How I Approach the Trans Debate: Compassion, Reason, Scripture
The other day I attended an online seminar put on by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. The seminar was about Victoria’s anti-gender conversion and suppression laws. Now the laws have a good purpose, to prevent and prohibit harmful conversion practices related to sexuality and gender identity. So things like sending teenagers to gay-cure camp, terrible conversion therapies that involve a weird mix of prayer and porn, that kind of thing. Let me be upfront. I totally support the ban on these harmful anti-gay and anti-trans conversion practices.
My reservation is that what constitutes “suppression” is broad and can include prayers, informal conversations, and even certain types of pastoral care. There are certain criteria involved in committing an offense under this legislation linked to a statement/action that is (1) directed at a specific person; (2) on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity; and (3) involves a change or suppression of sexual orientation or gender identity. So there’s a lot of breadth in what might constitute an offence. For example, advocating celibacy to an LGBT person could go either way depending on how the case for celibacy is articulated.
Anyway, at the seminar, I asked a question: “Can a medical practitioner (psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, or GP) treat an adolescent with gender dysphoria so that they desist in their symptoms.” The answer I was given by the public official from VEOHRC was, “No.” A medical practitioner cannot legally do that!
Now I have written to VEOHRC to query that answer as I am not sure that was correct because the Victorian Govt amended the legislation after discussions with the Australian Medical Association because, in keeping with the best clinical practice, sometimes a physician has to challenge a patient’s self-diagnosis. The legislation currently reads:
A practice or conduct is not a change or suppression practice if it—
is a practice or conduct of a health service provider that is, in the health service provider's reasonable professional judgement, necessary—
(i) to provide a health service; or
(ii) to comply with the legal or professional obligations of the health service provider.
But if medical practitioners are indeed under this constraint, then it sounds like activists, law-makers, and public officials will determine what is best clinical practice for adolescents with gender dysphoria rather than actual clinicians themselves, which everyone should think is a bad, bad idea.
But such are the times we live in!
Evidently, then, one of the most complex and contested issues today is the “trans debate” which includes everything from gender fluidity, gender dysphoria, heteronormativity, drag queen story time, sex education in schools, Harry Potter, bathrooms, sports, prisons, dictionaries, and science.
On the one hand, I’m critical of things like the Nashville Statement, because I think it’s trying to provide multiple-choice answers to essay questions about same-sex attraction, gender dysphoria, and intersex. I’m also morally appalled by a CPAC clip I saw where Michael Knowles said that transgenderism needs to be “eradicated.” There’s ignorance and nasty that needs to be confronted in the anti-trans movement.
On the other hand, I’m very sympathetic to gender-critical (secular) feminists in their concerns about prematurely transitioning children and the erasure of women’s rights. The amount of online abuse and calls for violence against J.K. Rowling for standing up for women’s rights, mostly by men, proves that women’s rights are indeed at risk. I mean the fact that in the UK the LGB Alliance and Lesbian Society have been set up to defend gay rights against trans activists shows just how crazy the situation is becoming.
So I’ll give my working hypothesis on this complex and delicate issue, but only for committed readers, as I don’t want to blast it everywhere because it will undoubtedly offend people from every corner of the spectrum.
Based on what I’ve read, who I’ve met, and what I’ve learned, this is how I see it.