The Girl in the Boys’ Locker Room
By: Mike Verway
Tags: Gender Identity, Christianity, Transgender, Public Education, Family Counseling

Last Monday local Twin Cities news broadcasts and newspaper websites ran headlines similar to this

MN Court Of Appeals: Separate Locker Room Violated Transgender Boy’s Right

The case involves a high school athlete in the Anoka-Hennepin School District. The athlete is a biological female, that means the athlete possesses female chromosomes and female body parts. At birth, the doctor said, “It’s a girl!” Somewhere along the way, the girl chose to identify as a boy, live as a boy, and require others treat her as a boy. She lives transgender.

As a member of the boys’ swim team, the girl who lives as a boy demanded access to the boys’ locker room. Swimming in turbulent waters, the school district created a space for her use apart from the boys’ locker room and the girls’ locker room. Her parents sued the school district declaring the segregation violated their daughter’s civil rights. The appeals court agreed it is unlawful to segregate her from biological boys in the locker room. As a biological female living transgender and identifying as an adolescent male, she is entitled to the same space as the cisgender boys (biological boys who agree they are, in fact, boys).

Following the ruling, the unnamed student athlete celebrated the court’s finding. “I never want any student to experience the discrimination and cruelty I experienced from the adults at my school. It means a lot to see that courts protect transgender students like me. Today’s decision makes it very clear that segregating trans students doesn’t just dehumanize us, it violates our legal rights.”

Few Saw This Coming

At the turn of the millennium, did anyone anticipate the approval and promotion of what it means to be male or female to come to this? Sure, we’ve debated for decades, maybe centuries or longer, the roles of male and female in our world. But look where we are now. Only an ignoramus believes there are two and only two genders determined by biology not by identity.

This is not a minor issue. In my mind this is even more significant for the Christian than same-sex marriage or a host of other moral issues. To embrace gender based on identity is to reject the creator’s design of male or female in every human he brings into existence. I can think of no other rebellion against the creator greater than this.

In a 2–1 decision, the Minnesota Court of Appeals sided with the plaintiffs against the school district.

Thinking about what it means to be male or female, as a Christian you cannot stick your head in the sand. My personal opinion is the political battle and probably the cultural battle are lost. I cannot see a path of reversal. Further, I cannot see a way this does not impact the local church and your family. This rebellion is not just out there. I guarantee it is or will be in your home too.

This is my great concern. This is not a neutral world; it resists God and stands in rebellion to him on all matters, including his created order of binary genders. Your children and grandchildren face an ideological onslaught we did not face. Public education teaches gender fluidity and popular culture praises and defends all transitions. Our children are learning to announce their pronouns of choice, as if an individual person has the authority to determine gender in rebellion to God’s will.

From a recent New York Times article,

“I think we, and particularly young people, increasingly view gender not as a given, but as a choice, not as a distinction between male and female, but as a spectrum, regardless of what’s ‘down there,’” said Julie Mencher, a psychotherapist in Northampton, Mass., who conducts school workshops on how to support transgender students. “Many claim that gender doesn’t even exist.”

Keep On Keeping On

Our churches, our parents, and our pulpits must know what God has revealed to us in his word about what it means to be human. We must teach God’s Word without apology and with confidence that God will bless the faithful teaching of his Word. We must believe that what God says is right and true and good and that all other teachings are wrong and lies and bad. We must discern the lies of the wicked one and cling to God’s grace when the attacks come with greater intensity and more severe consequences.

If I were still a parent of young children, this song would be playing in our home or minivan all the time.

The Bible has told us that we cannot be the friend of God and the friend of the world (James 4:4). They are not compatible. The world is telling us if you are on the side of the Bible when it comes to what it means to be human, we will not tolerate you. But God will not abandon us, and he will fight for us. Do not abandon him.

Brothers and sisters, the attacks against God are not going to stop until Jesus returns and puts a stop to them. Therefore, determine that you will “stand firm…with the belt of truth buckled around your waist” (Eph 6:14).