Commentary: “Transgender” Madness in the Schools

Jeff Johnston

Imagine your eighth-grade son telling you he had to change clothes in front of a girl in the locker room at school — in the name of “safe learning.” That’s exactly what happened to a 13-year-old boy in Northern California; the school let a girl use the boys’ locker room because she “identifies as a boy.”[1] 

The California Legislature created this brave new world when it passed “The Safe Place to Learn Act” – SB 777 – which went into effect in January 2008. Here’s how this law defines gender: 

"Gender" means sex, and includes a person's gender identity and gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth.[2] 

Did you catch that? Gender, under this law, includes a person’s “gender identity” and appearance. In other words, it’s not your biological sex that matters anymore; it’s how you choose to “identify” or “express yourself."

So, students and teachers in California are allowed to “change their gender” at will – moving beyond the world of two sexes into a “transgendered” or “multi-gendered” system. In the “transgendered” world, people can shift from male to female – or become any combination of the two. And in a “multi-gendered” world, an infinite number of genders is possible. 

The sponsors of the law erroneously assume a person’s biological sex is as changeable as clothing. For them, one could theoretically embrace a new gender each day of the week, because gender is now subjectively determined by how you think or express yourself, not by objective, physical reality. Pronouns like “he” or “she” could now be offensive and discriminatory in public schools, because they won't fit students who don’t "identify" as either male or female.

And this confusion isn’t just happening in California. In Colorado, lawmakers passed a law in May 2008, requiring businesses to accommodate men and women in all restrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms according to the “gender” with which they identify.[3] An Alaska school district passed a similar measure in March 2009.[4]  And beyond the United States, gay, lesbian, bisexual and “transgender” activists around the world echo The International Bill of Gender Rights in saying, “It is fundamental that individuals have the right to define, and to redefine as their lives unfold, their own gender identities, without regard to chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role.”[5] 

These developments in our public schools beg a fundamental question that few in the politically correct realm of homosexual and “transgender” activism seem willing to entertain: should efforts to encourage “gender change” be promoted to individuals – even children – and enshrined in public policy?

Here, it’s instructive to consider what one of the world’s leading experts on so-called Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) concluded. Several years ago, Dr. Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former head of the surgical gender reassignment unit at that esteemed institution, said that the “transgendered” patients he had come to know were no happier after sex-change surgery than before. 

“I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment," he said. "We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it."[6]

Because of this, Johns Hopkins University closed its SRS unit because they determined that, just as you wouldn’t perform liposuction on an anorexic patient, it was inappropriate to surgically and permanently alter a person’s anatomy in an attempt to treat what is essentially a mental disorder.

Significantly, Dr. McHugh is amazed at the number of medical professionals today that make such quick diagnoses to perform SRS rather than point out how erroneous the procedure could be and the trouble it could cause in a person’s life.

“It’s become an advertised and promoted idea and very few are pointing out to patients that there are other ways of looking at their problem and finding a way of life for them,” he said. [7]

Those who struggle with gender confusion and brokenness deserve compassion and healing — but not special legal status in the public arena, particularly in our schools. Through God’s grace and truth, and the support and help of the church, many have come through such confusion to embrace the biological sex of their birth. 

When Jesus was asked about marriage and sex, He pointed back to creation and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” [8] Christ affirmed the reality and goodness of the two sexes. Scripture joins biology and human experience in forcefully proclaiming God’s design for the sexes — male and female — not a “transgendered” or “multi-gendered” system.

If we really want to provide a safe place to learn in California — and across the nation — such confusion should not be taught to our children. 

Johnston is a research analyst at Focus on the Family.

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