough to be anticipated (2 Samuel 11:1). And if this scientific hypothesis is true, then why wouldn’t there have been an epidemic of this type of sexual confusion? You might point out that there was rampant homosexuality in the ancient world (Greek and Roman empires) as well as being notable by one of the most terrifying Bible stories (Sodom and Gomorrah). However, there was no small distinction or articulated difference between sexual orientation (heterosexuality or homosexuality) and gender identity. Therefore, the presence of this kind of behavior in the Bible and in history does not have any necessary correlation to the presence of transgendered people.

If you are wearied by all of this information and the foolishness of it all, you and I are on the same page. I only have a few more things to recount before I proceed to my reaction. We were told that a transsexual is not someone who “just thinks” that they are a different gender than what they were born with. This seemed to be directly contradictory to the entire portion of the training session prior to this. I voice this concern to the facilitator and was given the answer of,”they don’t ‘think’ that they are a different gender, they ‘know’ it.” Huh? So the distinction and the issues that were made were based on a very tenuous basis of the difference between “thinking” and “knowing” something.

I didn’t ask, but I wonder if I expressed the fact that I know that Jesus is God and unless each person repents of their own sins against Him and trusts completely in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, God will condemn them to eternal torment in Hell. I doubt that this expression of what I know would be accepted on anything near the same level as that of a transgendered person’s sexual identity.

The final question that was addressed was the question, “Can this condition be treated?” The answer was the source of the majority of my concerns. The answer was a compound one. Yes it can be treated by taking the steps to align one’s own identity - transitioning from one gender to another. No it cannot be treated or cured because the psychological identity is permanent.

With all of the focus on someone’s internal wiring toward one gender or another (much less one “orientation” or another), I must say that I could care less if transgender or homosexual problems are primarily genetic and physiological or if they have more to do with the environment and learned behaviors. This might be a bit shocking to those (myself included) who think that this has virtually nothing to do with genetic or other physiological predispositions.

Let’s just assume for a minute that homosexuality or transgendered identity is rooted in physiology or genetics. Does that change the call of Christ to mankind through Scripture? Absolutely not! It is no secret that men are somewhat naturally more promiscuous (or disposed to being so) than women. Men, regardless whether born again or not, have a fleshly pull to be promiscuous. If you ask 100 men, the vast majority will affirm this truth, and the small dissenting portion are most likely lying for any number of reasons. Why bring this up? Well, if I, or any other man, were to act on how we are naturally wired in the same uninhibited fashion that transgendered or homosexual individuals do, there would be no families as we know it. There would be no monogamous marriage. This would be disastrous on so many levels. Since God knows that men naturally (because of sin) have a tendency to not be monogamous, does he give men a “pass” on that lifestyle choice? No, He calls men to be celibate before marriage, and a one-woman man during marriage. He tells us to deny our desires that He has shown to be sinful.

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, e must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.’” (Matthew 16:24)

Over time, the power of the pull to sin in some ways is lessened. Not necessarily because sin is less powerful, but it is because we are growing in holiness and the things of God are becoming more and more attractive to us while sin is seen for being more and more vile. I do not believe, however, that I (nor any man for that matter) will ever arrive at the point where the possibility of sinning in this way (whether adultery of the heart or the playing out of that thought in action) is not a real danger. But, we are not left to fend for ourselves in this fight…

“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

The origin of the “pull” to be homosexual or to have a different gender than what you were born with is no less or no more sinful than the “pull” to be heterosexually adulterous, lying, and covetous for anyone else. All are sinful, and all must be denied for the sake of the gospel.

“Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:11)

This Bible verse kept coming to mind once this statement was uttered in that training session. I was so saddened by the lie that says that there is no treatment or cure. This lie holds the deceived in a vice of deception and sin with no hope and many times no desire, of escape. It makes me very sad to think that some of the people who are trapped in this lie have probably heard the gospel, or some portion of it, and never bowed the knee to it. Or worse, some of these people may have heard a distorted gospel, proclaiming Jesus as savior without understanding that it is not just this sin that they are guilty of and need forgiveness of, or they have been fooled by the false gospel of “inclusion” where this issue doesn’t matter, and have rejected the former or embraced the latter.

I am saddened because, for all of the motivations of love and tolerance that people really feel that they have, we were told that there is a 50% death rate in transgendered individuals before the age of 30 (including a seemingly high proportion of suicide). So, if campaigns such as the one that I went through are successful, and our society is paved to facilitate and not hinder or question this type of transition, then at best we can hope that people in this situation live to be 70, 80, or 90 and then die of natural causes. But what then? The Bible is clear that a lifestyle sexual perversion is an abomination before God and those who practice this will not inherit eternal life. As it stands now, these individuals live for maybe 30 years if they’re fortunate. They need the gospel of salvation and of being made new. They need the gospel that has saved all kinds of people, even people who were formerly in the throws of this, or similar, wretched and sinful living.

Who knows how anyone will react to the gospel? Most people who look, act, and talk “normally” reject the gospel with anger and hatred. But we are to bring the gospel to them because Christ commanded us to. So, in the same manner, we are to preach the gospel to those who don’t look, act, or talk “normally” too.

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¹ i.e. Men dressing as men, living as men, being intimate with only women, or women dressing as women, living as women, and being intimate with only men.

² During the session, one of my co-workers asked if a CAT scan was used to determine if someone was really transgendered or not. The facilitator said that people weren’t tested like this, but they were asked a series of questions where the answers show how a person thinks. Now, I am not a scientist, but if I begin to think a certain way and know how other people react, my answers can pretty much match up with them, regardless of my physiology.