Francis is disturbed by emerging new ideas about gender. So are many who are fully self-honest. It disrupts our world view when something so fundamental is challenged. Worse, there is at the present time no real stability, no strong consensus in this field. Rather, every Tom, Dick and Harry is proposed their own distinctions.

BUT, in this particular quote Francis makes it very clear that he is fundamentally confused about what is happening in the field. He implies that groundless ideology comes first, and out of that ideology, pronouncement are made about reality. He reveals his confusion in a core sentence: 

"Today children – children! – are taught in school that everyone can CHOOSE his or her sex" (emphasis added)

While it might be true that some idiot here or there might be teaching this, the gender issue today is founded on data, on observation, of disconcerting evidence that a few people experience their sexualtity and gendered in non-standard patterns.

(continued)