"Gender: A Non-Issue"?

This phrase was not spoken by the PCUSA Presbytery in San Francisco as it agreed to ordain a practicing lesbian (January, 08); nor by the multitude of contemporary Christians who believe that egalitarianism (same roles for men and women in the church and home) is an essential element of Christianity. It was made in November, 2007 by Kristina Wertz, legal director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco, as she praised the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for issuing municipal identification cards showing name, birth date and photo-but no gender. Wertz understands the radical nature of this decision: "The card really makes gender a non-issue."

This event is a decisive moment in our history for two reasons:
1. The Redefinition of Sexuality: American civil law has legally granted what a marginal movement dreamed about a generation ago: the total redefinition of human sexuality. "Make love, not war," sounded harmless in the midst of the Viet Nam war debacle, but the love proposed by the hippies was clearly expressed in the words of a now mature, millionaire/best selling author and five-time husband Neal Donald Walsch: "I envision a world where we can make love to anyone, any way we wish to, at anytime, anywhere." Walsch does not go into details. Virginia Mollenkott, once Bible Presbyterian professor of literature, does. Her 2001 programmatic Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach, argues for a society where there are virtually no sexual prohibitions. The desirable "omnigender" society "worth fighting for," includes at least sixteen sexual identity options.
In 2001 Mollenkott called for the elimination of oppressive gender-specific pronouns like "he" and "she." In 2003, Smith College, an all-female school in Massachusetts, heard the call and removed all feminine pronouns from the school constitution, replacing them with gender-neutral ones, to avoid offending women students who considered themselves male. Recently Wesleyan University in Connecticut offered a "Gender Blind" dormitory floor for students unsure of their gender.
Mollenkott's outlandish call in 2001 for the elimination of the "M" and "F" boxes on government forms (including marriage licenses) has elbowed its way into public policy, thanks to the authorities in San Francisco and New Haven.
2. The Rejection of Creational Sexuality:
Mollenkott predicted in 2001: "In all probability, official church policies will be the rear guard on gender, being dragged along towards gender justice kicking and screaming when the secular society will no longer tolerate anything else." What does Mollenkott know that the average person fails to see?
The apostle Paul indicates in Romans 1:25-28 that a change in spirituality (the pagan rejection of God the Creator) produces the inevitable consequence of perverted sexuality. The process also works the other way. The polysexualist Mollenkott began as an evangelical Christian and has become a polytheist, finding "truth" in all the religions. Her sexual perversion has led her far from the God of the Bible.
Many of us have believed that sexuality is of merely secondary importance. We now find ourselves, as a culture, and sometimes as a church, slowly asphyxiated by this new ideology of polytheism, now clearly associated with polysexuality and disguised as an issue of "fairness," and "civil rights."
It is time we believers reaffirm with conviction and theological clarity the truth of Scripture that gender is not a social or psychological construct, but a sovereign creative act of God: God created man in his own image…male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27). On this truth depends the very dignity of human life. This truth is not just for Christians. Say among the nations, says the Psalmist (Ps. 96:10) "The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity."
In lock-step with the Transgender Law Center of San Francisco, liberal Presbyterians of the same city affirm that sexuality is "not an essential of church belief." Of course, denying gender takes us down the road to Gnosticism. The God of the Bible, whom the Gnostics cast into Hell, is clearly revealed as both Redeemer and Creator. We "come to Jesus" as model, Savior and Maker. Failing to see our human heterosexuality as a part of our divinely-created "image" thus carries with it the dreadful implication that we also close our minds to the Creator's saving act for us in the Gospel, and seek salvation in the gods of our own making.
If we shrug our shoulders at the undermining of normative heterosexuality, we deprive the world of God's chosen picture of redemption. I beg you to stand up wherever you are to defend with passion our sexual identities as male and female, and to let your own Christian marriages shine with the beauty of Christ, our Bridegroom.