Catholic Bishops Encourage Parents to Reject Their Transgender Children
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released an open letter demonizing transgender children and rejecting their identities as a "false idea."
"The movement today to enforce the false idea - that a man can be or become a woman or vice versa - is deeply troubling," the letter, titled "Created Male and Female," claims.
The letter appears to show two conflicting sides - it states transgender people should be respected, but also condemns them.
"A person's discomfort with his or her sex, or the desire to be identified as the other sex, is a complicated reality that needs to be addressed with sensitivity and truth," it reads, stating these people deserve "to be heard and treated with respect."
However, the letter also states children "are harmed when they are told that they can 'change' their sex or, further, given hormones that will affect their development and possibly render them infertile as adults." It claims parents need better guidance, rejecting the legitimacy of gender identity by referring to it as "gender ideology."
"Gender ideology harms individuals and societies by sowing confusion and self-doubt," the letter continues. "The state itself has a compelling interest, therefore, in maintaining policies that uphold the scientific fact of human biology and supporting the social institutions and norms that surround it."
In other words, the bishops want the state to use biology to reject a child's gender identity.
"We also believe that God created each person male or female; therefore, sexual difference is not an accident or a flaw - it is a gift from God that helps draw us closer to each other and to God. What God has created is good. God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
This argument ignores the intersex population - people born with sex characteristics that "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies," according to the United Nations for LGBT Equality.
The letter was signed by twenty religious leaders, listed below:
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