On the day the Supreme Court ruled against transgender students, the LCMS published a hateful guide instructing parents to reject their transgender children.
It's still just wild to me the LCMS took one from the Kirk Cameron playbook and took the voice of one person who de-transitioned as the universal experience for all trans people.
It's because the writer of the guide was once an atheist, but converted to Christianity, and now believes that transition is sinful. That's how LCMS views trans surgery and trans lifestyle -- so the writer is their perfect witness. https://files.lcms.org/file/preview/lost-in-errors-maze-color
I have a different take on this “guide.” When I studied clinical psychology back in the late 70s, we knew about transgender persons. It was not classified as a mental illness. This was also during DSM-2 when homosexuality had just been dropped as a diagnosis classification. We were taught that if a transgender person came for therapy the main concern was ensuring any diagnosis take into account cultural acceptance as a confounding factor.
I’m sorry the author of the document didn’t have conscientious care to ensure she was a ready candidate for transgender treatment before prescribing mastectomies & a hysterectomy. Her situation was more gender dysphoria than transgender. She would have likely benefited from puberty blockers as she & her therapist sorted her symptoms. As she notes, your counselor should be vetted & I have questions about who she saw.
That said, she’s not talking about transgender people but about gender dysphoria. Even so, her advocacy of praying it away doesn’t address the issues the individual is facing. Being told you just need to pray harder & God only made males & females is dangerous, especially for an adolescent who’s already having identity issues. Adding guilt that God loves you despite your sinful rebellion against gender assignment at birth is more likely to induce suicidal ideation than comfort.
A loving parent will support their child exploring their feelings rather than discounting them as their sinful nature.
I was baptized & confirmed in the LCMS & am now in the ELCA for reasons like this.
There's that "e" word again. It is so very easy to argue when you start from the position that everyone else is in "error." Then, you can dismiss and condemn to your heart's content.
Then, as you mentioned, you don't have to see the other as someone trying to live out a life of faith, addressing issues that are bigger than we are. Then, you don't ever have to imagine that God might indeed be doing "a new thing" (at least in our understanding of it)..
How do we understand such negativity and rejection? To me, much of conservative thinking, whether religious or political, is caught up in fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, fear of those who are different, fear of change.
A LCMS pastor was arrested for election crimes in Georgia. The LCMS doesn’t strike me as a healthy church or a church one would turn to for moral guidance.
It is always notable to me when Christians (or others) will make a case about biology or ontology on one hand and then on the other insist that you can't use the name or pronouns another person asks you to. Are pronouns biological? Ontological? Just bizarre reasoning.
It is an adult identity that can confuse children when presented as a "doctrine" that all must learn. I can't defend the labels nor have read the document fully. But another perspective to consider is legal. The term "man" and "woman" is the only one unclaimable by the government and regarded as divine in law. People should know the legal consequences of abandoning the title of man and woman, in exchange for pronoun, in which their use is defined by the state.
Mainly, this arguement then boils down to who is it actually who grants you more freedom and power? The government or God?
Transgender people are not all nonbinary or gender-nonconforming and therefore want to be referred to as "they" or "them". Many are quite happy to embrace gender-conforming identities such as he/him or she/her. For these folks, the difficulty of legally changing your sex or gender marker depends entirely on the laws of the specific state in which they reside. The same is true for nonbinary or gender non-conforming people. Many state and local non-discrimination laws prohibit hostile work environments and allow individuals to legally enforce their new sexual identity or preferred pronouns in the workplace, although there is no Federal law that explicitly forces others to legally respect your pronouns of choice. That can change.
It's still just wild to me the LCMS took one from the Kirk Cameron playbook and took the voice of one person who de-transitioned as the universal experience for all trans people.
It's because the writer of the guide was once an atheist, but converted to Christianity, and now believes that transition is sinful. That's how LCMS views trans surgery and trans lifestyle -- so the writer is their perfect witness. https://files.lcms.org/file/preview/lost-in-errors-maze-color
I have a different take on this “guide.” When I studied clinical psychology back in the late 70s, we knew about transgender persons. It was not classified as a mental illness. This was also during DSM-2 when homosexuality had just been dropped as a diagnosis classification. We were taught that if a transgender person came for therapy the main concern was ensuring any diagnosis take into account cultural acceptance as a confounding factor.
I’m sorry the author of the document didn’t have conscientious care to ensure she was a ready candidate for transgender treatment before prescribing mastectomies & a hysterectomy. Her situation was more gender dysphoria than transgender. She would have likely benefited from puberty blockers as she & her therapist sorted her symptoms. As she notes, your counselor should be vetted & I have questions about who she saw.
That said, she’s not talking about transgender people but about gender dysphoria. Even so, her advocacy of praying it away doesn’t address the issues the individual is facing. Being told you just need to pray harder & God only made males & females is dangerous, especially for an adolescent who’s already having identity issues. Adding guilt that God loves you despite your sinful rebellion against gender assignment at birth is more likely to induce suicidal ideation than comfort.
A loving parent will support their child exploring their feelings rather than discounting them as their sinful nature.
I was baptized & confirmed in the LCMS & am now in the ELCA for reasons like this.
There's that "e" word again. It is so very easy to argue when you start from the position that everyone else is in "error." Then, you can dismiss and condemn to your heart's content.
Then, as you mentioned, you don't have to see the other as someone trying to live out a life of faith, addressing issues that are bigger than we are. Then, you don't ever have to imagine that God might indeed be doing "a new thing" (at least in our understanding of it)..
How do we understand such negativity and rejection? To me, much of conservative thinking, whether religious or political, is caught up in fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, fear of those who are different, fear of change.
A LCMS pastor was arrested for election crimes in Georgia. The LCMS doesn’t strike me as a healthy church or a church one would turn to for moral guidance.
https://wordandway.org/2023/08/15/pastor-indicted-alongside-trump-in-georgia-election-meddling-case/
It is always notable to me when Christians (or others) will make a case about biology or ontology on one hand and then on the other insist that you can't use the name or pronouns another person asks you to. Are pronouns biological? Ontological? Just bizarre reasoning.
It is an adult identity that can confuse children when presented as a "doctrine" that all must learn. I can't defend the labels nor have read the document fully. But another perspective to consider is legal. The term "man" and "woman" is the only one unclaimable by the government and regarded as divine in law. People should know the legal consequences of abandoning the title of man and woman, in exchange for pronoun, in which their use is defined by the state.
Mainly, this arguement then boils down to who is it actually who grants you more freedom and power? The government or God?
Transgender people are not all nonbinary or gender-nonconforming and therefore want to be referred to as "they" or "them". Many are quite happy to embrace gender-conforming identities such as he/him or she/her. For these folks, the difficulty of legally changing your sex or gender marker depends entirely on the laws of the specific state in which they reside. The same is true for nonbinary or gender non-conforming people. Many state and local non-discrimination laws prohibit hostile work environments and allow individuals to legally enforce their new sexual identity or preferred pronouns in the workplace, although there is no Federal law that explicitly forces others to legally respect your pronouns of choice. That can change.