The Problem with Pronouns

The August 2023 Durham Board of Education meeting opened with a moment of silence for the “trans child” destined to suicide or worse because of supposedly transphobic citizens like me who oppose so-called transgender affirming care—the castration of healthy 14-year-old boys and sterilization of healthy 15-year-old girls.

The LGBTQ+ movement defends this nonsense, even as the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual declares that 85% of gender-anxious children will heal naturally through natal puberty.1 Let that sink in.

The only time the word pervert was spoken at this school board meeting was when a Durham school board member took a point of privilege to rebuke me and the other two Christians who told the crowd that they were made in God’s image, as men and as women, because of his great love.2

Such are the times in which we live.

And to my shame, such times are ones I helped create.

A quarter century ago, I lived as a lesbian activist professor, one of the first crop of tenured radicals, hired, mentored, and tenured in the Syracuse University English Department to make homosexuality look normal.

I succeeded.

Along the way, I wrote policy for same-sex unions, testified before New York legislative bodies, and radicalized a generation of college students. When Christ saved me in 1999, I repented of my sin, broke up with my lesbian partner, stopped teaching classes in queer theory, and tried to make sense of my new world.

Sanctification came slowly and is still coming along.

I had been a Christian for two decades, authored books on repenting from sexual sin, lived joyfully as a wife to a beloved husband and as a mother and grandmother to amazing children before I yielded to the Holy Spirit’s pricking my conscience on a wicked, despicable, and very public sin: using and promoting what is called “transgender pronouns.”3

To the world, the use of transgender pronouns—referring to a biological male as “she” or biological female as “he”—falls under the category of social transition, where a person in rebellion against the created order sets out to live in that rebellion at the level of labels and litany—that is, pronouns and clothes.

Christians who defend the use of transgender pronouns do so because they want to be respectful of someone’s chosen identity. They believe using transgender pronouns is kind, courteous, and necessary for continuing a relationship with a person who believes he is transgendered.4

But by syncretizing gender ideology with the gospel and by harmonizing the inerrant Word of God under obedience to our sin nature, personal experiences, and corrupt feelings, we who use transgender pronouns defy the Word of God as inerrant, trustworthy, sufficient, and useful for our times.

Addressing the Disagreements

Not everyone agrees with me. My public repentance of using transgender pronouns has received several common responses.

Why can’t people be made in the image of God as transgender?

We are made in the image of God in the knowledge, righteousness, and holiness of our Lord, not in the deeds of the flesh. And transgenderism is a deed of the flesh, forbidden in the law, and overcome by the Savior.

Isn’t there a difference between sex and gender?

There is no biblical or legitimate difference between sex and gender. Using these words as terms of distinction falsifies the reality that God’s creation of man and woman is a purposeful pattern (Genesis 1:27). As pastor Christopher J. Gordon says, “To introduce gender as a new category of personhood, separate from the biological category of sex, in pursuit of a different sexual [and gender] identity, is unnatural to the creation order, and harmful to the purpose for which God made us.”5

Isn’t transgenderism a normal gender variant, the result of living in a fallen world the same as, say, blindness?

One can be blind to the glory of God, but transgenderism is a social contagion that celebrates rebellion against the created order.6

“To call a man ‘she’ is not kindness; it’s a concession—to a scheme to control our beliefs and advance an agenda, one pronoun at a time.”—Dr. Miriam Grossman

Should Christians go along with the cultural fiction of using transgender pronouns to keep the peace?

Not only does this violate the ninth commandment by bearing false witness against my neighbor—in this case a vulnerable and mentally unstable image bearer—but in this current climate, it creates harm. As Dr. Miriam Grossman writes, “We face a crusade, a juggernaut, that seeks to demolish male and female, and its success hinges on the control of language. Under those circumstances, to call a man “she” is not kindness; it’s a concession—to a scheme to control our beliefs and advance an agenda, one pronoun at a time.”7

To what agenda does Dr. Grossman refer? Consider just a few: The 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage in all 50 states and redefined harm to include failing to affirm someone’s LGBTQ+ identity. The 2020 Bostock Supreme Court decision that expanded the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include LGBTQ+ identity. The 2021 Biden Administration Federal Anti-Bullying Policy used in all government schools that defines bullying as failing to affirm the false identify of LGBTQ+.

What kind of peace are we keeping by using transgender pronouns? The peace that loves the law and gospel? Or the peace that negotiates our surrender to the idol of LGBTQ+?

Nothing Less Than Heresy

The allies of the old gay rights movement have become the groomers of the movement to “liberate” the “trans child” from his or her biological sex, reproductive future, and reality itself. The sin of normalizing homosexual orientation has morphed into the sin of gender ideology. The strange letter jumble LGBTQ+ stands as the reigning idol of our day, and many who call themselves Christians defend it. Call it what you want, it is nothing more and nothing less than rank heresy. Christians who continue to use transgender pronouns after having been warned do so to the detriment of their own souls—and the souls who follow them.