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

A year after the ‘Nashville Statement,’ we still don’t agree, The Tennessean (Cookeville Friends Meeting)

“The Nashville Statement on human sexuality, generated by a coalition of Evangelical Christians on Aug. 29, 2017, may come from a place of love, but it is a love without compassion, understanding or acceptance of differences. It does not represent the hard love that Martin Luther King, Jr. and other great moral leaders have taught us, which can transform lives.”

Pope Francis: Letter to the People of God, Vatican News (Pope Francis)

“Pope Francis has responded to new reports of clerical sexual abuse and the ecclesial cover-up of abuse. In an impassioned letter addressed to the whole People of God, he calls on the Church to be close to victims in solidarity, and to join in acts of prayer and fasting in penance for such atrocities’.”

Pope Francis at Mass: Bishops must pray to overcome ‘Great Accuser’, Vatican News

At Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Tuesday, Pope Francis invites bishops to overcome the “Great Accuser”, who seeks to create scandal, through prayer, humility, and nearness to God’s people.”

Pope Francis, the Accusations and the Back Story, The New York Times (Richard Pérez-Peña)

“Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who led the church for 35 years, not only slowed the pace of change after the Second Vatican Council, but also enforced strict discipline among bishops and theologians in seminaries. Francis, on the other hand, upending conservatives’ expectation, has repeatedly invited dissent — and they have obliged him.”

The Culture War That Is Tearing the Catholic Church Apart, Slate (Isaac Chotiner)

“Not only did Viganò’s letter arrive in the midst of an already sensitive trip the pope was making to Ireland—which has seen its share of sexual abuse scandals—but it also represented another shot in the long war between Pope Francis and more conservative elements in the church, including Viganò himself.”

From a Moral – Historical Perspective, This Crisis is Worse Than You Realize, National Catholic Register (Benjamin Wiker)

“[It’s] a rather horrible irony, isn’t it? The very men most authoritatively charged with the evangelization of all the nations are full-steam ahead bringing about the devangelization of the nations. In doing so, these priests, bishops, and cardinals at the very heart of the Catholic Church are acting as willing agents of repaganization, undoing 2,000 years of Church History.”

Episcopal Church Expands Gay Marriage to All Dioceses Where Bishops Object, Christian Post (Samuel Smith)

“At its triennial convention in Austin, Texas, the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops and House of Deputies voted to approve resolution B012, allowing gay and lesbian couples to be married by clergy in eight dioceses that had previously not allowed marriage rites for same-sex couples.”

Secular Trends on Gender and Sexuality

Why the surge in gender dysphoria among teenage girls?, The Globe and Mail (Margaret Wente)

“The obvious parallel to ROGD, as Dr. Littman points out, is anorexia – an eating disorder that often affects high-achieving, upper-middle-class teenage girls, spreads via the internet, distorts their body images and leads them to self-harm. So it’s no wonder that trans activists would be furious at the comparison. To them, transition isn’t the problem, it’s the answer. They charge that ROGD doesn’t exist, and that the research paper has serious problems with its methodology. (The paper, which doesn’t claim to be definitive, can best be described as a preliminary survey.) Under intense pressure, the school and the scientific journal promptly responded by cutting Dr. Littman off at the knees. PLOS One, the journal that peer-reviewed and published the study, now says it will review it – a step that is virtually unheard of. Brown University withdrew the press release promoting the paper from its website. The dean of the school of public health issued an open statement citing concerns that the study’s conclusions “could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community.

“Translation: If this research is politically inconvenient then we won’t support it.”

Baker claims religious persecution again — this time after denying cake for transgender woman, The Washington Post (Amy B Wang)

“In June 2017, Colorado lawyer Autumn Scardina called Masterpiece Cakeshop to request a custom cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside. The occasion, Scardina told the bakery’s employees, was to celebrate her birthday, as well as the seventh anniversary of the day she had come out as transgender. Masterpiece Cakeshop ultimately refused Scardina’s order on religious grounds.”

Critics find fodder in NC candidate’s sermons on women. He calls it a distraction., The Charlotte Observer (Jim Morrill and Brian Murphy)

“As a Southern Baptist minister for over three decades, Mark Harris has delivered thousands of sermons, spoken at countless Christian rallies and helped lead a statewide campaign in defense of traditional marriage. Now, as a candidate for Congress, he’s under fire for past comments, particularly about women and gay people.”

House candidate stands firm amid sermon scrutiny, Baptist Press (David Roach)

“The sermons of a North Carolina pastor turned congressional candidate have become fodder for political attacks and reports in national media outlets — especially his preaching on the family and gender roles.” Social justice statement spurs ‘productive conversation’ David Roach, Baptist Press Amid ongoing discussion of social justice in the Southern Baptist Convention, more than 5,500 people — many of them Southern Baptists — have signed a statement claiming “lectures on social issues” in the church and “activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture” “tend to become distractions that inevitably lead to departures from the gospel.”

Gender and Sexuality Miscellany

Complementarianism: Separate but equal by another name, Baptist Standard (Paul Kenley)

“It is time for us to ensure gender discrimination in the church is not given cover by co-opting a valid view of relationships and twisting it into something it is not. It is time the oppression of women is exposed for what it really is. It is time to recognize women are just as validly called of God to any place of service as are men. And it is time for the church to repent of any way it has either overtly or tacitly validated gender abuse among us.”

Masculine Dads Raise Confident Daughters, The Wall Street Journal (Abigail Schreir)

“When a man tries to mistreat a woman—I’m not talking about violence, but the instinct to convey to her that she isn’t worth very much—he is unlikely to get very far with a woman whose father has made her feel that she’s worth a whole lot.”

Book Review: On the Meaning of Sex, by J. Budziszewksi, 9Marks (Bobby Jamieson)

“How can we escape such blindness and see what sex really means? One necessary and increasingly urgent means is staring again at reality until we can make sense of what we see. That, in essence, is what J. Budziszewksi does in On the Meaning of Sex.

Memo to Chelsea Clinton: Freedom Does Not Require Women To Become Like Men, Public Discourse Ashleen Menchaca-Bagnulo)

“Aside from the obvious problem of justifying the cost of human life in terms of GDP, Clinton’s remarks reflect a subtler difficulty. Unwittingly, Clinton, like many traditionalists, concedes that women’s fertility is a defect that restrains them from entering the public realm. If Clinton is right, as a woman, I must be able to control my fertility in order to participate in the workforce and in the political sphere. This is a sacrifice that men are never asked to make, and that social and economic structures never demand of them. By solidifying the tie between public freedom, economic production, and the male experience of reproduction, she makes women dependent again—dependent on the normativity of male experience for social and political freedom.”

The FAQs: What Parents Should Know About Peer Contagion, The Gospel Coalition (Joe Carter)

“The term peer contagion describes a process of mutual influence between a child or adolescent and their peers that includes behaviors and emotions that potentially undermine one’s own development or cause harm to others. Examples of peer contagion include aggression, bullying, depression, disordered eating, drug use, bisexuality, suicide, tobacco use, and transgenderism.”

Porn and the Pastor: The Life and Death Consequences of Addiction in Ministry, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (C. Jeffrey Robinson and Garrett Kell) ***free download***

“In this little volume, we seek to attack porn and the pastoral ministry from a number of practical angles: How do we restore a pastor who has succumbed to porn’s deadly grip? How do we minister to a man in the middle of porn addiction? Is he still fit for ministry? If so, when should he return? Download this free book and you’ll read the powerful story of a pastor who was addicted to pornography, but who was, by God’s grace, able to overcome it and enjoy a fruitful ministry. We examine other issues such as how porn addiction affects a pastor’s wife and family, and how a God-called man can guard his heart and mind against this loathsome intruder.”