God’s love and design counter gender ideology

Modern culture is inundating us with gender ideology, the belief that everyone can choose for themselves whether they are male, female, both, neither, or something in between. God’s natural law and the Catholic Church provide us with the response to this misguided and dangerous philosophy. 

It all begins with a proper understanding of love, which is neither a feeling nor simply giving in to what someone wants. Christian love is an intentional act: willing the good of the other. Sometimes another’s good coincides with that person’s desire, but not always. We would never let a child touch a hot stove, no matter how much they want to do so, because we know the child would be burned.

Next, we need to consider God’s purpose for giving us sexed bodies. Our body-soul unity is not an arbitrary assignment; it makes us who we are. And when a man and a woman become “one body” in a sacramental marriage, they are a selfless gift to each other emotionally, spiritually, and physically. They hold nothing back, even their reproductive capacity, which allows them to co-create new life with God.

God’s design for our bodies tells us something beautiful about God’s nature. From the eternal exchange of love between God the Father and God the Son proceeds God the Holy Spirit. Similarly, the love between a man and woman in a sacramental marriage can be so strong it requires its own name: a “son” or “daughter.” As Christopher West explains, the communion of persons established by marriage is, in a way, an “icon” of the Trinity’s inner life.

Since God designed us male and female with purpose, we know there will be adverse consequences if we thwart that purpose. We do not have to follow God’s moral law, just like we do not have to follow the instructions in a car owner’s manual. But in either case, if we neglect the instruction book, things go downhill quickly, and neither we nor the car will flourish the way the Maker intended.

In the case of our bodies, science bears out that intuition. Studies of brain structure and function have not shown any conclusive biological basis for transgendered identity. From a scientific perspective, there is no such thing as a “boy trapped in a girl’s body” or vice versa.

Indeed, there is a recent global shift away from using gender affirmation as the first-line response to gender-dysphoric youth because there is no consensus that such affirmation advances a child’s good. Quite the opposite, there are a whole host of negative outcomes observed in those treated with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery. Personal stories from detransitioners — those who took such steps, then sought once again to present as their actual sex — confirm these outcomes and the lack of adequate information they received before making such a profound decision.

And the harm is not limited to those undergoing transition. As a result of aggressive government policies, males identifying as females are replacing women in athletic competitions and on the winner’s podium and occupying women’s shelters, prisons, dormitories, and showers.

We must proclaim the truth about the body and human sexuality with compassion and pastoral accompaniment. The lie that we control our own destiny and cannot trust God is the same one the serpent told in the Garden of Eden. We should embrace our God-given sex because it is a gift; rejecting that gift hurts us and our brothers and sisters in Christ.