Wednesday, October 26, 2022 – AlbertMohler.com – Albert Mohler
The transgender revolution is coming for the entirety of American culture, but specifically for American children. And if you think that is an exaggeration, just considered that the transgender revolution has a new enthusiast in chief, otherwise known as the president of the United States.
In an interview given to a TikTok artist, just over the weekend, the president of the United States enthusiastically gushed about the necessity of hormonal and surgical treatments, so-called gender realignment surgery, or gender affirming surgery. That’s the Orwellian terminology that’s used here. And he did so while trying to shame states that have taken measures through the legislature with the support of governors to limit the use of hormonal and surgical treatments when it comes to so-called transitioning children and teenagers. Now, this is a huge cultural, ethical, political watershed in the United States.
As a Christian theologian, it is hard for me to come up with a more significant issue nor a more telling indicator of the future of our society. At this point, it’s abundantly clear we are talking about children and we are talking about the order of creation. That’s all. We’re only talking about the most basic interests and the most vulnerable people in our entire society. We’re talking about objective truth, we’re talking about what it means to be human, and we’re talking about the fact that the federal government is now seeking to intervene in this issue and in the administration of Joe Biden in a way that is enthusiastically and largely unrestrictedly pro-LGBTQ.
More on that in just a moment. But let’s look at the words the President actually said, and let’s also take a look at the context. Because this context is also amazingly revealing. Because here you have a TikTok artist who is a biological male, that is to say a man, who is identifying as a glittery girl, not only as a woman, but as a girl. And the president of the United States is playing along and doing so we might add in the White House.
The event was known as the Now This News Presidential Forum, and one of the participants was this transgender individual or non-binary known as Dylan Mulvaney, a former Broadway actor who has become famous on TikTok for a series called, “100 Days of Girlhood.” As one media source explains, this particular series documents his supposed transition to becoming a girl. Again, we’re not talking about transition merely to being a woman, but to a girl.
Now, just at first glance, let’s just remind ourselves of basic reality here, that reality is that no previous president of the United States could dared to have taken the political risk of inviting into the White House someone who is living out this active live public sexual perversion. Given that individual the credibility of a presidential interview and then gladly trumpeted his unrestricted affirmation of the fact that in this context, children and teenagers should have access to this kind of surgery. And its opposition to this kind of surgery the President described as immoral. Evita Duffy, writing for the Federalist also points out the fact that the president publicly, repeatedly, continuously claims to be a Roman Catholic. In his words, a practicing Roman Catholic, a regular practicing Catholic. But here you notice that as on the issue of abortion, the president of the United States, along with other major Democratic Catholic leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House basically set themselves in 180 degree Diametrical opposition to the official dogma, doctrine and moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
As a Protestant evangelical Christian, I’ll simply say, they are setting themselves over against the entire authority of scripture and the very structures God has given us in creation itself. Now, keep all of this in mind when you understand that the President sat down for this interview and he knew the interviewer’s identity, and the interview began with Dylan Mulvaney, remember a man claiming to be a girl. He said, “Mr. President, this is my 221st day of publicly transitioning.” The President’s response was, “God love you.”
The president’s absolute affirmation was followed by Mulvaney question to the president about whether or not states should have the right to limit hormonal and surgical treatments when it comes to gender, transgender procedures in particular or so-called gender realignment or gender affirming procedures, when it comes to those who identify as non-binary. And the president simply responded with unbridled enthusiasm and moral clarity. Absolutely morally wrong, but moral clarity. “I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that,” said the president. “As a moral question and as a legal question, I just think it’s wrong.” Addressing states that have taken some of these actions. The president said, “The idea that what’s going on in some states, it’s just outrageous and I think it’s immoral. The trans parts not immoral. What they’re trying to do to trans persons is immoral.”
Now looking carefully at the transcript and at the record, it is clear that the president knew what he was talking about here. This is not a matter of confusion because the states that have taken the actions that Mulvaney ask about are states that have taken those actions on behalf of children and teenagers. There’s basically no confusion in this country as to the kind of legislation the president was being asked about.
And there certainly was no confusion in the president’s response. The president’s response was absolutely unqualified, absolute support and absolute demand for the fact that government get out of the way and then just pay for so-called hormonal and surgical treatments that are intended to affirm, and furthermore, to realign a body to a new gender identity. Or no gender identity, or anyone’s infinite permutational choice of what a gender identity might be. This is absolute insanity.
It would be insanity any place, anytime since the book of Genesis. It is insanity here and now. It is insanity now in the White House. And just ask yourself this question, Are there any remaining moral boundaries or limits if a president of the United States would invite into the White House and then sit down for an interview with a so-called TikTok journalist, a celebrity who is a biological male?
He is a man who is claiming an identity not only as a female, not only as a woman, but as a girl, in his own language, a glittery girl. This news story’s caught the attention of journalists on the other side of the Atlantic. Josie Ensor writing for a London newspaper the Telegraph tells us that even as Mulvaney has attracted this news attention, he has already attracted a great deal of controversy. Some of that controversy has been people who have accused him of infantilization for calling himself a girl rather than even calling himself a woman.
So you see the nonsense here and then the deeper nonsense, you see the rejection of creation and then the even deeper rejection of creation. And Mulvaney’s response to this was, “I think that’s rooted in transphobia. I think in womanhood, I get shamed a lot for liking pink and liking glitter. And I’m like, ‘Why does that bother you so much?'” The Telegraph also tells us that the American cosmetic retailer known as Ulta, had featured Mulvaney on a podcast which was, no, you get the irony here, supposedly centered on femininity.
And there were some actual women who felt that this was wrong, and using the language of critical theory, they accused him of appropriating womanhood. The response of Ulta, “We believe beauty is for everyone.” Now, frankly, I don’t know where we are and where we might possibly go as a country when this is the moral reality we are facing.
And even as there’s so many legitimate, so many urgent moral issues facing this country, the fact is that it is hard to exaggerate the basic rebellion against creation this represents. Now we have the White House, we have the President of the United States speaking this kind of moral insanity. And notice this is not just some kind of political posturing. He clearly would use every power of his office to try to bring about as much of this revolution as possible.
And that’s not just said as some kind of guess or inference. He has said this out loud. And of course, speaking out loud is why we’re talking about this story in the first place. But we also need to notice something else. I mentioned that journalists across the Atlantic have noticed this story. Let me tell you why that might come with a particular sensitivity when it comes to a British newspaper.
It is because the central medical establishment is now calling, if not a halt, then a tremendous slowdown in any kind of hormonal or surgical intervention when it comes to trans issues or gender confusion in children and teenagers. This is a huge issue. The Telegraph, the very same newspaper recently reported that the new proposals by the National Health Service say that the new clinical approach will “reflect evidence that in most cases, gender incongruence does not persist into adolescents.”
The official position of Britain’s national health service based upon a report that had been submitted to the British government is that the vast majority of children who are confused and teenagers who are gender confused return to their so-called birth gender as their identity, and the confusion is a transient phase. Just hear that language. A transient phase. By the way, there has been plenty of evidence on both sides of the Atlantic that for the majority of children and teenagers who reflect some kind of confusion at some point, that is indeed a transient phase.
Just try to reconcile that medically or morally with terms like puberty blockers and hormonal treatments and surgical intervention. And just keep in mind what kind of surgery we’re talking about here. But it is really important to recognize that in Britain, a matter of months ago, they announced that the National Health Service’s major clinic for adolescents dealing with these kinds of issues known as Tavistock was shut down simply because the government came to the conclusion that it could well be causing more harm than good in the lives of children and teenagers treated at that clinic for these very issues.
The current British protocol suggests “a watchful approach.” That would seem to make a great deal more moral sense than the kind of position that is now taken even by the major medical authorities in the United States. But it’s also a reminder of the fact that those medical authorities though, having brought so much good, so many good treatments, such an extension of life, so many good surgical procedures, they also have a great deal of moral baggage in that medical closet in the background. And a good many scandals in the past at professional medicine.
I think we as Christians understand that this transgender movement is going to represent another very sad immoral chapter in American medicine. But still Tavistock and the United Kingdom across the Atlantic, far less pressing to most Americans, far less depressing than the sight of the President of the United States being interviewed by a man who claims to be a girl in the White House, with the president gushing.