Get Real (Answers to Dysphoria)

Author: Andrew Comiskey
December 05, 2024

The US Supreme Court just finished oral arguments concerning Tennessee’s statewide ban on puberty blockers and hormone treatments for youth seeking to change their sex.

Though the Court won’t rule on the ban until spring, it appears likely that it will uphold the right of Tennessee and another 24 states that currently refuse such ‘medical’ treatment for children claiming to be the other sex.

We can be happy about that possibility. We can pray that the Court will uphold common-sense morality. Like ethnicity, sex is immutable. We must defend ferociously the dignity of every male or female’s civil rights. That does not apply to funding risky and unproven medical interventions to do the impossible, e.g., to ‘change’ one’s sex.

Like Sweden and the UK, the USA is finally beginning to refuse false solutions to the complexity of sexual dysphoria.

My question for all Christians who wince at men posturing as women and vice-versa: what is our answer? Are we prepared to be a community that knows how to accompany those who believe they are trapped in the wrong body in prayerful fellowship?  

We have created a culture that permits confused young children to cultivate other sexual ‘selves.’ I believe that this is as much of a social phenomenon as it is a psychological and spiritual distortion. (Educators and clinicians throughout our country believe that sex is mutable and that a dysphoric child should be encouraged to ‘trans’ identify to ward off more significant distress, especially suicide.)

OK, got that. I have been to countless seminars where really smart Christians rearticulate this cultural nightmare, again and again. Yet they offer no answers to the child in distress.

It’s not enough to refuse him or her sexual reassignment. How does a sexually lost child reintegrate his or her original sexual dignity?

That is the most relevant question in this entire ‘trans’ mess. What are our answers? How do we prevent a child from adopting such a personal delusion in a culture that insists on fake answers?

We need empowered counsel if we are to refuse puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgery to those seeking sex change.

Do we have any true answers? Does Jesus and His Church?  

What persuades one to begin to refuse his or her sexual birthright at three or four years old? Equally, what helps confirm his or her unique sexual identity as male or female without resorting to heavy-handed stereotypes?

As we await the Supreme Court decision on whether states are free to refuse false solutions for children at odds with themselves, we must contend for real answers to wounded children in our midst.

Common sense morality hinges on common sense restoration.
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