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The Church & Transgender Identity

Some Cautions, Some Possibilities
By David Cloutier & Luke Timothy Johnson
February 27, 2017
Theology
U.S. Catholicism
Domestic Affairs
Pope Francis
Sexuality
Social Justice

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David Cloutier

The phenomenon of transgender identity is difficult to discuss, and not least because each side
tends to present it as beyond discussion, an open-and-shut case. One side views accepting an
individual’s chosen identity as paramount and resistance not as simply erroneous, but downright
offensive. Moreover, there is a (correct) recognition of the real struggle and suffering
experienced by trans people. Yet the other side views the plain reality of male and female
biology as so obvious (and often as a matter of religious truth) that it can envision no possibility
of acceptance. What has increasingly resulted from this opposition are not reasoned arguments,
but acts of coercion—whether in the Obama administration’s well-publicized anti-discrimination
directives compelling schools and hospitals to accommodate “an individual’s internal sense of
gender,” or in such backlash responses as North Carolina’s infamous “bathroom bill.”

Such fractious approaches to questions of social change signal that important things are at
stake—and make it all the more important for us to have a careful and civil discussion. To this
end I would like to consider two questions. The first is seemingly simple: What does a claim to
transgender identity mean? The second is more complex: How does the debate over transgender
identity and rights impact the common good?
Comprehending the phenomenon of transgender identity turns out to be no easy task. An Atlantic
article, discussing the term “cisgender,” explains that “‘Cisgender’ refers to people who feel
there is a match between their assigned sex and the gender they feel themselves to be. You are
cisgender if your birth certificate says you’re male and you identify yourself as a man or if your
birth certificate says you’re female and you identify as a woman.” The stress in this construal is
on the feeling of identification with the gender you were born into—or, in the case of
transgender people, of incongruence with it. But how can we clarify what that feeling of
identification is in the first place?

The clinical diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” does not help much, since in the DSM-5 the focus
is not on the experience of gender incongruence itself, but rather the subsequent impairment of
normal functioning; the goal, quite understandably from a clinical perspective, is easing the
distress caused by the experience rather than delving into the experience itself. (Or, perhaps, the
range of experiences; according to the manual Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, “Transgender and
gender non-conforming people have many different ways of understanding their gender
identities.”)

One difficulty for science is that the phenomenon is not only complex but relatively rare, so good
data from large survey populations is not easy to find. Both science and anecdotal evidence tend
to recognize that sex/gender identification is not absolute. The ways we define “gender identity”
in the first place have to be part of the question. A strong gendering of certain activities may
increase a sense of incongruity in someone who is drawn to things associated with the opposite
gender; the symptoms in the DSM diagnosis for children include, for example, “strong
preference” for wearing clothing of the opposite sex, for toys and activities associated with the
opposite sex, and for playmates of the opposite sex. Of course, many persons who experience
some sort of affinity with the opposite gender express this affinity without having a persistent
desire or conviction that they are the “wrong” gender. Thus, a key challenge is trying to arrive at
a conceptual understanding of what is meant by this deeper desire.

And that’s really hard to come by. Noting the diversity of experiences, psychologist Mark
Yarhouse recounts the saying that “if you’ve met one transgender person, you’ve met one
transgender person.” The Atlantic article posits that gender is not a matter of two possibilities, of
“cis” versus “trans,” but rather simply of “possibility itself”—not a fixed transgender identity,
then, but a radical plasticity that is all about individual self-creation and autonomy. You might
recall that Facebook now offers fifty-six gender options. We seem to be rushing to embrace an
ethic that dismisses the need to posit a real self, in favor of exploring the possibilities as they
come.

YET WHAT HAPPENS when we forsake the appeal to some core trans identity in favor of
plasticity? Uncomfortable difficulties arise from the attempt to settle identity questions simply by
appeals to internal experiences. The year 2015 saw not only the emergence of Caitlyn Jenner, but
the controversy over Rachel Dolezal, a white NAACP chapter leader roundly condemned for
claiming to be “black” based on her inner sense of identity. And consider this passage from the
memoir of transgender economist Deirdre (formerly Donald) McCloskey. Of her own decision
McCloskey muses aloud, “Why, then, did Deirdre join the women’s tribe?” She goes on to say
that “the question does not make sense”:

Asking why a person changes gender is like asking why a person is a Midwesterner or thoughtful
or great-souled: She just is. An identity is both made and not made. It is a romantic idea, which is
strangely paired in the modern world with the antiromantic ideas of positivism in social science,
that we all have an internal identity, fixed and readymade, and the only task is to express it. Will
the real Deirdre please stand up? The “realness” is not right. We make ourselves, which is our
freedom as human beings.

The romantic view does have something in it. You make yourself Dutch or American, a nurse or
an accountant, a recluse or a social butterfly, piece by piece. But you have tendencies, which can
be traced back to childhood. Anyone who has watched a child grow is impressed by the thrust of
character. The dismal, fretful infant in arms will in eighty years be a dismal, fretful old lady. The
cheerful infant will always be an optimist. No wonder people devised a word for it, the soul.

McCloskey wants identity to be a matter of freedom—“we make ourselves”—yet also appeals to

the notion of the given temperament. The idea that “a cheerful infant will always be an optimist,”
however, is false and dangerous. Do we have temperaments? Yes. Are we determined by them?
We are not. And we surely do not want to tell the “dismal, fretful infant” that he or she is fated to
that misery forever. “That’s just who the kid is” is not what parents should hear from the
kindergarten teacher.

McCloskey’s account reveals a troubling conceptual instability in notions of the transgender

phenomenon. On the one hand there is the conviction that “who I really am” is opposed to my
existing biology. Yet ascertaining exactly what is meant by “who I really am” is complicated by
the fact that gender identity is inherently destabilized by the assertion of radical plasticity. The
claim that one is “really a woman” is difficult to make if there is no set identity of “woman” on
which to anchor the claim. Hence, “who I really am” ends up being about “possibility”—who I
really am is who I choose to be.

Once we arrive at this place, we are essentially saying identity is a matter of free expression of
an internal sense, and therefore what we are supposed to respect is the individual’s choice of the
expression of identity feelings, regardless of his or her embodiment. For a theologian, it is hard
to miss the echoes of a kind of gnostic dualism here. Both liberal and conservative Catholics
have spent decades trying to rehabilitate the goodness of embodiment from problematic
spiritualizations that understood our sexual bodies in particular as suspect sites of corruption
requiring rigid regimes of mastery. We are committed to an ultimately sacramental worldview
where the body and soul are a unity. From this perspective, an immaterial sense that one’s body
is the “wrong” one seems like a pretty big problem.

Then there is the issue of medical interventions on the body. Modern psychology catalogues a
range of distorted, alienated experiences of one’s own body—that is, in generic terms, a sense
that one’s body does not “belong to” one’s sense of self. Certainly—and this should always be
highlighted—the person experiencing this alienation is not helped by blame or shame. Yet the
therapeutic response is almost always to help a person become reconciled to the goodness of the
body as it exists, not to recommend an aggressive alteration of it. Even the secular realm, in other
words, implies a normative telos for therapy that favors affirming existing embodiment. So we
must ask why the response in this case should be so different.

What I suspect is that the subjective sense of one’s own gender and sexual identity has become
so important in our society that we are willing to sacrifice the body to it. In other words, the
sense of gender identity being invoked here is construed as sacred. And the particular sense of
the sacred has to do with a kind of radical self-determination. To stretch the metaphor, advocates
of alternative gender paradigms are making a kind of “religious freedom” argument for having
their sacred sense of identity accepted.

As with other sorts of religious-freedom arguments, the hard part comes from the fact that public
life in our society entails a common life with many who do not share one’s convictions. Hence,
the general assumptions about religious freedom are that its exercise should be given broad
scope, but that such exercise should not harm public order by impinging on widely accepted
public goods, and that any one set or sense of religious commitments should not be normatively
enforced by the state.

But here our public discourse has surely gone right off the rails, as the race to protect transgender
rights has quickly gained the power of the state (and its funding), simply through executive
action. Promulgated by those with a deep conviction that they are on the right side of history,
Obama-administration instructions on Title IX state the following:

when a student or the student’s parent or guardian, as appropriate, notifies the school
administration that the student will assert a gender identity that differs from previous
representations or records, the school will begin treating the student consistent with the student’s
gender identity. Under Title IX, there is no medical diagnosis or treatment requirement that
students must meet as a prerequisite to being treated consistent with their gender identity.

This is truly extraordinary. The conceptual difficulties discussed above are ignored—or rather,
hidden behind the language that casts such an assertion as simply a matter of differing “from
previous representations or records.” The reality of the body is entirely erased. Given this
erasure, such a policy certainly cannot logically be distinguished from one allowing a student to
claim a racial identity differing from “previous representations,” à la Rachel Dolezal.
Meanwhile, the problems of public order, especially for adolescents and children, are also
glossed over. The guiding assumption is that the public order must be revised to accommodate
the identity preference expressed by the transgender person, regardless of the effects on others.
Many real questions are ignored. Fears about predatory males taking advantage of women’s
locker rooms may be exaggerated, but they remain nonetheless real. Privacy rights of others
simply disappear.

BUT MY CONCERN about public order is different, running deeper than potential individual
incidents. It is hard for me to understand the kind of state protection of transgender rights put
forth in the Title IX instructions as anything other than a firmly individualist and libertarian
assault on a fragile ecology of sexual development, with state power deployed to champion a
particular conception of gender identity at the expense of the ecology—an ecology of sex and
gender congruence—assumed and desired by others. That a useful concept of human ecology
might be said to run parallel to the physical ecology of the natural world is a concept elaborated
by John Paul II, reiterated by Benedict, and affirmed by Francis. In Laudato si’, Francis writes:

Human ecology also implies another profound reality: the relationship between human life and
the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation of a more
dignified environment. Pope Benedict spoke of an “ecology of man,” based on the fact that “man
too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will.”

A nature that cannot be manipulated at will. I assume that we have as much interest in a sexual
ecology as we do in a natural ecology. Thus, while it is reasonable for the state to tolerate, if not
endorse, the wide exercise of individual autonomy, we also have a responsibility to ask questions
about any potential damage done to our understanding of the common good, which also has real
costs for individuals, especially children.

The prevailing response to this kind of assertion is twofold. Some will suggest that my concern is
no different from beliefs about “ecology” that once included segregation of the races, and that
expressed special horror at interracial marriage. I would dispute the analogy. The case against
miscegenation was notable for the shoddy pseudoscience mustered by those who sought to ban
interracial marriage on the grounds of a bogus racial taxonomy. By contrast, the widespread
stability of sex/gender congruence is far more robustly supported by scientific evidence than is
the claim of a fundamental transgender identity. To destabilize this default position of body/soul
congruence is to allow exceptional cases to reshape the entire ecology.

A second response is that there is no reason to think an individual’s transgender identity does any
harm to anyone else. This is a more difficult question. It certainly seems true, in a pluralist
society, that if Caitlyn Jenner wants to undergo this or that medical intervention, this should be
tolerated, since no obvious reason exists to outlaw it. What is being demanded, however, is not
tolerance, but affirmation—an affirmation, moreover, that is being asked of children and
adolescents for whom sexual development is a fragile and complex social process. Again, if we
grant the persuasiveness of the “gender possibility” argument in explaining the trans
phenomenon, then it seems necessary to acknowledge that affirming and accommodating the
transgender identity of one child will affect other children, in much the same way that gender
stereotypes about alpha males and compliant females affect them.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying that gender incongruity is a choice in any direct sense. But in an
ecology normed by “possibility” rather than by “congruence,” forces that shape and reshape
gender identity will be altered. We typically gloss over the common good when discussing
questions of sex and gender. But there are issues of the common good at stake here, and I am
sufficiently anti-libertarian to believe the transgender phenomenon raises very tricky questions—
ones that should not undermine respect for the dignity of every person, but that seem to indicate
the need for caution before we plunge ahead, radically altering social norms and practices. Given
the conceptual difficulties involved in discerning the gender implications of “who I really am,”
plus the longstanding preference in both Christianity and in the general society for a unified
body-soul anthropology, and the significant capacity for human folly and self-deception in these
matters, at the very least we would seem to need a yellow light, not a green one.

But we are not likely to proceed cautiously, given the power of sexual libertarianism in our
culture, the fascination with the sacred character of individual sexual and gender exploration, and
the broad disinclination to believe that society has any responsibility to limit individual
expression for the sake of the common good. Like market libertarianism, sexual libertarians
proceed as if the sexual ecology is only a matter of isolated individuals entering into contracts;
the only limits they recognize are those that prevent coercion. There is no larger common good,
merely individuals seeking to satisfy preferences. This deeper social illusion goes far beyond
gender identity; still, the questions raised above about endless sex and gender “possibility”
become acute at these boundaries, and our inability to think in terms of the common good more
obvious.

No doubt, amid this sexual libertarianism, everyone does their best to muddle along, and will
continue to do so—just as market libertarians want us to do with the sometimes violent swings in
an economy. But for either group, what must never be questioned is the sovereignty of the
individual. In an essay that only gets better and more prophetic with time, “Sex, Economy,
Freedom, and Community,” Wendell Berry rightly suggests that we cannot solve either our
sexual or our economic problems until we recognize that community—not the individual and not
the state—is the place where the complex nurturing of natural and cultural ecologies can be
sustained. In the space of community, we can in the long run tend both to our concerns about
those who are unjustly excluded because their voice sounds wrong or they have the wrong length
hair, and to a stable development of the mature—and yes, gendered—sexual ecology that will
undergird family and society in the long run.

All of which sounds well and good. Yet these are not days where “the long run” is a paramount
consideration.

Luke Timothy Johnson

Our society’s never-ending conflict over sexual identity and public policy has settled of late on
the rights of persons who are transgendered. Specifically, should such persons be allowed to use
public restrooms or school locker rooms according to their gender of choice rather than their
gender of birth, or should they be forced to do the opposite—or must public institutions such as
schools provide designated restrooms for them? Should public funds be used to enable gender-
changing surgeries? Is society obligated to formally recognize, approve, and provide appropriate
medical and other services to those claiming to have gender dysphoria? Should people who resist
the social engineering called for by the “transgender community”—and advanced by executive
order during the latter part of the Obama administration—be considered bigots? Or has
liberalism perhaps at long last run amok, revealing itself as plain silliness?

Veterans of the civil-rights struggle for racial equality, who then gladly worked to realize the
feminist dream of gender equality, then urged the acceptance of gays and lesbians and the
rejection of language and practices that marginalized them, can be forgiven if they suffer a bit of
battle fatigue when they are now asked to work for the rights of the transgendered. But we know
the pressure is on when Caitlyn Jenner not only appears on the cover of Vanity Fair, but is the
subject of a laudatory essay in ESPN, recipient of its Arthur Ashe Courage Award. It appears
that sides must be taken. Immediately.

A DIVERSE SOCIETY'S effort to retain some coherent shape while tending to the needs and
desires of each segment of its population provides almost as many insights into the cultural
condition of the United States as did the 2016 presidential campaign. One is that the pace of
social change, or at least the agitation for it, is drastically accelerated by social media and the
24/7 news cycle, and that for users of Facebook and Twitter, immediacy is all. Another is that
our understanding of civil rights continues to change, as the classic conception of rights as
entailing obligations morphs into one of rights as a form of entitlement. The right to vote derives
from the obligations of citizenship, the right of assembly entails the obligation to participate in
assemblies, and so on. But what is the basis for the “right” to be recognized by others according
to one’s chosen gender?

Closely connected to the role of the media and the proliferation of rights language is the
polarization of political rhetoric, not least at some of our nation’s most prestigious universities.
Mudslinging, to be sure, is an honored American tradition. But it is startling to hear, especially
among those ostensibly committed to inclusion, language so divisive: liberals are not simply
wrong, they are demonic; conservatives are not merely in error, they are evil. In a paradoxical
twist, agitators for the recognition of sexual difference in the name of diversity demonize any
appeal to norm or nature as oppressive; they seem unaware of the way in which “diversity”
easily becomes an equally hegemonic norm. The current craziness—there is really no better term
for it—of discourse about gender on many college campuses is illustrative: when everything
masculine is identified as “toxic” and in need of ideological correction and behavioral control, it
is not difficult to understand why gender dysphoria should afflict a young man’s life.

The roiling political energy of the current social moment—its ready surge into federal, state, and
local litigation—also reminds us how confused our notions of public and private have become, a
confusion aggravated by the omnipresence of streaming videos, instagrams, tweets and all the
other mechanisms of “social” media, and the direct discharge of such effluent into the “news”
media. Traditionally, one’s sexual profile was considered largely a private matter, of interest
only to oneself, one’s partner, and God; but no longer. Such changes also reflect the particular
set of assumptions about the body that emerges in a privileged and luxury-laden society: that the
social and physical world alike are answerable to each individual’s feelings concerning himself
or herself; that such imperatives are as urgent as those pertaining to crime or the economy; that
sexuality is not primarily about human relationships, but about “identity”; that the body is an
instrument of human volition and all but infinitely malleable, a problem to be solved rather than
(to borrow the Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel’s language) a mystery to be celebrated and
suffered. Such assumptions encourage the notion that sexual or gender dysphoria, some degree
of which is arguably a normal and even necessary component in psychosexual development, is a
problem that can and should be fixed, and now.
Kierkegaard called observations such as the ones I’m making here “preliminary expectorations,”
those throat clearings that prepare for the main topic. The real question I want to pursue is
whether Christian theology has anything to offer our present situation. My effort focuses on
gender, identity, and the body, and begins by addressing a theological tendency I regard as
profoundly unhelpful, precisely to the degree that it pays no attention to actual human
experience—and thus, in fact, fails to “respond” at all.

THE TOPIC OF gender has not been absent from recent theology. In fact, following Karl Barth’s
insistence that humans are constituted as male and female, and that it is impossible to think of a
humanity apart from these categories (Church Dogmatics), gender has played an important role
among Catholic theologians such as Hans von Balthasar (Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic
Theory), John Paul II (Theology of the Body), and Angelo Scola (The Nuptial Mystery). Gender
also appears as a fundamental category in the influential Protestant theologian Stanley Grenz
(see “Theological Foundations for Male-Female Relationships,” Journal of the Evangelical
Theological Society). Though these authors do not agree in every respect, they share a basic
perspective, one that makes their approach to gender problematic not only for addressing
questions like transsexuality, but for thinking theologically about sex at all.

First, this perspective takes Scripture as both the starting and end point for thinking about
gender—not all Scripture, which in fact has many and various ways of talking about real men
and women, but rather select passages in Genesis 1-2 and the letters of Paul (especially 1
Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5) that connect “male and female” to language about the image of
God. Second, it reads the ancient narratives and correspondence as though they yielded revealed
truth concerning human ontology; thus, the shift from “he made them male and female” to “they
are in the image of God precisely as male and female.” Third, it embraces essentialistic
conclusions concerning “male” and “female” among humans, with certain binary characteristics
and dispositions taken as standard for the respective genders, a stabilization that follows from
making gender a constitutive element of being created in the image of God. Fourth, and quite
shockingly, we find among such theologians the tendency to argue from analogy to something
like gender roles in the interrelationship of persons in the Trinity, corresponding roughly to the
complementary roles ascribed to human males and females. Such an argument can seem like
pure projection, from the happily gendered human family to a blessedly gendered trinitarian god.
But it too appears necessary once one accepts gender as an essential and constitutive element of
human personhood, and insists that human persons must reflect “the image of God.”

Such convictions tend naturally (even if not necessarily) to the ascription of traditional,
“complementary” roles for men and women in the social realm. Thus the almost frantic need
among some Christians to assert that marriage is between a “male and female,” with any other
possibility regarded as both unnatural and irreligious. These understandings support hostility
toward feminism and, often in the same breath (see Angelo Scola), toward homosexuality. It
scarcely needs stating that from this perspective, the prospect of a “transgendered community”
would be deeply disturbing, a rejection of creation and indeed of the image of God.
THE APPROACH TO human sexuality I just outlined is based neither on observation of human
behavior, nor on genuine philosophical reflection on the behavior of real people in conversation
with all the texts of Scripture, but rather on elevating selected texts of Scripture perceived as
possessing a distinct and absolute revelatory character. A better theological consideration of
human sexuality requires a more capacious interpretive framework. However important Scripture
is as a witness to God’s activity in the world, and however truly Scripture participates in divine
revelation, it is wrong to proceed as though revelation were contained in it alone. If theology has
to do with the Living God, then it must pay attention to the ways in which God continuously
manifests his power and presence in the world. Catholics have always regarded tradition as a
second source of witness to God’s work—in liturgy and Creed, to be sure, but above all also in
the living testimony of the saints. For where holiness speaks, the church must pay attention.

Theologians need to read Scripture within a complex conversation that includes the voices of
tradition alongside the witness offered in the contemporary world by human experience and
reason. Regarding subjects like sex and gender, theologians risk seeming deaf to the voice of the
living God if they do not listen carefully to what God might be up to in the sexual experience of
actual humans and in the study of sexuality and gender offered by philosophy, anthropology,
psychology, and—for goodness sake!—biology.

Theologians are required, then, to give as much attention to the specifics of human experience in
live human bodies as they do to the exegesis of ancient texts in dead languages—and not least
because the special arena of God’s self-disclosure is the human body. Close and disciplined
attention to the body is all the more necessary because bodily expression is always ambiguous,
always difficult to decipher. If we believe, however, that God lives and continues to touch us,
then we must learn something of the grammar and syntax of real bodies. By no means are the
symbols of Scripture to be ignored or dismissed: on the contrary, we would have no clue about
what to listen for in bodies were it not for the shaping influence of Scripture’s language; we
would not search for spirit in the body, or treasure each human body as in some fashion the
image of God, were we not instructed by Scripture. My point is rather that attention to human
reason and experience allows us to understand Scripture in new ways. Sometimes we are led to
see that Scripture’s language is true but not adequate; in such cases, attention to experience can
help us appreciate the transcendent value, but also the limitation, of Scripture for theology.

The terms “male” and “female” in Genesis 1:26, the passage that figures so prominently in
conservative interpretations of gender, offer a classic example. Like the terms “night” and “day”
in the same account, they identify in rough fashion what anyone can observe: males have
penises, females have vaginas; night is dark and day is light. But closer observation exposes the
descriptive inadequacy of “day” versus “night,” their binary opposition excluding the liminal and
intermediate stages of “dusk” and “dawn”; and we can identify still further gradations in light
and darkness that challenge the adequacy of the terms “night” and “day.” So also in the case of
the binary opposition of male and female: the observation of real humans reveals a variety of
ways in which “male” and “female” can be individually embodied and expressed.
ONE EXAMPLE OF rigid gender distinctions in our thinking that requires reconsideration is
presented by the phenomenon called intersex. This is not a case of sexual activity or orientation,
but a condition of birth. Though the numbers are debated, perhaps as many as 1 to 3 percent of
humans—at any rate, a not insignificant number—are born with ambiguous organic and/or
hormonal gender markers. In varying degrees, the most obvious being true hermaphroditism,
these newborns fall between the category of “male” and “female.” Such infants are otherwise
healthy, but their gender lacks clear definition. They are “inter-sex.”

Even though Jesus recognized the existence of “eunuchs who have been so from birth,” and
referred to others who become eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven (Matt 19:10–12), the moral
and theological implications of intersex have only recently begun to be addressed (see Margaret
Farley’s Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics or Megan DeFranza’s Sex
Difference in Christian Theology). Although in some societies sexually ambiguous individuals
have been recognized as such, and even given special roles, our society has medicalized the
condition and “fixed” it—sometimes with unfortunate consequences—through surgery, hormone
treatment, and socialization into one acceptable gender or the other. In the same way that those
who are single don’t fit neatly within the theological concept of the image of God held by those
who conceive of that image in terms of male and female in covenant, so those who are intersexed
would seem not to bear God’s image.

The “fact on the ground” of intersex, therefore, calls into question a theology that, on the basis of
Scripture alone, attaches the image of God to a clear and absolute distinction between male and
female in their complementary (covenantal) roles. For a theological approach that begins in
another place, namely with the question of what God is up to in the world of real bodies—of
actual men and women—the phenomenon of intersex becomes an occasion for asking what God
might be up to in bringing humans into the world in such fashion.

To begin to answer this through experience and reason, we can approach, in addition to Genesis
1-2 and the passages in which Paul reinscribes traditional gender roles (Rom 7:2-3; Col 3:18;
Eph 5:21-33; 1 Tim 5:14; Tit 2:4-5), those places in Paul where he states a more radical
understanding of gender, ethnicity, and social status. His declaration in Gal 3:28 that “there is no
longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all
of you are one in Christ Jesus” serves as the premise for his argument that the problem for
relations in the church is not the fact of being either Jew or Gentile, but rather the insistence on
making being a Jew an absolute good: “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision
counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal 5:6).
Ethnicity, in other words, becomes merely a relative good when viewed in light of the “new
creation” that is Christ (Gal 6:15).

Letting experience and reason guide our reading of Scripture leads us to the realization that
gender is properly neither a moral nor a religious category. Rather it is a biological and social
category, rooted partly in physical facts and partly in social construction. It is therefore a relative
rather than an absolute good. It is not constitutive of humans but is rather an accidental (if
extremely important) dimension of being human. Sexual behavior, in contrast, is both morally
and religiously significant. As I have argued elsewhere, the church’s concern for holiness
requires that expressions of eros be characterized by fidelity, fruitfulness, and chastity.
Regardless of what organs are brought into play, the church cannot say “yes” to sexual behavior
that is promiscuous, coercive, abusive, non-reciprocal, or violent, while on the other hand it must
listen receptively to sexual lives (again, regardless of what organs are involved) that are
faithfully covenanted, that nurture life, and that are chaste in manner.

BUT IF GENDER IS a relative rather than an absolute good, how should we see the effort to
cross from one gender to another? (Note, I am taking up only the first of what Rogers Brubaker
in Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities helpfully discerns as three distinct
meanings in “transgender”: the “trans of migration,” in which the goal is to move from one
gender to another; the “trans of between,” in which one seeks to live idiosyncratically within
both genders; and the “trans of beyond,” through which a form of human existence that is in
some sense “genderless” is the ideal.) I think it fair to state that the desire to change one’s gender
is not itself a moral issue. It is not in itself a disordered drive, or a form of rebellion against the
creator. It could be, to be sure, but it need not be; like the discovery of one’s sexual attraction to
persons of the same gender, it may in fact be a recognition of oneself that is deeply respectful of
the Creator. In some cases, indeed, the dysphoria arising from one’s gender identity may arise
from deeply rooted circumstances of birth such as those we recognize in intersex.

Nor is the quest to change genders a religious issue—at least, not in the way it seems to those
who connect “image of God” with a specific gender assignment. With respect to being rightly
related to God, gender is among the adiaphora (non-essential things). Regarding eating foods
offered to idols, Paul observes that “Food will not bring us close to God; we are no worse off if
we do not eat, and no better off if we do” (1 Cor 8:8). He states elsewhere that “The kingdom of
God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17).
The same principle applies to gender: it is irrelevant to our closeness to God. Of course, this also
means that if I make gender change an absolute good (I cannot be myself in this body) rather
than a relative one (what counts is serving God and others in any body), I may in fact reveal a
disordered desire, a form of idolatrous impulse. The moral or religious issue is not our gender, in
other words, but what we make of it.

Christian theologians must take seriously both the order of creation and the order of the
liberating new creation in Christ. For Paul, the Resurrection and exaltation of Jesus as “life-
giving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45) establishes us in “a new creation: everything old has passed away.
Paul himself seems unable to grasp the full implications of this new order; what is clear to him is
that all those markers that were formerly taken to be absolute are now rendered relative. In his
discussion of marriage and virginity (1 Cor 7:1-40, e.g.), he argues in the same way he did
concerning the eating of foods: neither marriage nor singleness by itself matters, neither being
male or female; what counts is service of the Lord.

In the middle of that argument, Paul shifts from the “male-female” binary to “Jew-Gentile” and
“slave-free,” again diminishing their importance in a world “whose present form is passing
away” (1 Cor 7:31). Circumcision, he says, means nothing, nor does uncircumcision; but
“obeying the commandments of God is everything” (1 Cor 7:19). So also with slavery: someone
in the condition of slavery is (in Christ) “a freed person belonging to the Lord,” just as someone
in the social condition of freedom is “a slave of Christ” (1 Cor 7:22). It is true that Paul’s specific
advice is for people to “remain in the condition in which you were called” (1 Cor 7:20). But once
gender, ethnicity, and social status are defined as adiaphora, the way is also open for persons to
change: not because becoming a Jew or a free person—or a male—would put one in an
advantageous position with God, but because it is possible to “keep the commandments of God”
in any of those conditions.

I HAVE SUGGESTED THAT a conversation structured by attention to a different selection of

texts from Scripture, stimulated by contemporary experience, and disciplined by scientific
inquiry can lead to a more benign view of transgendering. But openness to what God is telling us
through present-day experience must be accompanied by a firm commitment to the moral
principles that guide all expressions of human sexuality. Openness to gender change does not
equal openness to sexual vice. Christians need always to remind themselves that, in light of the
resurrection of Christ, their bodies are not first of all for their own disposal, but as Paul states,
are first of all “for the Lord” (1 Cor 6:13). The point of embodiedness, for Christians, is not to
find one’s own special identity or erotic fulfillment; our bodies are given to us for service to
others and the world in that distinctive Christian expression of love (agape) that seeks not the
good of the self but the good of the other.

Because the church is committed to such moral principles, and to an understanding of agape that
transcends eros, it should be the ideal “safe space” for discernment by individuals and groups
concerned about gender. The hope for Christians to find wisdom concerning the body is clearly
not to be found in the contentiousness and distortion of contemporary academic, political, and
media discourses; Christian discernment, it need hardly be stated, cannot proceed in the
overheated manner of our public disputes. Instead of social media, discernment requires face-to-
face conversation; rather than the glare of publicity, intimate and honest exchange. Rather than
compelling others through legal injunctions, discernment seeks to move together toward deeper
mutual insight and understanding; rather than petitioning for one’s own “rights,” it strives to
serve the needs of others. Rather than regard the body as a machine that is infinitely malleable,
such discernment appreciates the mystery of all embodiedness, and listens carefully for what the
Spirit desires to be heard in our own bodies and those of others.

In sum, the church ought to be the place where openness to change is a corollary of belief in the
new creation and its endless inventiveness, even as it remains the place where the goal of change
is greater than the discovery of the autonomous self. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Now the
Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with
unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the
Lord, the Spirit.”

Published in the March 10, 2017 issue:

View Contents
Tags
Theology
U.S. Catholicism
Domestic Affairs
Pope Francis
Sexuality
Social Justice

David Cloutier is associate professor of theology at the Catholic University of America and the
author of Walking God’s Earth: The Environment and Catholic Faith (Liturgical Press). Luke
Timothy Johnson is emeritus Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at
Emory University and a frequent contributor to Commonweal. His latest book is The Revelatory
Body: Theology as Inductive Art (Eerdmans).

Please email comments to editors@commonwealmagazine.org and join the conversation on our

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