June 2014 – Incongruity or confusion – the next wave of the sexual revolution will rock our cultural conscience
You should never judge a book by its cover, goes the old saying.

That was the case in February, when a Texas judge married two couples consisting of four “women.” Since same sex marriage is illegal in Texas, news reports stated that one member of each pair was a male-to-female transsexual.

The transsexuals viewed themselves as “women” – thus the claim that the two weddings were “same sex” – but in this instance they relied on their biological nature to get hitched.

“On all of my information, it still says male,” Ashely Boucher told the local CBS affiliate. “So, legally I’m still male in the state of Texas. My presentation would suggest otherwise. But my documentation says that I can marry [my girlfriend] no questions asked.”

“We’re a normal couple just like anybody else,” Boucher’s mate, Genevieve Jonte, told confused clerks when the couple applied for a marriage license.

It’s enough to make a grown man cry – except that America might get to the point where it’s difficult to know for certain just who or what a man is.

Changing the definition of “sex” and “gender” has been something of a coup in America. (See AFA Journal, 5/14.) Now we are told that sex is what a person is biologically, while gender is what an individual feels like inside. When the two don’t match, a transgendered individual feels like a stranger in his or her own body.

Just how many people in America struggle with this incongruity? According to Associated Press, a UCLA think tank estimates that there are at least 700,000 transgendered individuals in the U.S. – or .2% of the population.

Henchmen who break legs
The cultural implications of this “gender identity” shift are just now beginning to dawn on most Americans, who typically – and admirably – take a live-and-let-live approach to most matters.

While attempting to conform one’s body to one’s feelings is one thing, demanding that society conform to one’s personal feelings is another. To enforce this behind-the-scenes shift in perspective, the secular left has brought the full weight of law into the mix.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 17 states and the District of Columbia “clearly prohibit discrimination against transgender people.” Additionally, some 160 cities and counties have similar laws.

True, the two tenths of one percent of the population that identifies as transgender is quite small; but the laws passed in the name of protecting them count every bit as much as any other law. The theoretical musings of professors, researchers and activists have now become a real-world force, with attorneys backing up the sexual radicals like the henchmen who break legs for a mob boss.

In many ways, California has taken a leading role in cracking open this new frontier of the sexual revolution. In 2010, for example, a former male SWAT team member, a “female” transsexual who goes by the name Lana Lawless, demanded the right to compete in the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Due to the state’s nondiscrimination law, the LPGA quickly caved.

Lawless, a 57-year-old, broad-shouldered, hulking man wearing makeup, earrings and sporting long hair, told the press, “I just want to compete with the other girls.”

Fortunately for the LPGA, Lawless was not a very good golfer.

However, these sorts of stories continue to multiply as radicals throw their weight around – even in the public school system. In March, for example, Pat Cordova-Goff, a 17-year-old boy described by some press reports as “a strapping senior at Azusa High School [outside Los Angeles],” was declared eligible to play for his school girls’ softball team.

Businesses are also put in grave danger if they refuse to knuckle under. Also in March, a male-to-female transsexual, Chloie Jonsson, 34, sued CrossFit Inc. because the fitness chain refused to let Jonsson compete as a woman in its annual competition. The state’s non-discrimination law was the trigger for the legal imbroglio – with $2.5 million in damages up for grabs.

Defining our own reality
How has this happened? Certainly no one expects America to return to the days of the 1950s sitcom Ozzie and Harriet; but how did we get to the point where Ozzie becomes Harriet?

Of course, the initial assault on the traditional view of human sexuality and gender was the sexual revolution. Sex was decoupled from marriage, but simultaneously – and maybe even more importantly – marriage was separated from nature. Throughout human history, marriage was clearly based on the truth that only one man and one woman could conceive a child. Society then had a compelling interest in protecting the familial unit that proceeded from that union.

The sexual revolution deconstructed that model, and made sex – and relationships including marriage – a mere expression of individual taste. Sex became another form of entertainment, and marriage became a form of relationship that was important only if an individual thought it was. As so many said during the 1960s, marriage was just a piece of paper.

It was a small step indeed to the place where sex and gender were not only separated, but made to serve the individual as well. Radical individualism has swept the games.

America faces an even deeper problem: Postmodernism. However, this is a term that implies a recent origin. It is not. It is the age-old problem of societies in moral decay: “Every man did what was right in his own eyes,” (Judges 17:6).

The Founding Fathers believed that morality linked to the Christian faith would anchor the republican experiment enshrined in the Constitution. As George Washington famously said in his 1796 Farewell Address: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

Note the completely different tone struck in 1992 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v Casey, an abortion rights ruling. The high court said: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.”

This Supreme Court ruling doomed any attempt to ever again appeal to religion or morality when it comes to public policy. Contrary to the opinion of the nation’s first president, the high court has torn down the twin pillars and bulldozed the rubble out of sight.

Moreover, reality is declared to be malleable; the individual is given the right to bend it to suit individual tastes. Even the biological roots of gender must yield – and the rest of us must also pretend that the emperor has no clothes.

Lost souls
While the “gender nonconforming” movement no doubt contains some element of rebellion against, as the Declaration of Independence states, “nature and nature’s God,” at its core there seems to be a much sadder truth.

The gender-confused exhibit a clear sense of “lostness” in life – a painful alienation, a sense that they just don’t belong to the “normal” world of which everyone else around them seems a part. These lost souls are truly searching for identity, meaning and stability.

However, encouraging them in the attempt to manipulate biology to fit their own portrait of reality is an exercise in futility. It will not end well for the transgendered men and women of America. Ultimately, biology will have its revenge.

Christians must patiently speak the truth out of a heart of compassion, because in countless ways we are all broken, confused and lost. We are all alienated from God; our true peace comes only when we are “found” by Him.

Ridiculing lost souls in their lostness is abhorrent; letting them suffer in that condition is even worse.  

Definitions
Transgendered refers to an individual who believes his or her biological sex does not reflect what he/she feels like inside.

Transsexual refers to a transgendered person who takes steps to outwardly express his/her “true” gender – by looking, dressing and acting as they feel. In some circumstances a transsexual will undergo surgery and a corresponding drug regimen to conform the body to his/her “inward” gender.

Recommended Resources
▶ A New Creation 951-687-6902
▶ Genesis Counseling 714-508-6953
▶ Restored Hope Network  503-927-0869