One mission of CBMW is to help Christians think through secular and ecclesial trends on gender and sexuality. Through this work, we pore over a lot of different news reports and articles as we attempt to wade through the ceaseless flow of information on the web. In our weekly Gender and Sexuality News Roundups, we aim to distill some of the more pertinent information for you.
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 cbmwoffice@cbmw.org with the subject “News Roundup.”
Ecclesial Trends on Gender and Sexuality
Maryland banned a school from voucher program over anti-LGBT views. It says that violates religious freedom., The Baltimore Sun (Liz Bowie)
“A private Christian school that doesn’t accept same-sex marriage or transgender people says Maryland unfairly threw it out of a school voucher program because of its religious beliefs. Administrators of the multimillion-dollar scholarship program counter that the state can’t allow taxpayer money to go to any institution — religious or otherwise — that discriminates against students because of their sexual orientation.”
Nashville Presbytery of the PCA should support intersex community, The Tennessean (Lianne Simon)
“I’ve met hundreds of other people whose bodies aren’t completely male or female. Understand this: The Nashville Statement drives intersex people away from the Gospel. Historically, doctors have castrated us, surgically assigned us a sex, given us hormones, told us lies, kept secrets from us and caused us to live in shame, all in the name of their precious binary vision of sex. When someone says that we should embrace our biological sex, what we hear is that they approve of the things being done to us to coerce our bodies and our genders. One of the primary authors of the Nashville Statement has spoken out against childhood cosmetic genital surgeries — and we applaud that — but he reduces sex to the presence or absence of a Y chromosome. And the Nashville Statement insists that a person’s gender must follow their sex. “
Christian speaker pulled from Texas design conference over ‘safe space’ concerns, The Washington Times (Jessica Chasmer)
“The graphic design Circles Conference in Texas announced this week that it’s pulling a church leader from its list of speakers after people complained he might make others feel unsafe. David Roark, the communications and resources director for The Village Church, a megachurch based in Flower Mound, Texas, was uninvited from the three-day conference to take place in September after the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) refused to participate because of his inclusion. The group claimed that The Village Church “does not meet our standards of inclusion because of openly discriminatory policies and practices towards women and the LGBTQ+ community.””
Riverside Church congregants call for reinstatement of first female minister after her exit following a sex shop visit, The Washington Post (Hannah Natanson)
“The church’s contract negotiations with Butler over the past few months stalled in part over her desire for an approximately $100,000 compensation increase to match what her male predecessor made, according to the three people and one other person familiar with the proceedings. Another sticking point was Butler’s request that the church adopt a policy mandating stricter discipline of laypeople who commit misconduct such as sexual harassment, according to the four people who spoke to a Post reporter on the condition of anonymity because they were concerned about the repercussions of speaking publicly about the matter. The Sunday meeting was closed to the media. But revelations that Butler took two church employees and a congregant on a visit to a Minnesota sex shop in May ultimately derailed the contract negotiations, according to the four people.”
Dallas Church Offers Free Weddings to Couples Living Together, on One Condition, The New York Times (Tammy La Gorce)
“Every three years since 2010, Pastor Bryan Carter has issued a call to arms to his 8,500 parishioners at Concord, in South Dallas: Disavow living together and commit to marriage. To sweeten the deal, he throws in a free wedding, complete with white gown, tuxedo, wedding bands, bouquets and a post-wedding reception. Mr. Carter officiates for the couples who make it through the 11 weeks of premarital counseling, which is part of the challenge. The handful that bow out of marriage can receive one month’s rent (up to $750) toward a new place to live, so long as it doesn’t include a cohabiting partner.”
Cathedral fired a gay teacher. Brebeuf protected one. They are married to each other, lawyer says., The Indianapolis Star (Arika Herron)
“Joshua Payne-Elliott, the teacher fired from Cathedral High School because of his same-sex marriage, is suing the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. Until now, Payne-Elliott had not been identified publicly. His husband, Layton Payne-Elliott, is a teacher at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School. They married in 2017. The couple have been at the center of a fight between their schools and the Catholic Church, which directed the schools to fire both men. “
Secular Trends on Gender and Sexuality
A candidate for governor says a female journalist can’t shadow him – unless she brings a man along, The Washington Post (Deanna Paul)
“Before announcing his campaign to become Mississippi’s governor, state Rep. Robert Foster made a commitment to his wife, Heather. He’d follow the “Billy Graham rule” — which, in his words, means avoiding “any situation that may evoke suspicion or compromise of our marriage.” His personal policy, which is also used by Vice President Pence, presented a problem for Mississippi Today reporter Larrison Campbell. Citing “the optics,” Foster declined Campbell’s request for a 15-hour ride-along, unless she brought a male colleague. Campbell and her editor objected on the grounds that it was sexist, and it prevented her from completing a story assignment about the Republican contenders for governor.”
NYT Writer Says A ‘Just,’ ‘Rational’ Society Would Eliminate Pronouns ‘He’ And ‘She’, The Federalist (Nathanael Blake)
“This effort to control language is a deliberate erasure of the identities of those who have not embraced the latest trends in gender ideology, and who are happy to identify with our biological sex. It is a form of cultural and ideological imperialism directed against us, insofar as it linguistically erases our lived reality of biological sex as an essential, integral part of the human experience, and therefore of our identities.”
The High School Fighting to Save Women’s Sports, National Review (Alexandra DeSanctis)
“For Oakcrest School, the choice to leave the conference was made regretfully, and not on the basis of Catholic teaching about human sexuality, though upholding the school’s mission was at the heart of the decision. “The safety-and-fairness issue for us was the biggest,” Miriam Buono, an administrator at Oakcrest, tells National Review in a phone interview. “Our mission is deeply rooted in the natural law and the teaching of the Catholic Church, and certainly we really understand that girls are girls and boys are boys, and that’s a beautiful thing. But we weren’t going to impose our mission on other schools.” When Oakcrest made a case to the PVAC in opposition to the proposed policy change, it was based not on Catholic beliefs about progressive gender ideology but on concern for the safety and success of its students.”
Gender Dissenter Gets Fired, National Review (Madeleine Kearns)
“llan M. Josephson is a distinguished psychiatrist who, since 2003, has transformed the division of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychology at the University of Louisville from a struggling department to a nationally acclaimed program. In the fall of 2017 he appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation and shared his professional opinion on the medicalization of gender-confused youth. The university responded by demoting him and then effectively firing him. Now he is fighting back. Josephson v. Bendapudi has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky.”
A Short Review of Collins’ and Bilge’s Intersectionality, Neil Shenvi – Apologetics (Neil Shenvi)
“Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor. They are generally shaped by many factors in diverse and mutually influencing ways. When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other.”
Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force, American Psychological Association
“The Task Force on Consensual Non-Monogamy promotes awareness and inclusivity about consensual non-monogamy and diverse expressions of intimate relationships. These include but are not limited to: people who practice polyamory, open relationships, swinging, relationship anarchy and other types of ethical, non-monogamous relationships.”
Social health disparities may put LGBT individuals at a higher risk for dementia, Quartz (Katherine Ellen Foley)
“It appears that members of the LGBT community may be at a higher risk of showing early signs of dementia than the straight, cis-gendered population. Presented at the annual Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Los Angeles, a study found that LGBT people are more likely to report that they’ve noticed trouble with their memories or feeling confused in the past year. Although dementia requires a diagnosis from a doctor, in many cases cognitive decline is the first symptom.”
Gender and Sexuality Miscellany
An Epidemic of Disbelief, The Atlantic (Barbara Bradley Hagerty)
“From the moment a woman calls 911 (and it is almost always a woman; male victims rarely report sexual assaults), a rape allegation becomes, at every stage, more likely to slide into an investigatory crevice. Police may try to discourage the victim from filing a report. If she insists on pursuing a case, it may not be assigned to a detective. If her case is assigned to a detective, it will likely close with little investigation and no arrest. If an arrest is made, the prosecutor may decline to bring charges: no trial, no conviction, no punishment.”
The Mystery of Christian Marriage, CBMW (Nathan N. Hoff)
“Biblical marriage is a wonderful thing. The concept of one man and one woman for a lifetime is a goal to which all Christian spouses should aspire. Unfortunately, we live in an age where Christian marriages don’t look all that Christian. Too often, marriages in the church resemble cultural ideas rather than God’s ideal. The result is costlier than many of us realize. When Christian marriage breaks down, it loses something profound. It loses its mystery.”
Beware of a “Test the Fruit” Hermeneutic, Denny Burk (Denny Burk)
“When Matthew Vines’ book God and the Gay Christian came out in 2014, I could hardly have imagined how much of an impact it would have among evangelicals. Nevertheless, it has had an impact. Some of the high-profile evangelicals (e.g. Jen Hatmaker) who have come out affirming gay marriage have done so on the basis of arguments found in Vines’ book. Among the ideas from Vines’ book that I still see gaining purchase among evangelicals is a particular hermeneutical oddity that Vines draws from Jesus’ teaching about “trees” and “fruit” in Matthew 7:15-20.”
How Fathers Influence Their Daughters’ Romantic Relationships, Institute for Family Studies (D. Scott Sibley and Katie Granger)
“One of the most important findings from our study involved the importance of father-daughter communication about sex and romantic relationships. Fathers need to have the courage to ask their daughters about relationship concerns. The majority of our participants believed that a lasting benefit from these conversations would be an increase in closeness with their fathers. Uncertainty in romantic relationships, especially among emerging adult women, can stem from many things. The results of our investigation provide further evidence that fathers play an important role in what their daughters believe about dating and marriage.”
The Cracks in the Edifice of Transgender Totalitarianism, Public Discourse (Jane Robbins)
“The transgender castle that radicals have constructed by sheer force of will is built on shifting sand without supports of any kind. The wave that will sweep it away is gaining strength. May the time come soon when we will all say, with observers of past hysterias, “How could we have believed that?””
Episode 7: Singleness, same-sex attraction, and preaching with Sam Alberry, Southern Equip (Hershael York)
“Dr. York sits down with author, pastor, and speaker Sam Allberry to discuss singleness, same-sex attraction, and preaching.”
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