Evangelicals hope to respond with both moral authority and biblical
compassion to gender identity disorder.

by John W. Kennedy-Christianity Today

John Nemecek struggled with gender confusion from early childhood.
Marrying at age 21 didn't change that confusion. Neither did raising
three sons—all of whom are themselves now happily married. Four years
ago, Nemecek's Internet search of a medical site matched the symptoms
he exhibited: gender identity disorder (GID). "It was an awesome
experience to realize something I'd been dealing with all my life had
a name," Nemecek says. A therapist, endocrinologist, and a counselor
all later confirmed the diagnosis.

In 2004, Nemecek began taking female hormones, a process that will
last his lifetime. However, there will be no sex reassignment
surgery. Nemecek is staying with his wife, Joanne, and they recently
celebrated 35 years of marriage.

Nemecek, 56, may now feel he has more clarity about gender identity,
but much ambiguity remains. Nemecek's driver's license says "male,"
but on credit card applications, Nemecek writes "female." Since John
and Joanne wed legally, their marriage isn't illegal, even though it
appears they are in a lesbian union.

In 2005, Nemecek's employer, Spring Arbor University, learned of
John's plans for a court-approved change of first name to "Julie."
Afterwards, the Free Methodist-affiliated school in southern Michigan
cut Nemecek's pay and reduced job responsibilities. Eventually,
Spring Arbor decided not to rehire the business professor and
associate dean when Nemecek started wearing a wig, makeup, fingernail
polish, and earrings on campus. Nemecek was a 15-year veteran at the
university, located in the small town of Spring Arbor, a
conservative, churchgoing community of 2,100 people.

After the university's action, Nemecek filed an employment
discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, triggering newspaper headlines across the nation.
(Federal courts have yet to settle completely whether federal
protections against sexual discrimination in the workplace—Title VII
of the Civil Rights Act—protect transgendered people. Several cases
are working their way through the justice system.)

In March 2007, Spring Arbor decided to settle out of court, resolving
the case and permanently ending Nemecek's employment there. At an
official mediation hearing, the professor asked aloud, "Should I deny
my head, heart, and soul to live according to what others think of my
body? I cannot do that and live a life of Christian integrity."

Nemecek, who spent two decades as a Baptist pastor before joining
Spring Arbor's faculty, is currently working as an independent
consultant on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) issues.

"This is something that's in you from the womb," says Nemecek.

Nemecek's transgender experience is still statistically rare, but the
profile of transgender issues is rising, both in and outside the
church, and evangelical churches and mental health professionals are
beginning to respond.

Expanding Civil Rights

The drive to expand civil rights to include transgendered people is
gaining momentum. Many films, magazine articles, TV programs, and
newspaper commentaries trumpet this campaign, sympathizing with
people who feel they have been unfairly targeted because of their
transgender condition.

Such media portrayals, including several focusing on elementary-age
children with supportive parents, typically blend a sense of
injustice and pathos to convince viewers how wrong society has been
to label transgendered people as deviant, strange, or sinful.

Advocates say transgendered individuals are at great risk of hate
crimes and discrimination in housing and employment searches. In many
jurisdictions, it's legal for an employer to dismiss or refuse to
hire an individual for being transgendered. A website, gender.org,
lists the names of transgendered murder victims. To increase public
awareness, advocates have chosen November 20 as the annual National
Transgender Day of Remembrance for transgendered victims from the
past year.
There is little research on the public's opinion of transgender
behavior. One 2002 poll for the Human Rights Campaign found that 48
percent of the people surveyed would have "no problem working with a
transgendered person."

Experts believe there are about 400,000 transgendered persons, less
than one-half of one percent of the population, in America. In order
to be diagnosed with gender identity disorder, there must be a strong
desire to be the other sex and a persistent discomfort with one's
body. The person may or may not have had sex reassignment surgery,
and he or she may or may not have homosexual attractions.

There are six levels of GID according to what is known as the Harry
Benjamin Scale. The occasional cross-dresser is stage one; someone
who has had a surgical procedure, such as a vaginectomy or penectomy,
has completed the final step.

A raft of transgender rights groups have formed in recent years to
take up the civil rights cause. For example, there's the Transgender
Legal Defense & Education Fund, the National Center for Transgender
Equality, and the Transgender Law and Policy Institute. That's not to
mention many sexual rights groups lending support. (The acronym GLBT
is now a standard classification for such groups, referring to gays,
lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons.)

Such groups are seeking more than additional restrooms. The most
vocal campaign is for special federal protections for employment and
housing. However, through multiple lawsuits, transgender rights
organizations are defending the transgendered homeless, college
students, immigrants, and prisoners.

As of January 2008, some 13 states have laws prohibiting employers
and landlords from discriminating against transgendered people. Ten
states have enacted hate crime laws explicitly protecting "gender
identity or expression." A growing number of major corporations have
gender identity nondiscrimination policies.

Intense activism for transgender inclusion is having a ripple effect
on local churches. Pastors are more likely to encounter a GLBT
activist than a church member with GID; few pastors are trained to
address either transgender advocacy or those with GID.

Debating Sexual Ethics

When church leaders include a transgendered individual who has "come
out" into the spiritual life and leadership of a local congregation,
it almost always provokes sharp controversy. But a number of liberal
religious groups are rallying around the transgender movement in the
name of social justice. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based Faith in
America is at the forefront.

"Religion has been used in history to discriminate against various
groups of people by justifying slavery, denying women the right to
vote, and persecuting religious minorities," says Jimmy Creech,
executive director of Faith in America. "Today it is being used to
persecute lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people."

Creech likens the struggle for transgender liberties to the early
civil rights movement to end racial bigotry. Creech, a former United
Methodist Church (UMC) minister, says he spent three years studying
Scripture before concluding that church teachings on homosexuality
are fear-based and motivated by hate. Creech views the transgender
movement as indistinguishable from the gay rights cause.

"We have to recognize the Bible in terms of the history and culture
in which it was written," Creech says. "Scripture doesn't address the
issues of transgender experience."

Whether mentioned in Scripture or not, the transgender movement
clashes with traditional Christian theology that teaches the only God-
given expression of human sexuality is between a man and woman who
are married. "Transgender impulses are strong, but they don't match
up with the Christian sexual ethic," says Warren Throckmorton,
associate professor of psychology at Grove City College in
Pennsylvania. "Desires must be brought into alignment with biblical
teachings, but it will be inconvenient and distressful."

Throckmorton, past president of the American Mental Health Counselors
Association, says he has advised transgendered people who are in
absolute agony over their state. Typically, such individuals are
desperately in search of hope and acceptance, he says. It may be
uncomfortable to tell transgendered individuals that their desires
don't align with the Bible, Throckmorton says, but pastors must do
so. "Even if science does determine differentiation in the brain at
birth," Throckmorton says, "even if there are prenatal influences, we
can't set aside teachings of the Bible because of research findings."

So far, the church's response to transgender rights has been focused
more on specific cases before denominational bodies or the civil
courts, and less on the campaign for transgendered persons' rights.
Those opposing the transgender movement are reluctant to call
themselves experts because much about the condition remains a mystery
and public debate is so new.

Individual evangelical congregations across the land are trying to
figure out how to welcome lonely, hurting, seeking visitors who
exhibit GID without offending long-term members.

As with homosexuality, it can be a delicate balance—accepting the
person into the church without affirming that switching sexual
identities is God's will for their lives.

A few years back, Calvary Assembly of God in Orlando, Florida,
accepted a man who had complete sex reassignment surgery, and even
allowed the person to do volunteer maintenance work at the church,
according to administrator Bill Gray. The individual agreed to use a
gender-neutral restroom in the office rather than upset females in
the women's restroom.

One day, the individual appeared in Gray's office, weeping and
confused. The person told Gray that after extensive counsel, he
eventually realized that God didn't make creative mistakes and he
resumed a male identity.

Pushing the Envelope

In Congress, legislators during 2007 considered three bills
addressing GLBT issues: The Matthew Shepard Act places sexual
orientation and gender identity as new categories covered under the
federal hate crimes law; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act
provides employment protection for GLBT workers; and the Military
Enhancement Readiness Act repeals the ban on GLBT participation in
the military.

But in the short term, none of the bills, caught up in Washington
politics, are expected to pass.

In Washington, vocal conservative organizations don't see transgender
rights as a matter of civil liberties. "The transgender lobby is
following the example of the homosexual lobby in that they are co-
opting the language of the civil rights movement in order to push
their own radical and wacky agenda," says Matt Barber, policy
director for cultural issues for Concerned Women for America (CWA).

Barber points out that the American Psychiatric Association, which
declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973, still
classifies the condition of transgender as a disorder. Barber says
the political left wing is facilitating more gender confusion by
counseling the afflicted to feel good about themselves rather than
find a treatment for this disorder. "You are what you are—male or
female," Barber says.

Peter Sprigg, Family Research Council (FRC) vice president for policy
in Washington, D.C., says, "The pressure for acceptance is ultimately
a challenge to the authority of Scripture and a violation of natural
law. In the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender movement there is a
tendency to continually push the envelope in trying to demand the
acceptance of what most people perceive to be unusual behavior."

The everyday lives of transgendered people are often an agonizing
interplay of nature and nurture. The experience of Ann Gordon/ Drew
Phoenix has become a public example of this interplay in a faith-
based environment.

As a child, Ann Gordon's parents allowed her to dress and act like a
boy. Because of Ann's tomboyish appearance and conduct, her parents
even publicly referred to her as their son in a small town north of
Dayton, Ohio. But when puberty hit, Ann's parents expected her to
start wearing dresses and look like a lady. She didn't know how to
conform to parental wishes and societal expectations.

Eighteen years ago, Ann became an ordained United Methodist minister.
In 2002, Ann began serving St. John's of Baltimore United Methodist
Church. But the lifelong feelings of gender confusion were strong and
persistent.

"I experienced a disconnect between my external physical self and my
internal spiritual self," the minister says.

In 2006, Ann Gordon legally became Drew Phoenix, culminating in a sex-
change operation. After the surgery, the bishop of the Baltimore-
Washington conference reappointed Phoenix to the church. Some 20 of
the 40 active St. John's members view themselves as part of the GLBT
movement, according to Phoenix.

"I have no qualms about the transition," says Phoenix, 48. "It was
the right thing to do. I feel happy, peaceful, and whole. I felt
guided by the Spirit to do this."

In October, the nine-member UMC Judicial Council met to determine if
Phoenix had broken any church law. Nothing in the denomination's Book
of Discipline addresses the topic. The council upheld the bishop's
decision that Phoenix could remain as a pastor in good standing. This
summer, the UMC General Conference, which meets every four years,
will likely discuss banning transgendered ministers.

Phoenix sets aside the biological fact that her body was originally
female. "I believe I was born male," Phoenix says. "My body didn't
match what I am. That's how God made me. God created me male."

Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International in Orlando, Florida,
understands the ordeal that Phoenix is facing. "As a prepubescent boy
I could have been diagnosed as transgender," Chambers says. "I
dressed like a girl. I acted like a girl. I wanted to be a girl."
Chambers is convinced that many of the children labeled as
transgendered have been misdiagnosed.

Chambers, 35, says his parents didn't encourage him to try to be a
female. He says his parents knew God didn't make mistakes and cited
Genesis 1:27, in which God creates male and female. Preschoolers are
incapable of knowing whether they would feel better as the other
gender, Chambers says. His desire to be a girl subsided when he hit
puberty.

"A lot of parents are allowing their children to switch identities
from the sex that God created them to live," Chambers says. "That
only sets kids up to be even more confused."

Call for Compassion

Jerry Leach, director of Reality Resources, a ministry in Lexington,
Kentucky, to people dealing with gender confusion, shares Chambers's
point of view. Leach says, "Rather than cutting tissue by invasive
surgery and starting a new life, which for the most part doesn't
work, people need to find help psychiatrically."

Leach has become the referral point person for several national
Christian organizations on this topic. "The essence of who you are in
your genetics, anatomy, chromosomes, and DNA does not suddenly change
by surgical amputation."

Surgery or no surgery, there is no quick fix for transgendered
people. Chambers says those who wrestle with such feelings don't
start out with a desire to be involved in sinful behavior. It's
merely a response to what they feel is natural.

"It's a psychological, emotional struggle that needs compassion,"
Chambers says. "It's an identity issue. At its core, there is
absolute confusion about who someone is created to be."

Leach says, "This is a psychological and emotional malady. It's not
like taking an appendix out."

Leach, 65, says only the sympathy of trusted Christian friends helped
him emerge from his own conflict.

Sexual identity struggles consumed Leach beginning in early boyhood.
His parents told him they wished he had been a girl and that they had
planned to name him Jennifer. His mother made him wear dresses. His
father told him he looked better as a female. The pattern of cross-
dressing, applying lipstick and mascara, and wearing fingernail
polish and pantyhose became a secret obsession years into his adult
life. While some men who gazed at scantily clad females were overcome
with lust, Leach had a different problem: jealousy. He wished he
inhabited those bodies himself.

With God's help, Leach has learned to avoid occasions of temptation,
including shopping for dresses with Charlene, his wife of 46 years.

Leach hoped marriage would make his gender-confused feelings go away,
but it didn't. In 1989, after taking female hormones for 18 months,
Leach scheduled sex reassignment surgery. But two weeks before the
operation, he says he sensed God telling him to stop his covert
double life.

Ultimately, Leach understood that God knit together his male body, as
outlined in Psalm 139:15–16.

"God planned for me to be a man before I had ever been created,"
Leach says. "There was not a woman inside my body longing to be
expressed. There is no human condition outside the redemptive circle
of God's love and power."

The challenge before conservative evangelicals is persuading
transgendered people, their families, and faith-based advocates that
gender identity disorder is not beyond the reach of God's grace,
compassionate church-based care, and professional help.

John W. Kennedy, a CT consulting editor, is a journalist in
Springfield, Missouri. He is news editor of TPE magazine and a former
CT news editor.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/february/25.54.html?start=5


Resources

http://www.help4families.com/
http://www.raf-t.org/
http://www.realityresources.com/
http://www.parakaleo.co.uk/
http://www.syrogers.com/
http://newhope-outreach.blogspot.com/
http://www.shatteredn2pieces.com/ -Christian Wives Support Group of
husbands who are Cross-dressers and its effects on them and their
entire family.

Gender Identity Awareness Association -
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~gendmend/Home.htm
To warn these individuals of the pitfalls and tragic consequences
that can result from the administration of cross-sex hormones and
surgical sex modification procedures.

Transsexualism in the Church-A pastor responds
http://www.newhopeoutreachtoronto.org/A_pastor_responds.html

The Desire For A Sex Change-Psychiatrist says sex-change surgery is a
collaboration with a mental disorder, not a treatment.
http://www.narth.com/docs/desiresch.html

APA Division 44 Psychologist-
Proposes Non-Pathological Approach To Transgenderism
http://www.narth.com/docs/proposes.html


How Should Clinicians Deal With GID In Children?
Psychologist Kenneth J. Zucker explains the current research on
children and adolescents who develop a Gender Identity Disorder
http://www.narth.com/docs/gid.html

Should transsexuality be freely endorsed
by Christians?
http://www.narth.com/docs/gid.html