The creationist group Answers In Genesis, the Young Earth organization behind the Kentucky-based Creation Museum, wants parents to know that while evolution may explain why some people identify as transgender, Creationism unequivocally rejects transgender identity. Responding to a San Francisco Chronicle article about a one-hour discussion on gender diversity in an Oakland school, Answers In Genesis claims that “when human beings suffer physical problems with gender identity, they are suffering from a medical condition as real as other physical infirmities” that resulted from The Fall in the Garden of Eden, and “to teach children that choosing to change gender is perfectly moral and right is wrong”:
Transgender clownfish, transgender people—what’s the difference?
None—according to the mandatory curriculum at California’s Redwood Heights Elementary School. Principal Sara Stone says, “Really, the message behind this curriculum is there are different ways to be boys. There are different ways to be girls.”
After teaching about “the crazy world of gender within the animal kingdom with lessons about single-sex Hawaiian geckos, fish that switch genders and boy snakes that act ‘girly,’” Gender Spectrum trainer Joel Baum tells fourth and fifth graders, “Evolution comes up with some pretty funny ways for animals to reproduce.”
Then he extrapolates from animals to people, teaching “some boys can act like girls; some girls can have boy body parts; and some biological boys feel like a girl inside their hearts. . . . There are not just two options.” Gender Spectrum bases its curriculum on the evolutionary notion that humans are animals.
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When human beings suffer physical problems with gender identity, they are suffering from a medical condition as real as other physical infirmities (consequences of the Fall of Genesis 3). Human physical gender identity can be ambiguous or at variance with the “gender genes” a person possesses due to conditions interfering with correct expression of the genome.
Human beings are designed to live a life identified as a particular gender without the prerogative to alter it at will. To teach children to be kind and loving to all people is good. But to teach children that choosing to change gender is perfectly moral and right is wrong.
