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#Post#: 22236--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: patrick jane Date: December 15, 2020, 7:58 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Why didn't Sherman post her personal beliefs and opinions on TOL
- TheologyOnline? Because TOL is a very biased and intolerant
site filled with prideful members. She is "scared" to post this
on her own forum.
#Post#: 24073--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: patrick jane Date: January 22, 2021, 9:13 am
---------------------------------------------------------
January 21, 2021, 06:35:13 pm Bladerunner says: good evening to
all.....the signing of the LGBTXXXXXX executive orders has
already begun. I say to all the churches, Watch out!
#Post#: 24074--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: patrick jane Date: January 22, 2021, 9:13 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=897.msg24073#msg24073
date=1611328396]
January 21, 2021, 06:35:13 pm Bladerunner says: good evening to
all.....the signing of the LGBTXXXXXX executive orders has
already begun. I say to all the churches, Watch out!
[/quote]January 21, 2021, 09:08:00 pm Chaplain Mark Schmidt
says: I see no issues with the signing of the LGBTQ executive
orders. The sky did not fall, God did not admit anyone, no
police showed up to check if I was harboring Gays, no Churches
burned up nothing. I think the reactions or overreactions. The
churches have solid grounds to stand on if they chose to be an
exclusive country club that only those that act and look a
certain way can attend, then they can be. Those that chose to
be inclusive, they can. AND guess what each and every one of us
gets to pick the one we attend, and WE AL HAVE the right to
ignore the rest.
Remeber your own hate only punishes you. The others by and
large will not care about your positions. Take care of yourself
and your salvation and do not worry about those that have chosen
a different journey.
That is my viewpoint and humble opinion. NOTHING and I mean
NOTHING in that order will affect me and my faith, belief and
position.
#Post#: 24075--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: patrick jane Date: January 22, 2021, 9:14 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=897.msg24074#msg24074
date=1611328423]
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=897.msg24073#msg24073
date=1611328396]
January 21, 2021, 06:35:13 pm Bladerunner says: good evening to
all.....the signing of the LGBTXXXXXX executive orders has
already begun. I say to all the churches, Watch out!
[/quote]January 21, 2021, 09:08:00 pm Chaplain Mark Schmidt
says: I see no issues with the signing of the LGBTQ executive
orders. The sky did not fall, God did not admit anyone, no
police showed up to check if I was harboring Gays, no Churches
burned up nothing. I think the reactions or overreactions. The
churches have solid grounds to stand on if they chose to be an
exclusive country club that only those that act and look a
certain way can attend, then they can be. Those that chose to
be inclusive, they can. AND guess what each and every one of us
gets to pick the one we attend, and WE AL HAVE the right to
ignore the rest.
Remeber your own hate only punishes you. The others by and
large will not care about your positions. Take care of yourself
and your salvation and do not worry about those that have chosen
a different journey.
That is my viewpoint and humble opinion. NOTHING and I mean
NOTHING in that order will affect me and my faith, belief and
position.
[/quote]Today at 01:11:49 am Bladerunner says: Mark: Wow,
expected something but not that...
I expect no police at any church as I expect no church to be
harboring (hiding) gays! What the executive order did do was
unleash the transgender on the women's sports. It will all but
destroy it in every way. Its already in the news today and the
'WOKE' NCAA will remove tournaments in states that prohibit
transgenders in women's sports.(i.e. Montana)
Allowing the transgender male to go into the female bathrooms is
another problem that is a little closer to home.. will you allow
this in your church? will not allow my wife, daughter or
granddaughter to go into a restroom that has a transgender in
it. Thus, we will have to remove ourselves from a favorite
restaurants, church, etc. and become a part of that ever
widening division in America.
With these executive orders, the feds 'can' remove the churches
C3 status that refuse a same sex marriage....Will your church do
that? If it does, I am sure the feds will leave your church
alone.... I would not marry a same sex couple...It would indeed
be a direct sin against GOD! p.s. funny you should speak of the
standing of the church as it was Justice Roberts and the SUPREME
Court refusal to hear the Texas Case because they had no
standing.
I have already seen many churches chasing down a rabbit hole to
help those that are part of the social justice or Woke
movements. They simply lose themselves trying to help these
people that do not want help, for social justice and the WOKE
movement is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is
no degree that you can be part of either one of these movements
and be true to GOD's WORD and HIS Gospel.
The executive orders also give our (yours and mine) tax dollars
to places that abort babies in the womb. Surely you do not
condone this as the POPE at least says He doe not agree with the
murder of innocent life. Yet, they were signed and another
million babies will be dying all in the name of what? women's
rights
I could go on as there were 17 orders he signed but the rest do
not affect the churches directly. While these seem to be
political, they will certainly effect the churches and the
parishoners that will not stray away from GOD's word....I and my
family are one of those.
Back in 2015 as (White) stated, a switch was turned on and the
transgender movement began immediately. Rom 1:28."And even as
they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave
them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not
convenient;" We are under judgement and have been since the
late fifies/early sixties.
P.s. I have no hate for people but rather the sins they
promote,. and my salvation/justification is in good shape as I
protect the WORD of GOD as He Authored it. Those words in Rom
1:28 literally tell us what was to happen 2,000 years ago.
today it is a reality.
Again, these signatures did not burn down any churches, but
given a little time, they will affect all of us. You and I and
others will all be in the same bucket. It will be interesting in
how those that think like you do handle it when things get
heated with the social justice and "WOKE" movement for they like
the bull in the spanish colosseum only see red no matter whether
it be a Matador or a citizen within. we already see signs of
this in Portland last night!
Have a good day Mark
Blade
#Post#: 24076--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: patrick jane Date: January 22, 2021, 9:15 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=897.msg24075#msg24075
date=1611328465]
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=897.msg24074#msg24074
date=1611328423]
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=897.msg24073#msg24073
date=1611328396]
January 21, 2021, 06:35:13 pm Bladerunner says: good evening to
all.....the signing of the LGBTXXXXXX executive orders has
already begun. I say to all the churches, Watch out!
[/quote]January 21, 2021, 09:08:00 pm Chaplain Mark Schmidt
says: I see no issues with the signing of the LGBTQ executive
orders. The sky did not fall, God did not admit anyone, no
police showed up to check if I was harboring Gays, no Churches
burned up nothing. I think the reactions or overreactions. The
churches have solid grounds to stand on if they chose to be an
exclusive country club that only those that act and look a
certain way can attend, then they can be. Those that chose to
be inclusive, they can. AND guess what each and every one of us
gets to pick the one we attend, and WE AL HAVE the right to
ignore the rest.
Remeber your own hate only punishes you. The others by and
large will not care about your positions. Take care of yourself
and your salvation and do not worry about those that have chosen
a different journey.
That is my viewpoint and humble opinion. NOTHING and I mean
NOTHING in that order will affect me and my faith, belief and
position.
[/quote]Today at 01:11:49 am Bladerunner says: Mark: Wow,
expected something but not that...
I expect no police at any church as I expect no church to be
harboring (hiding) gays! What the executive order did do was
unleash the transgender on the women's sports. It will all but
destroy it in every way. Its already in the news today and the
'WOKE' NCAA will remove tournaments in states that prohibit
transgenders in women's sports.(i.e. Montana)
Allowing the transgender male to go into the female bathrooms is
another problem that is a little closer to home.. will you allow
this in your church? will not allow my wife, daughter or
granddaughter to go into a restroom that has a transgender in
it. Thus, we will have to remove ourselves from a favorite
restaurants, church, etc. and become a part of that ever
widening division in America.
With these executive orders, the feds 'can' remove the churches
C3 status that refuse a same sex marriage....Will your church do
that? If it does, I am sure the feds will leave your church
alone.... I would not marry a same sex couple...It would indeed
be a direct sin against GOD! p.s. funny you should speak of the
standing of the church as it was Justice Roberts and the SUPREME
Court refusal to hear the Texas Case because they had no
standing.
I have already seen many churches chasing down a rabbit hole to
help those that are part of the social justice or Woke
movements. They simply lose themselves trying to help these
people that do not want help, for social justice and the WOKE
movement is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is
no degree that you can be part of either one of these movements
and be true to GOD's WORD and HIS Gospel.
The executive orders also give our (yours and mine) tax dollars
to places that abort babies in the womb. Surely you do not
condone this as the POPE at least says He doe not agree with the
murder of innocent life. Yet, they were signed and another
million babies will be dying all in the name of what? women's
rights
I could go on as there were 17 orders he signed but the rest do
not affect the churches directly. While these seem to be
political, they will certainly effect the churches and the
parishoners that will not stray away from GOD's word....I and my
family are one of those.
Back in 2015 as (White) stated, a switch was turned on and the
transgender movement began immediately. Rom 1:28."And even as
they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave
them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not
convenient;" We are under judgement and have been since the
late fifies/early sixties.
P.s. I have no hate for people but rather the sins they
promote,. and my salvation/justification is in good shape as I
protect the WORD of GOD as He Authored it. Those words in Rom
1:28 literally tell us what was to happen 2,000 years ago.
today it is a reality.
Again, these signatures did not burn down any churches, but
given a little time, they will affect all of us. You and I and
others will all be in the same bucket. It will be interesting in
how those that think like you do handle it when things get
heated with the social justice and "WOKE" movement for they like
the bull in the spanish colosseum only see red no matter whether
it be a Matador or a citizen within. we already see signs of
this in Portland last night!
Have a good day Mark
Blade
[/quote]Today at 01:25:52 am Chaplain Mark Schmidt says: I love
your take and your input Blade and you always provide a well
thought out and informative response. I unfortunately have been
a little more passionate and less thoughtful the last couple of
months. Too many issues in the background. The thing about
executive orders is they are only enforceable until the court
overturns or congress passes laws to overturn them. The NCAA is
a bunch of wankers that are afraid of the lawsuits and change
with the fad of the moment. the Tax-exempt status does need to
be revisited but I agree not under these conditions. I stand
with you on my salvation and justification is on solid ground
and I believe in the inspired word of God. I just come from a
different angle and believe only God can sit in judgment of
sins, not be. I will be tolerant and I will be as inclusive as
possible and still not violate my belief, my faith my salvation,
and the Words of God. Thank you for the good wishes. Without
men of faith as you, we all would be worse off.
I hope you have a good day and a blessed day Blade.
#Post#: 28410--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: patrick jane Date: April 14, 2021, 9:59 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/123143.jpg?w=940[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/quick-to-listen/transgender-surgery-sports-bill-legislation-podcast.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+christianitytoday%2Fctmag+%28CT+Magazine%29
Why the Transgender Conversation Is Changing
New bans for surgeries and student sports aren't the most
dramatic changes in gender identity.
Last Friday, a bill that would ban transgender athletes from
competing in middle, high school, and college sports passed in
the West Virginia legislature. At least 20 different state
legislatures have introduced transgender athlete bans in 2021.
While South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem vetoed a proposed ban,
Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi have signed these changes
into law.
Arkansas’ governor, Asa Hutchinson, did, however, veto
legislation that would have banned gender confirming treatments
or sex reassignment surgery for transgender youth under 18. That
bill would have been the first in the country to ban this
practice. Meanwhile, last Monday, GOP legislators in North
Carolina introduced a bill that that would prevent doctors from
performing sex reassignment surgery for transgender people under
the age of 21.
This flurry of state bills—a month ago LGBT advocacy group Human
Rights Campaign had counted more than 80—has once again provoked
impassioned fighting, much of it centered around children. It’s
led to questions of fairness in youth sports, if adolescent
judgement and diagnosis should be trusted, and what role and
what say parents should have in how their children express their
gender.
Mark Yarhouse is a pyschology professor at Wheaton College and
the director of the Sexual and Gender Identity Institute. His
books include Understanding Gender Dysphoria and most recently,
Emerging Gender Identities. He joined global media manager
Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen on this week’s
episode of Quick to Listen.
What is Quick to Listen? Read more
Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts
Follow the podcast on Twitter
Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted Olsen
Follow our guest on Twitter: Mark Yarhouse
Music by Sweeps
Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder
The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su and Bunmi Ishola
Highlights from Quick to Listen #260
What is the same and what has changed in the conversation around
gender over the past five or six years?
Mark Yarhouse: The conversation around gender has become more
pronounced and centered into cultural discussions.
You see an increase in the number of people who identify as
transgender or what I refer to as emerging gender identities.
There's a splintering of gender categories into different
experiences, different language for describing people's
experiences.
Things have become more polarized as well. You saw that with the
reaction to legislation like the bathroom bill, and you see that
now with the law passed in Alabama. 20 or more states have
gender identity–change laws in place for minors to keep that
from happening. There’s an increase on both sides of a divisive
topic.
What led to this development?
Mark Yarhouse: When I wrote my first book on understanding
gender dysphoria, I was trying to introduce evangelical
Christians to the concept of transgender experiences. Gender
dysphoria is this experience that's distressing when a person's
gender identity doesn't align with their biological sex.
When I talk about emerging gender identities, it's beyond that
basic framework of transgender. Young people say that they’re
gender-expansive, they’re gender-creative, they’re bi-gender,
they’re pan-gender and the different identifiers go from there.
It helps us as Christians to be thoughtful in how we engage in a
culture that's shifted so dramatically and where language has
been shifting. You're interacting now with younger people for
whom these are taken-for-granted realities and the generation
that went before them had a limited scope of categories and
language. There’s a real high likelihood of our misunderstanding
and talking past one another.
Do the lessons about transgender issues from before map onto the
emerging gender identities?
Mark Yarhouse: Some of the lessons learned will map onto that.
It's challenging to know exactly how to, as Christians, enter
into this conversation because we have had norms around
sexuality and gender that we want to be able to articulate.
But sometimes when we articulate those norms, we can do it in
ways that seem to cast doubt on the experience of other people
around us, who don't use those same norms as anchor points that
we do. It ends up becoming more of a risk of speaking past each
other or being entrenched in not understanding.
You can both teach norms around sexuality and gender and
recognize that there are exceptions to those that are likely the
result of a fallen world and the challenges that people face in
that space. There are also clinical differences and issues from
a classic transgender presentation and some of the emerging
gender identities.
To seek common ground, is it helpful to talk about how we also
have dysphoria or don’t conform to cultural or biblical notions
of what it means to be male or female?
Mark Yarhouse: There are an upside and a downside to that
approach. Christians would hold that we have so much in common
as we bear the image of God and we should start there. People
are beloved by God. God wants a relationship with people.
There’s so much in that sense as a starting point for shared
human experience.
But if you overplay that, you look past how some people's
experience is so far on the margins that you might not fully
appreciate the challenges that they're facing, particularly when
it is dysphoria, a painful experience that you've never
experienced.
There are also people saying that this is willful disobedience
on your part. We're not speaking the same terms here about
people's experiences.
How do you define gender dysphoria? Is the term interchangeable
with the idea of transgenderism?
Mark Yarhouse: Gender dysphoria is the discomfort or distress
that's associated with the lack of concordance between someone's
biological sex, usually thought of in terms of chromosomes,
genitalia and gonads, and the person's gender identity, their
experience as a man or a woman or a different gender identity
than that.
When that's distressing to them, it's dysphoria versus euphoria,
a positive emotional state. It's a negative emotional state. I
don't think of that as synonymous with transgender but many
people who would identify as transgender would report gender
dysphoria. It can vary in severity from mild to severe, and it
can ebb and flow in severity in a person's life.
Historically, gender dysphoria was thought of as having an early
onset. A boy or a girl is aware of their gender between ages two
and four, developmentally. They're aware that they're a boy or a
girl, or they're going to express a different experience than
that.
What we've seen in the last six years has been a remarkable
increase in the number of cases that we would call late-onset.
That means at or after puberty, the person is reporting
dysphoria that they didn't appear to have much evidence of, if
at all, in childhood.
That's what's concerning to some mental health professionals and
others. There’s not been a satisfying explanation that accounts
for that increase.
Is it true that, before the last five or six years, people that
were saying “I’m trans” most likely started feeling those
feelings well before puberty?
Mark Yarhouse: Most of the cases had been what we would call
early onset. Parents would wonder if their child was going
through a phase. They would probably go to a specialty clinic
when that child turned six or seven, maybe when they were going
to preschool or kindergarten, when the comparison would be their
peer group, rather than at home with their family.
Historically, that would be the more typical presentation. It
was more often biological males rather than females, at about a
four- or five-to-one ratio that would be referred to these
specialty clinics. That was probably the result of having a
narrower box for what a boy can be like.
If they're outside of that expectation, then it raises more
flags for parents. Whereas girls can have a little more latitude
in how they present; and if they're gender atypical in some
ways, you have positive language for that. They could be
tomboyish and no one's going to be particularly concerned.
That probably accounted for that ratio, but now you're seeing
quite a flip. Now we're seeing not just the late-onset cases at
a higher rate, but also seeing it among biological females at a
higher rate than you do males. We don't understand what's going
on with that switch.
How do you distinguish between someone who expresses themselves
outside the cultural understanding of masculinity or femininity,
versus someone who feels uncomfortable being a particular
gender?
Mark Yarhouse: When you meet with somebody to make a diagnosis
of gender dysphoria, you rule out that they're within the range
of what a boy or girl, or a man or a woman, would be like. They
maybe have different characteristics, different presentations,
different ways different interests, and so forth that are gender
atypical. They don't fit into maybe stereotypes, but they're not
gender dysphoric.
So how do you make that distinction? Several things go into
that. You can have a conversation with an adult and they’re
telling you. It's harder when you're trying to make that
determination with a child who might not be able to pull all
that together. But there are certain criteria that you follow
around what they're able to say about their gender identity.
It's usually their response to primary and secondary sex
characteristics. It's the desire for the sex characteristics of
the other gender. These things aren't for a few weeks or a few
months; it's over time and it's significant. It's significant in
their body image and how they experience and see themselves.
It's distressing to them.
What advice would you give to adults who have recently learned
that a young person in their life is trans?
Mark Yarhouse: Christians typically have this skill set. We are
used to applying it to other groups of people whose individual
characteristics are different than our own. For example, we
don't seem to have difficulty relating to our agnostic
neighbors, even though their characteristics around their
religious identity are different than ours.
We have a sense of how to relate to that person who's different
in terms of racial or cultural background. When people's
characteristics vary from ours, we can relate to them, talk with
them, recognize God's love for them, value them as a person, to
encourage them to bring all of their experiences into the
relationship that we're forming with them as an acquaintance and
maybe a friend.
You use the same skill set here. It's doesn't have to be more
difficult than that.
I don't normally speak into the lives of adolescents around me
unless I have a relationship with them and I'm invited into that
space. It would run a significant risk of me overstepping the
nature of the relationship I have with them, and then likely
speaking past them. Then what they may know about me is that I'm
a Christian who’s now a witness to them. I have this top-down
approach where I'm telling them that they're at-risk or they're
doing something wrong.
I would probably take the position more with an adolescent than
I do as a neighbor, as a family friend, or something like that.
To listen more about what their experience has been like,
remember that they're navigating at their age.
Their generation has a lot more categories for language around
categories and linguistic constructs around gender and sexuality
than my generation did. They're probably deeply shaped by what's
been made available to them and they're interacting with those
categories and they're making sense to them, or they might not
make sense to me.
I might have a reaction to that, but it would be better to
understand how the language functions for an adolescent rather
than begin with the place that they're wrong or that they need
to be corrected. That kind of mutational strategy does not work
with adolescents period. It doesn’t work in this conversation
because our connection to their language has been so different
and they've been exposed to so many different categories.
How do you counsel people on the basic questions of name and
identity?
Mark Yarhouse: If a person is able to live in a way that
reflects their birth sex, it’s going to be less complicated.
There are so many layers of complexity. Some people are in this
place where they're considering a social transition or a partial
transition, and they're trying on different names and pronouns.
If the person's trying to do that because they've been suffering
from gender dysphoria and it's been distressing to them, and
they've used other strategies to manage that (like the clothing
they wear, the way they keep their hair, and these things have
taken the edge off that dysphoria and been helpful to them), but
it's sufficiently distressing that they think that using
pronouns that they would prefer might be helpful to them, then
I'd like to understand what's behind the request and how it's
functioning for them.
That's not an uncommon strategy that people use. They try to use
these strategies usually in a trial-and-error way and in a
stepwise fashion. They can always reverse and go back to their
original pronouns.
They can always do that; they're trying to figure this out. I
don't want to be overly reactive to that. I want to meet them
where they are. I want to have a sustained relationship with
them. I err on the side of hospitality towards somebody to be in
a relationship with them rather than do things on the front end
that would sever the tie that they might otherwise want to have
with me.
What advice do you have for parents as they try to understand
where their child is coming from?
Mark Yarhouse: When you have early onset, parents are not that
surprised when a child says to them, “I'm transgender,” or “I
experience my gender identity differently than most people do,”
or however they frame it. Parents knew something was going on.
They just didn't have language for it. But when you have
late-onset cases, it is blindsiding. Parents feel like their
world has been rocked and there's no reference point for what
their teenager is saying. There's little or no history to
understand it.
There has been some concern that there might be teens who have
other issues going on in their life and they're finding a sense
of identity and community in something that has such social
salience today. It's moved to the center of some of the cultural
discourse around sexuality and gender, where some time ago,
being gay had occupied that space.
The transgender conversation has moved into that space
culturally and maybe a generation ago, a young person might've
landed in a different area and explored different aspects of
themselves. But today this has the kind of salience that might
be appealing to some people where they might not have gender
dysphoria.
There may be other things going on and they're finding something
in this space. I want to be careful when I say that because I
don't think that's most of what I'm seeing in my clinic. Some
people have been trying to research that as a possible
phenomenon.
Is that something that is trending among adolescents and we
should be cautious about? I want parents to be wise and
discerning to check things out with a provider, someone who has
expertise in this area and to realize there could be multiple
things going on here and it would take discernment and time to
figure out what's going on.
Are there important ways that we should differentiate between
dysphoria and transgender issues, versus same-sex attraction
issues?
Mark Yarhouse: They are different experiences. When someone
describes themselves as gay, they're talking about their
attraction towards the same sex and their orientation towards
the same sex. When someone says that they're transgender,
they're talking about their experience of their gender identity
as a man or a woman or a different gender identity than that.
Gender identity doesn't have to do with who you're physically,
emotionally, or sexually attracted to. A lot of times when
people are wrestling with dysphoria, they're often being asked
about their sexual orientation. That's a confusing topic for
some people.
They're not sure what they could even say about that. They're
trying to figure out what's going on around gender. Sometimes
Christians are more preoccupied with sexual behavior. I don't
think that's where a lot of people are when they're figuring out
gender. That's a different thing for them. Distinguishing that
is helpful. S
Some Christians see that Scripture speaks more to the question
around sexual behavior than it does to gender identity. That
complicates this conversation more. It's not that Scripture
doesn't say anything about gender, but it doesn't certain
passages that stand out around sexual behavior. It's not quite
as clear if you're looking for direct scriptural passages.
What effect do you expect banning surgery for young people to
have?
Mark Yarhouse: There are several things that minors might
consider, like whether to block going through puberty. That's
right at the beginning of the development of puberty. Then young
people might consider using cross-sex hormones at some point,
maybe a year or two later. If they did the puberty-blocking
intervention, then that becomes a consideration. Some of the
legislation may be looking at that. There are surgical
procedures as well.
On both sides of this debate, people have young people's best
interests at heart. They're both trying to address vulnerable
young people that they're concerned about, but they're landing
diametrically in places to express their concern. Those who are
saying we shouldn't allow these types of procedures are saying
young people don’t have the capacity to make these kinds of
decisions, to understand the consequences of these decisions,
and what that could mean for them five or 10 years out.
Other people believe that young people are at great risk and
that these are the kinds of things that medical and psychiatric
providers think should be on the table and considered for a
young person. They can make that decision.
What are some of the consequences that people proposing these
bans are concerned about? To what extent are they valid or
exaggerated?
Mark Yarhouse: With the use of cross-sex hormones, this would be
a lifelong regimen that a young person would have to take to
have the clinical effects of using the other hormones of the
other sex. If you stop taking the hormone, you stop having that
clinical benefit.
We don't have the kind of long-term research on the effects of
an adolescent using cross-sex hormones over 30 years. The
greatest risk would be the risk for sterility.
Another topic that people are concerned about is that a young
person at 16 or 17 doesn’t understand what that would mean in 10
years. Do they understand the risks that they're taking there?
I'm not a fan of legislating around these complex clinical
issues on either side. Once you move towards legislation on
either side of these complex issues, ultimately, it ends up not
being nimble enough to respond to the needs of the next person
in front of you. I'd love for those needs to be met more by the
mental health profession and the people who are working with
them.
Those that regulate the mental health professions, that's where
typically complaints would be adjudicated. It would be through
the people who were licensing the providers to provide services
rather than through legislation that creates a statement that's
applied to everybody across the board. That doesn't end up being
as flexible on members as we would.
Have you seen any examples of school districts figuring out how
to have trans girls and women play in youth or collegiate sports
without resorting to laws?
Mark Yarhouse: We need more time to research how to measure
advantage and what that looks like. When you develop a policy
like the NCAA has tried to, looking at the length of time to be
on hormones, there's good intention to try to figure that out.
What gives someone a competitive advantage? How do you safeguard
that without excluding people from being able to compete when
this is what they have trained to do?
They're good at this, and you want to allow them to do this.
There have been controversies at every level of competition;
this is not going to be resolved quickly. There hasn't been
enough work done on clarifying what those standards would need
to be across the board. Maybe they need to be applied more on a
case-by-case basis than having one length of time that's applied
to everybody. I wonder if it's more complicated than it's been
made out to be.
How should we understand stories of people who have
transitioned, then transitioned back? What kind of attention
should they get?
Mark Yarhouse: Sometimes it's referred to as de-transitioning. I
haven't seen a very well-designed study that would show us how
common that is. In the Netherlands, they recently published a
report on 30 years of people using different interventions,
including surgical procedures.
The rate of regret continues to be low. I don't think that
you're seeing a dramatic rise in regret that would typically
correspond with de-transitioning. You could have regrets about
surgery and elect not to be transitioned. We need to study that
more to see how common that is, but based on the rates of regret
that were published more recently, I don't see a rise in that.
I am concerned that we could see a rise in that for the reasons
that I've talked about: atypical presentations, late onset, the
gender ratio flip towards more cases of female adolescents with
later onset. Where will they be in five or 10 years? We don't
know yet.
Most actually don't make medical transitions at this point, but
if they were to, would we see a rise in regret? I'd be curious.
How do you recommend we pray for people who are experiencing
gender dysphoria?
Mark Yarhouse: We pray for God to continue, if He's already been
speaking to them, to continue to speak to them; to speak to me,
to guide me, to help me know best how to see the person, to love
this person, that they would know that they are loved by God.
For me and them to have wisdom and discernment moving forward.
For wisdom and discernment on how I relate to them as someone
that God cares deeply about.
Those are the types of prayers that I pray. I also provide
ministry outside of my role as a psychologist. That's been
helpful to me in walking with people. I mentioned that most
people don't make a medical transition at this point. I think in
the last transgender survey, about 44% of something like 26,000
transgender persons had indicated that they were using hormone
treatment and only about 25% had used any type of gender
confirmation surgery.
That's been a helpful conversation to have in the back of my
mind.
#Post#: 28492--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: guest8 Date: April 19, 2021, 9:09 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=patrick jane link=topic=897.msg28410#msg28410
date=1618455582]
[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/123143.jpg?w=940[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/quick-to-listen/transgender-surgery-sports-bill-legislation-podcast.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+christianitytoday%2Fctmag+%28CT+Magazine%29
Why the Transgender Conversation Is Changing
New bans for surgeries and student sports aren't the most
dramatic changes in gender identity.
Last Friday, a bill that would ban transgender athletes from
competing in middle, high school, and college sports passed in
the West Virginia legislature. At least 20 different state
legislatures have introduced transgender athlete bans in 2021.
While South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem vetoed a proposed ban,
Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi have signed these changes
into law.
Arkansas’ governor, Asa Hutchinson, did, however, veto
legislation that would have banned gender confirming treatments
or sex reassignment surgery for transgender youth under 18. That
bill would have been the first in the country to ban this
practice. Meanwhile, last Monday, GOP legislators in North
Carolina introduced a bill that that would prevent doctors from
performing sex reassignment surgery for transgender people under
the age of 21.
This flurry of state bills—a month ago LGBT advocacy group Human
Rights Campaign had counted more than 80—has once again provoked
impassioned fighting, much of it centered around children. It’s
led to questions of fairness in youth sports, if adolescent
judgement and diagnosis should be trusted, and what role and
what say parents should have in how their children express their
gender.
Mark Yarhouse is a pyschology professor at Wheaton College and
the director of the Sexual and Gender Identity Institute. His
books include Understanding Gender Dysphoria and most recently,
Emerging Gender Identities. He joined global media manager
Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen on this week’s
episode of Quick to Listen.
What is Quick to Listen? Read more
Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts
Follow the podcast on Twitter
Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted Olsen
Follow our guest on Twitter: Mark Yarhouse
Music by Sweeps
Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder
The transcript is edited by Yvonne Su and Bunmi Ishola
Highlights from Quick to Listen #260
What is the same and what has changed in the conversation around
gender over the past five or six years?
Mark Yarhouse: The conversation around gender has become more
pronounced and centered into cultural discussions.
You see an increase in the number of people who identify as
transgender or what I refer to as emerging gender identities.
There's a splintering of gender categories into different
experiences, different language for describing people's
experiences.
Things have become more polarized as well. You saw that with the
reaction to legislation like the bathroom bill, and you see that
now with the law passed in Alabama. 20 or more states have
gender identity–change laws in place for minors to keep that
from happening. There’s an increase on both sides of a divisive
topic.
What led to this development?
Mark Yarhouse: When I wrote my first book on understanding
gender dysphoria, I was trying to introduce evangelical
Christians to the concept of transgender experiences. Gender
dysphoria is this experience that's distressing when a person's
gender identity doesn't align with their biological sex.
When I talk about emerging gender identities, it's beyond that
basic framework of transgender. Young people say that they’re
gender-expansive, they’re gender-creative, they’re bi-gender,
they’re pan-gender and the different identifiers go from there.
It helps us as Christians to be thoughtful in how we engage in a
culture that's shifted so dramatically and where language has
been shifting. You're interacting now with younger people for
whom these are taken-for-granted realities and the generation
that went before them had a limited scope of categories and
language. There’s a real high likelihood of our misunderstanding
and talking past one another.
Do the lessons about transgender issues from before map onto the
emerging gender identities?
Mark Yarhouse: Some of the lessons learned will map onto that.
It's challenging to know exactly how to, as Christians, enter
into this conversation because we have had norms around
sexuality and gender that we want to be able to articulate.
But sometimes when we articulate those norms, we can do it in
ways that seem to cast doubt on the experience of other people
around us, who don't use those same norms as anchor points that
we do. It ends up becoming more of a risk of speaking past each
other or being entrenched in not understanding.
You can both teach norms around sexuality and gender and
recognize that there are exceptions to those that are likely the
result of a fallen world and the challenges that people face in
that space. There are also clinical differences and issues from
a classic transgender presentation and some of the emerging
gender identities.
To seek common ground, is it helpful to talk about how we also
have dysphoria or don’t conform to cultural or biblical notions
of what it means to be male or female?
Mark Yarhouse: There are an upside and a downside to that
approach. Christians would hold that we have so much in common
as we bear the image of God and we should start there. People
are beloved by God. God wants a relationship with people.
There’s so much in that sense as a starting point for shared
human experience.
But if you overplay that, you look past how some people's
experience is so far on the margins that you might not fully
appreciate the challenges that they're facing, particularly when
it is dysphoria, a painful experience that you've never
experienced.
There are also people saying that this is willful disobedience
on your part. We're not speaking the same terms here about
people's experiences.
How do you define gender dysphoria? Is the term interchangeable
with the idea of transgenderism?
Mark Yarhouse: Gender dysphoria is the discomfort or distress
that's associated with the lack of concordance between someone's
biological sex, usually thought of in terms of chromosomes,
genitalia and gonads, and the person's gender identity, their
experience as a man or a woman or a different gender identity
than that.
When that's distressing to them, it's dysphoria versus euphoria,
a positive emotional state. It's a negative emotional state. I
don't think of that as synonymous with transgender but many
people who would identify as transgender would report gender
dysphoria. It can vary in severity from mild to severe, and it
can ebb and flow in severity in a person's life.
Historically, gender dysphoria was thought of as having an early
onset. A boy or a girl is aware of their gender between ages two
and four, developmentally. They're aware that they're a boy or a
girl, or they're going to express a different experience than
that.
What we've seen in the last six years has been a remarkable
increase in the number of cases that we would call late-onset.
That means at or after puberty, the person is reporting
dysphoria that they didn't appear to have much evidence of, if
at all, in childhood.
That's what's concerning to some mental health professionals and
others. There’s not been a satisfying explanation that accounts
for that increase.
Is it true that, before the last five or six years, people that
were saying “I’m trans” most likely started feeling those
feelings well before puberty?
Mark Yarhouse: Most of the cases had been what we would call
early onset. Parents would wonder if their child was going
through a phase. They would probably go to a specialty clinic
when that child turned six or seven, maybe when they were going
to preschool or kindergarten, when the comparison would be their
peer group, rather than at home with their family.
Historically, that would be the more typical presentation. It
was more often biological males rather than females, at about a
four- or five-to-one ratio that would be referred to these
specialty clinics. That was probably the result of having a
narrower box for what a boy can be like.
If they're outside of that expectation, then it raises more
flags for parents. Whereas girls can have a little more latitude
in how they present; and if they're gender atypical in some
ways, you have positive language for that. They could be
tomboyish and no one's going to be particularly concerned.
That probably accounted for that ratio, but now you're seeing
quite a flip. Now we're seeing not just the late-onset cases at
a higher rate, but also seeing it among biological females at a
higher rate than you do males. We don't understand what's going
on with that switch.
How do you distinguish between someone who expresses themselves
outside the cultural understanding of masculinity or femininity,
versus someone who feels uncomfortable being a particular
gender?
Mark Yarhouse: When you meet with somebody to make a diagnosis
of gender dysphoria, you rule out that they're within the range
of what a boy or girl, or a man or a woman, would be like. They
maybe have different characteristics, different presentations,
different ways different interests, and so forth that are gender
atypical. They don't fit into maybe stereotypes, but they're not
gender dysphoric.
So how do you make that distinction? Several things go into
that. You can have a conversation with an adult and they’re
telling you. It's harder when you're trying to make that
determination with a child who might not be able to pull all
that together. But there are certain criteria that you follow
around what they're able to say about their gender identity.
It's usually their response to primary and secondary sex
characteristics. It's the desire for the sex characteristics of
the other gender. These things aren't for a few weeks or a few
months; it's over time and it's significant. It's significant in
their body image and how they experience and see themselves.
It's distressing to them.
What advice would you give to adults who have recently learned
that a young person in their life is trans?
Mark Yarhouse: Christians typically have this skill set. We are
used to applying it to other groups of people whose individual
characteristics are different than our own. For example, we
don't seem to have difficulty relating to our agnostic
neighbors, even though their characteristics around their
religious identity are different than ours.
We have a sense of how to relate to that person who's different
in terms of racial or cultural background. When people's
characteristics vary from ours, we can relate to them, talk with
them, recognize God's love for them, value them as a person, to
encourage them to bring all of their experiences into the
relationship that we're forming with them as an acquaintance and
maybe a friend.
You use the same skill set here. It's doesn't have to be more
difficult than that.
I don't normally speak into the lives of adolescents around me
unless I have a relationship with them and I'm invited into that
space. It would run a significant risk of me overstepping the
nature of the relationship I have with them, and then likely
speaking past them. Then what they may know about me is that I'm
a Christian who’s now a witness to them. I have this top-down
approach where I'm telling them that they're at-risk or they're
doing something wrong.
I would probably take the position more with an adolescent than
I do as a neighbor, as a family friend, or something like that.
To listen more about what their experience has been like,
remember that they're navigating at their age.
Their generation has a lot more categories for language around
categories and linguistic constructs around gender and sexuality
than my generation did. They're probably deeply shaped by what's
been made available to them and they're interacting with those
categories and they're making sense to them, or they might not
make sense to me.
I might have a reaction to that, but it would be better to
understand how the language functions for an adolescent rather
than begin with the place that they're wrong or that they need
to be corrected. That kind of mutational strategy does not work
with adolescents period. It doesn’t work in this conversation
because our connection to their language has been so different
and they've been exposed to so many different categories.
How do you counsel people on the basic questions of name and
identity?
Mark Yarhouse: If a person is able to live in a way that
reflects their birth sex, it’s going to be less complicated.
There are so many layers of complexity. Some people are in this
place where they're considering a social transition or a partial
transition, and they're trying on different names and pronouns.
If the person's trying to do that because they've been suffering
from gender dysphoria and it's been distressing to them, and
they've used other strategies to manage that (like the clothing
they wear, the way they keep their hair, and these things have
taken the edge off that dysphoria and been helpful to them), but
it's sufficiently distressing that they think that using
pronouns that they would prefer might be helpful to them, then
I'd like to understand what's behind the request and how it's
functioning for them.
That's not an uncommon strategy that people use. They try to use
these strategies usually in a trial-and-error way and in a
stepwise fashion. They can always reverse and go back to their
original pronouns.
They can always do that; they're trying to figure this out. I
don't want to be overly reactive to that. I want to meet them
where they are. I want to have a sustained relationship with
them. I err on the side of hospitality towards somebody to be in
a relationship with them rather than do things on the front end
that would sever the tie that they might otherwise want to have
with me.
What advice do you have for parents as they try to understand
where their child is coming from?
Mark Yarhouse: When you have early onset, parents are not that
surprised when a child says to them, “I'm transgender,” or “I
experience my gender identity differently than most people do,”
or however they frame it. Parents knew something was going on.
They just didn't have language for it. But when you have
late-onset cases, it is blindsiding. Parents feel like their
world has been rocked and there's no reference point for what
their teenager is saying. There's little or no history to
understand it.
There has been some concern that there might be teens who have
other issues going on in their life and they're finding a sense
of identity and community in something that has such social
salience today. It's moved to the center of some of the cultural
discourse around sexuality and gender, where some time ago,
being gay had occupied that space.
The transgender conversation has moved into that space
culturally and maybe a generation ago, a young person might've
landed in a different area and explored different aspects of
themselves. But today this has the kind of salience that might
be appealing to some people where they might not have gender
dysphoria.
There may be other things going on and they're finding something
in this space. I want to be careful when I say that because I
don't think that's most of what I'm seeing in my clinic. Some
people have been trying to research that as a possible
phenomenon.
Is that something that is trending among adolescents and we
should be cautious about? I want parents to be wise and
discerning to check things out with a provider, someone who has
expertise in this area and to realize there could be multiple
things going on here and it would take discernment and time to
figure out what's going on.
Are there important ways that we should differentiate between
dysphoria and transgender issues, versus same-sex attraction
issues?
Mark Yarhouse: They are different experiences. When someone
describes themselves as gay, they're talking about their
attraction towards the same sex and their orientation towards
the same sex. When someone says that they're transgender,
they're talking about their experience of their gender identity
as a man or a woman or a different gender identity than that.
Gender identity doesn't have to do with who you're physically,
emotionally, or sexually attracted to. A lot of times when
people are wrestling with dysphoria, they're often being asked
about their sexual orientation. That's a confusing topic for
some people.
They're not sure what they could even say about that. They're
trying to figure out what's going on around gender. Sometimes
Christians are more preoccupied with sexual behavior. I don't
think that's where a lot of people are when they're figuring out
gender. That's a different thing for them. Distinguishing that
is helpful. S
Some Christians see that Scripture speaks more to the question
around sexual behavior than it does to gender identity. That
complicates this conversation more. It's not that Scripture
doesn't say anything about gender, but it doesn't certain
passages that stand out around sexual behavior. It's not quite
as clear if you're looking for direct scriptural passages.
What effect do you expect banning surgery for young people to
have?
Mark Yarhouse: There are several things that minors might
consider, like whether to block going through puberty. That's
right at the beginning of the development of puberty. Then young
people might consider using cross-sex hormones at some point,
maybe a year or two later. If they did the puberty-blocking
intervention, then that becomes a consideration. Some of the
legislation may be looking at that. There are surgical
procedures as well.
On both sides of this debate, people have young people's best
interests at heart. They're both trying to address vulnerable
young people that they're concerned about, but they're landing
diametrically in places to express their concern. Those who are
saying we shouldn't allow these types of procedures are saying
young people don’t have the capacity to make these kinds of
decisions, to understand the consequences of these decisions,
and what that could mean for them five or 10 years out.
Other people believe that young people are at great risk and
that these are the kinds of things that medical and psychiatric
providers think should be on the table and considered for a
young person. They can make that decision.
What are some of the consequences that people proposing these
bans are concerned about? To what extent are they valid or
exaggerated?
Mark Yarhouse: With the use of cross-sex hormones, this would be
a lifelong regimen that a young person would have to take to
have the clinical effects of using the other hormones of the
other sex. If you stop taking the hormone, you stop having that
clinical benefit.
We don't have the kind of long-term research on the effects of
an adolescent using cross-sex hormones over 30 years. The
greatest risk would be the risk for sterility.
Another topic that people are concerned about is that a young
person at 16 or 17 doesn’t understand what that would mean in 10
years. Do they understand the risks that they're taking there?
I'm not a fan of legislating around these complex clinical
issues on either side. Once you move towards legislation on
either side of these complex issues, ultimately, it ends up not
being nimble enough to respond to the needs of the next person
in front of you. I'd love for those needs to be met more by the
mental health profession and the people who are working with
them.
Those that regulate the mental health professions, that's where
typically complaints would be adjudicated. It would be through
the people who were licensing the providers to provide services
rather than through legislation that creates a statement that's
applied to everybody across the board. That doesn't end up being
as flexible on members as we would.
Have you seen any examples of school districts figuring out how
to have trans girls and women play in youth or collegiate sports
without resorting to laws?
Mark Yarhouse: We need more time to research how to measure
advantage and what that looks like. When you develop a policy
like the NCAA has tried to, looking at the length of time to be
on hormones, there's good intention to try to figure that out.
What gives someone a competitive advantage? How do you safeguard
that without excluding people from being able to compete when
this is what they have trained to do?
They're good at this, and you want to allow them to do this.
There have been controversies at every level of competition;
this is not going to be resolved quickly. There hasn't been
enough work done on clarifying what those standards would need
to be across the board. Maybe they need to be applied more on a
case-by-case basis than having one length of time that's applied
to everybody. I wonder if it's more complicated than it's been
made out to be.
How should we understand stories of people who have
transitioned, then transitioned back? What kind of attention
should they get?
Mark Yarhouse: Sometimes it's referred to as de-transitioning. I
haven't seen a very well-designed study that would show us how
common that is. In the Netherlands, they recently published a
report on 30 years of people using different interventions,
including surgical procedures.
The rate of regret continues to be low. I don't think that
you're seeing a dramatic rise in regret that would typically
correspond with de-transitioning. You could have regrets about
surgery and elect not to be transitioned. We need to study that
more to see how common that is, but based on the rates of regret
that were published more recently, I don't see a rise in that.
I am concerned that we could see a rise in that for the reasons
that I've talked about: atypical presentations, late onset, the
gender ratio flip towards more cases of female adolescents with
later onset. Where will they be in five or 10 years? We don't
know yet.
Most actually don't make medical transitions at this point, but
if they were to, would we see a rise in regret? I'd be curious.
How do you recommend we pray for people who are experiencing
gender dysphoria?
Mark Yarhouse: We pray for God to continue, if He's already been
speaking to them, to continue to speak to them; to speak to me,
to guide me, to help me know best how to see the person, to love
this person, that they would know that they are loved by God.
For me and them to have wisdom and discernment moving forward.
For wisdom and discernment on how I relate to them as someone
that God cares deeply about.
Those are the types of prayers that I pray. I also provide
ministry outside of my role as a psychologist. That's been
helpful to me in walking with people. I mentioned that most
people don't make a medical transition at this point. I think in
the last transgender survey, about 44% of something like 26,000
transgender persons had indicated that they were using hormone
treatment and only about 25% had used any type of gender
confirmation surgery.
That's been a helpful conversation to have in the back of my
mind.
[/quote]
God is the only one who can save these people. For those He has
already p0laced judgement on, there is no reprieve.
Blade
#Post#: 40136--------------------------------------------------
Re: Social Heart Rot: BY SHERMAN @THEOLOGYONLINE (TOL)
By: patrick jane Date: June 11, 2022, 6:51 pm
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy_CNc8Bqbg
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