Trans advocates contradict each other.
When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery for minors (United States v. Skrmetti, 18 June 2025),¹ the decision was widely reported as a clash between conservative lawmakers and transgender advocates. Less attention fell on the division it exposed within pro-transition rhetoric. Within a single afternoon, two sharply different protest statements arrived in my inbox. One lamented that the court had “erased trans kids,” because some children are girls trapped in boys’ bodies and therefore need swift medical intervention. A second statement expressed concern that the ruling reinforced what it called “colonial fictions,” suggesting that rigid notions of male and female can be limiting and deserve re-examination.
Both emails condemned the court, yet they could hardly have disagreed more about why it was wrong. The tension is not confined to press releases; it surfaces every week in parish life. Church leaders splice phrases from each side into welcome statements. Youth ministers sift through TikTok clips that swing from “wrong body” language to anti-binary slogans. Trans Christians sometimes feel pulled in both directions. Until clergy and lay leaders can name the contradiction, pastoral conversations may continue to stall.
Two Worldviews Pull in Opposite Directions
Secular worldviews on gender identity questions are diverse but can be distilled into two seemingly contradictory camps.
The first binary-affirming narrative still dominates medical conferences and mainstream media. Many affirm the existence of a gender binary but merely believe that their body does not match the gender of their mind, soul, or spirit. Advocates such as Caitlyn Jenner want to preserve the distinction between men and women while allowing people to conform their bodies to the gender they perceive (again) in their mind, soul, or spirit. Surgeons, endocrinologists, and legislators are urged to realign the body with this unseen identity. Notice here the emphasis on the binary.
This response to gender incongruence, however, deepens gender stereotypes and increases distress for those who do not feel like transition is the right step for them.
For others, the issue is the gender binary. A second and increasingly influential deconstructionist narrative begins by rejecting this binary. Advocates for this perspective, often transgender people, want to deconstruct any male/female or man/woman distinction, seeing them as arbitrary labels that ignore a wide range of genders and biological sexes along a spectrum. Surgery becomes optional or even suspect, because altering a body to match a binary is considered submission to an oppressive fiction.
The collision between these stories is not a Christian caricature; it is documented in transgender scholarship. As the editors of Understanding Transgender Identities: Four Views explain, “an increasingly common area of criticism leveled against queer theory is that it frequently disregards the lived experiences of the very people it appeals to in its theoretical arguments.”2 They note that many trans people describe their identity as “innate and unchanging,” language that “depends on a fixed, essentialist identity and the male/female sex binary,” which in turn “runs afoul of the central convictions of queer theory.” This explains why many trans activists who embrace queer theory have often expressed attitudes toward medical transition ranging from ambivalence to outright disdain.
Ultimately, the “solutions to the problem” that each perspective advocates for are contradictory and compete against each other. One seeks to maintain the gender/sex binary while the other seeks to deconstruct it. This complicates a Christian’s response to secular worldviews regarding gender incongruence because secular progressives offer multiple, opposing explanations. A teenager scrolling social media may hear that authentic transition requires surgery, then seconds later hears that male and female are imaginary. Parents, mentors, and pastors are left asking which premise they must address first.
Adaptations that Multiply the Confusion
Some progressive Christians embrace secular philosophies toward gender incongruence. Some simply claim that the Bible is not binding or authoritative for modern Christians, so believers may follow whatever gender ethic seems most fair and true. Other progressive Christians argue that the mention and embrace of eunuchs in the New Testament signals that genital alteration has been made holy by Jesus, in addition to claims that there will be no gender or biological sex in heaven/at the resurrection; therefore, whatever feels most authentic should be accommodated.
These moves import rather than resolve the secular conflict. Blessing surgery because the binary is sacred, on the one hand, while blessing the abolition of the binary, on the other hand, yields pastoral incoherence. Parishioners sense the contradiction even when theologians do not admit it.
A Christian Reply
Christians can respond pastorally by first recognizing that cultural gender stereotypes are often arbitrary and deepen the pain trans people experience. Then we can humbly reflect on a gender ethic informed by how Christians have consistently understood the Scriptures: that God intended each of us to be either male-bodied men or female-bodied women (Gen. 1-3). We also recognize that the Bible affirms biological sex and the gender binary (1 Cor. 11:2–16).
Yet because we live in a fallen world, all of us experience some level of brokenness in our biological sex or gender. For some, this brokenness manifests as a painful incongruence between the biological sex of their body and a perceived inner sense of being a man or a woman (an experience sometimes referred to as gender incongruence or being trans).
Discipleship refuses both stereotype and erasure. Instead of reinforcing gender stereotypes or eliminating gender and sex altogether, we should resist the urge to overprescribe cultural gender. It would be better to affirm God’s command to resist the sinful temptation to remake themselves in their desired image using medical transition. Yet God does not abandon trans people in this confusion. The invitation to fullness of life, however challenging, is found in Christian community..
But the church has work to do. Brothers and sisters in Christ must consistently emphasize a core Christian conviction: every person is created in the image of God. Even if people’s experience of gender incongruence is the result of the Fall, even if they steward that incongruence imperfectly, they still reflect God’s image in unique, sacred ways. Their lives hold profound dignity not because of what they do but because of who made them. Recognizing this image-bearing is not a compromise of orthodoxy; it is the foundation of Christian ethics. Before we call people to obedience, we must first honor their inherent worth as image-bearers.
Spotting the Clash Helps
Understanding the two narratives is not an abstract exercise; it equips leaders to see hidden assumptions the moment they surface and to respond with calm clarity.
Consider a confirmation class. Early in the week, a young person may say, “I am a boy in a girl’s body,” language that belongs to the binary-but-body-modification story. By the end of the week the same student might announce on social media that “gender is a social construct,” echoing the no-binary account. A mentor who recognizes both scripts can gently ask which claim the student believes right now, why it feels persuasive, and how Scripture might speak to each premise. What felt like whiplash becomes a focused conversation.
The same awareness steadies pastoral care with adults. A trans parishioner could describe real relief after starting testosterone, convinced at first that medical alignment is essential. Months later the same person may wonder whether further surgery would reinforce stereotypes that queer theory rejects. Because the pastor already knows the tug-of-war between the two secular stories, the meeting does not pivot to panic or quick fixes. Instead, the pastor can name the competing ideas, listen to the person’s experience, and explore how Christian hope addresses both relief and new misgivings.
Even administrative work benefits. Church leaders eager to craft a welcome statement sometimes weave together phrases that affirm “true gender identity” while also celebrating the abolition of male and female. Showing how those sentences rest on incompatible premises prevents unintentional contradiction and helps the parish speak with both hospitality and coherence.
When leaders keep naming the two stories, listening first and answering with Scripture, ordinary meetings begin to change the culture of a whole church. What once felt like whiplash becomes steady, hopeful progress.
Signs of Hope
Small shifts rather than dramatic turns often mark genuine progress. A pastor meets twice with worried parents to map the binary-affirming and the deconstructionist stories their teenager hears online. They leave the second meeting not with everything resolved but with two questions to keep asking and a plan to pray nightly for wisdom.
A lay leader, once quick to endorse any bill labeled “gender-affirming,” spends a month reading a pair of memoirs by binary-affirming trans adults alongside a short anthology of queer-theory essays. He does not flip positions overnight, yet he returns to other leaders ready to ask whether a proposed policy protects children’s long-term health as well as their present distress.
A parishioner navigating gender incongruence meets regularly with a trained member of the pastoral team. She still wrestles with her sense of self, but she no longer carries the struggle alone, and she has been invited to join a small group where other sexual and gender minorities share their stories.
When stories like these accumulate, a congregation begins to offer what this cultural moment rarely sees: clear thinking joined to patient care. That combination, however modest each step may feel, gives weary people a glimpse of the One who holds truth and tenderness in perfect unity.
Originally published in Covenant Journal (The Living Church)
United States v. Skrmetti, 23-477 (U.S. 18 June 2025).
James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy, eds., Understanding Transgender Identities: Four Views (Baker Academic, 2019), xvii–xviii.
