The articles below are from a wide variety of sectors and publications, organized generally into three categories. They are presented in aggregate, not necessarily endorsed.

If you see an article that you think should be featured in future CBMW news roundups, you can send it to: [email protected] with the headline “Gender and Sexuality News Roundup.”

Ecclesial Trends on Gender and Sexuality

ELCA Hits Bottom, First Things (Robert Benne)

“This year, concluding her speech, she employed a blasphemous parody of the set of renunciations that parents or godparents are ex­pected to answer at a baptism: “Do you renounce the devil and all his empty promises?” One renunciation went: “Do you renounce the lie that Queerness is anything other than beauty?” And the youths dutifully chanted back: “I renounce them.” So the crowd was led to reject Christian teaching that homosexual orientation is “objectively disordered” and that acting upon it is sinful. Those who held classic Christian views became purveyors of the devil’s lies. That judgment fell upon those in the ELCA who, ­previously, were guaranteed a place in the church if their “bound conscience” held them to traditional Christian teaching. That promise, we see now, was bogus. It merely allowed local pastors and congregations of a traditional bent to persist in their retrograde beliefs, while all agencies and institutions of the church beyond the local level enforced the progressive verdicts of the 2009 assembly. No public dissenter could get a position or keep one at the higher level.”

Church of England should avoid only calling God ‘he’, Bishop says, The Telegraph (Olivia Rudgard)

The Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, bishop of Gloucester, the Church of England’s first female diocesan bishop, said: “I don’t want young girls or young boys to hear us constantly refer to God as he,” adding that it was important to be “mindful of our language”.

The Elephant in the Sacristy, Revisited, The Weekly Standard (Mary Eberstadt)

“We have to start calling things by their proper names, beginning with refusing to participate in the dominant ideology of secularism, which celebrates what the catechism calls sin and reduces the human person to evanescent erotic desires in defiance of Christian teaching.”

Christian College Drops Sex Standards in Law School Bid, Christianity Today (Morgan Lee)

“TWU’s quest to open a law school had stalled in court for years after several provincial law societies refused to accredit would-be graduates, citing the covenant’s prohibition of sex outside of traditional marriage. Canadian law schools require the approval of provincial law societies to operate.

“Last Thursday, TWU’s board of governors decided to drop the covenant altogether.”

Secular Trends on Gender and Sexuality

The strange truth about the pill, BBC (Zaria Gorvett)

“But right from the beginning, the pill has had a secret.

“In recent years, scientists have started to realise that the brains of women on the pill look fundamentally different. Compared to women who aren’t taking hormones, some regions of their brains seem to be more typically ‘male’.

“There are behavioural changes, too. Women on certain types of pill aren’t as good at coming up with words – something our gender are usually highly skilled at. On the other hand, they’re better at mentally rotating objects, as is often the case in men. Finally, women on a different type of pill are better at recognising faces – something women are usually good at.”

Chelsea Clinton: Reversing Abortion Rights Would Be ‘Un-Christian’, Huffington Post (Carol Kuruvilla)

“Speaking last week on a radio program about the Supreme Court’s landmark abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade, former first daughter Chelsea Clinton said it would be “un-Christian” to take away women’s access to safe, legal abortions.”

Why are so many teenage girls appearing in gender clinics?, The Economist

“Typically, adolescents first show symptoms of gender dysphoria, the clinical term for the distress caused by the feeling that one’s body does not match one’s gender, in childhood. But in the past decade clinics in Western countries have reported that a growing number of teenagers have started experiencing gender dysphoria during or after puberty. And whereas these young adults used to be predominantly male, now they are more likely to be female. In 2009, 41% of the adolescents referred to Britain’s Gender Identity Development Service were female; in 2017, 69% were.”

Brown statement on gender dysphoria study, Brown University

“In light of questions raised about research design and data collection related to Lisa Littman’s study on “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” Brown determined that removing the article from news distribution is the most responsible course of action.”

Hearing Set for Monday to Hear Kavanaugh and His Accuser, The New York Times (Sheryl Stollberg and Julie Davis)

“The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, under mounting pressure from senators of his own party, will call President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the woman who has accused him of sexual assault before the committee on Monday for extraordinary public hearings only weeks before the midterm elections.”

Patriarchy paradox: how equality reinforces stereotypes, The Times (Tom Whipple)

“The more gender equality in a country, the greater the difference in the way men and women think. It could be called the patriarchy paradox.”

Gov. Brown Signs Landmark Bill Ensuring Medical Care, Counseling, Surgery For Transgender Youth In Foster Care, CBS Los Angeles

“Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday signed into law a landmark bill that gives, as a right, access to medical services, including counseling, hormone therapy and surgery, to transgender youth in foster care.”

Gender and Sexuality Miscellany

How to Evangelize Your LGBT Neighbors, Christianity Today (Rosaria Butterfield)

“If we really believed that the blood of Christ is thicker than the blood of biology or that partaking of the Lord’s Supper together is the highest bond of intimacy people can have, we would see and deal with each other differently. We would stop regarding singles as people who need to be fixed or fixed up. We would understand that biblical marriage points to the marriage of Christ and the church. We would appreciate that while marriage is by God’s design, he did not design every person for biblical marriage. At the same time, all Christians are married to Christ, have union with Christ, and will be fulfilled only in the New Jerusalem.

“This is the question that we who wish to evangelize the LGBT community must answer: To what are we calling people? If we know what we are calling people from but do not have anything to call people to, we are only sharing half of the gospel.”

Are Authority and Submission Inherently Flawed?, Crossway (Joe Rigney)

“[CS Lewis] has a great line in Perelandra where he says, ‘Everything is righteousness and there is no equality’ meaning not that people are unequally valuable, but that we have different functions and places in God’s great story, in God’s Great Dance. Part of the Christian life is seeking to live into whatever place God has assigned to us.”

Six Steps to Defeating Sexual Sin, Desiring God

“Jesus tells his disciples to be willing to tear out their eyes and cut off their members to avoid where unconfronted lust leads: hell (Matthew 5:29). But nobody spontaneously tears out his eye. There should be nothing passive in us when the lion of lust comes out of the bushes. We don’t lie down and wait for a miracle. By God’s grace, we must act the miracle.”

Confessions of a Reluctant Complementarian, The Gospel Coalition (Rebecca McLaughlin)

“Ephesians 5:22 used to repulse me. Now it convicts me and calls me toward Jesus: the true husband who satisfies our needs, the one man who deserves our ultimate submission.”

Is Anyone Born Gay?, Desiring God (Christopher Yuan)

“Should we simply accept sexual orientation as the way things are, as the only terminology to describe enduring and unchosen same-sex attractions? Or should we step back and critically assess this idea in light of God’s truth about who we are? Honestly, we cannot begin to understand human sexuality until we first start with “theological anthropology,” meaning what God thinks, and reveals, about who we are.”

The soulmate myth, The Week (Bonnie Kristian)

“Perfect compatibility is neither possible nor necessary for a healthy and successful relationship, but the durable commitment marriage requires (and cohabitation lacks) most certainly is. And just as it is unreasonable to expect to know and like everything about your partner, so you cannot expect to fully know yourself as a precursor to marriage. Total self-realization is not a condition of commitment. Marriage does not require you to have everything figured out, merely that you are willing to do the figuring together.”