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A YEAR LATER: HOW HAVE TRANSGENDER “ACCOMMODATIONS” PLAYED OUT?
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, it was about a year ago that we talked about the Target retail stores and how they had made a decision to allow transgenders to use the bathrooms of their choice. There was a public outcry, however, Target decided that was the right thing to do.
Recently, in Chicago, a self-identified transgender male entered a ladies’ room. There was a little girl in the store and, unfortunately, what we warned might happen did, in fact, happen. Now, I’m happy to say the girl was not physically harmed but, unfortunately, she found herself in a predicament that will probably leave a scar on her for the rest of her life.
DR. REEDER: The point in the discussion previously, Tom, that we had was not that every person dealing with gender confusion would have such motivations and desires, but our point was the policy is exactly what opens the door for that and loses modesty, security, and privacy. Actually, this is the second time this has happened in a Target store since that policy has been enacted.
Interestingly, these regulations are not coming from the federal government under the Trump administration, but they are coming on state-levels and local levels. In fact, in Anchorage, there was an attempt to restore privacy, and security, and safety and modesty to public facilities.
STATES ARE NOW HAVING TO PROPOSE LAWS
TOM LAMPRECHT: Indeed. Nearly 53 percent of the voters in Anchorage cast their ballots against Proposition 1, which was proposed by a non-profit Christian policy group, Alaska Family Action, that would have meant biological males use the men’s room and biological females use the ladies’ room. That failed.
DR. REEDER: That’s not a Target or a private company that has embraced the policy, but that was a public vote on the issue. And it was narrow, but they turned it down so now whatever happens in those public facilities in Anchorage, Alaska, the voting population of Alaska has to bear responsibility for it.
However, Tom, it’s not just simply a matter of security, as important as that is. It’s also a matter of clarity. It’s a matter of chaos that is being introduced. It’s a matter of loopholes. We are constantly filtering stories that are coming to us of males who say, “I identify as a female,” and go out and win what historically would have been a female track event. We even have this whole issue that was recently publicized of the Iranian soccer team.
IRANIAN WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM HAS 8 TRANSGENDER MEN ON IT
TOM LAMPRECHT: The Daily Wire reported the Iranian women’s soccer team has found a loophole and, instead of comprising a team of actual women, they have added eight full-grown men who claim they are transgender and awaiting sex changes.
DR. REEDER: Interestingly, the country with the largest number of existing are those waiting in line for sex change operations is Iran. In a Muslim country, if you are a homosexual, there is a public penalty of death. Those executions are carried out in various Muslim countries under Shariah Law.
Interestingly, Iran does allow sex change operations so what many of them are doing is not actually getting the sex change operation but declaring their desire for the sex change operation and declaring that what they actually are is transgender.
By doing that, they escape the specter of the death penalty, but most of them are not carrying it out. Yet, a number of them are “athletes” or a number of them claim a transgender identity in order to compete in the arena of female athletics as males and just intentionally are making these claims which, of course, again, that’s something that in previous programs we said would happen.
ANOTHER DESTRUCTIVE CONSEQUENCE OF GENDER THEORY
Therefore, just as there is the consequence of the loss of privacy, modesty, security and safety in bathrooms, in the transgender ideology of the sovereign self — “I can be what I want to be and whatever I want to be is what I actually am. Not what I am is what I am, but what I declare myself to be, the self-identity of my gender” — the fact is that positions them with certain physical advantages in the field of competition and sports.
Now you’ve got an Iranian women’s soccer team that now has a majority of men who are actually playing as women because they self-identify as women. Some of them are on a list for a sex-change operation that, in reality, they’re not going to get.
Thus, you see the chaos and the confusion. Now, my prediction is, to deal with that, you’ll ultimately just have to remove any male and female distinctions in the arena of sports and you just have a team and everybody has to compete.
Therefore, Title IX, you can forget that because now women will be back into the situation where they cannot have protection to have equal resources for female competition that males have because any male can identify as a female and, even if it’s just three or four or five or whatever, you have, by chaos, transformed the landscape of competition.
And, thus, again, you have relegated women who identify as women and they are women into a position where they will not be able to compete on a level playing field because now men have access to their playing field, whatever the sport might be, if they simply identify as a woman.
IRONY: WHAT WAS ONCE RIDICULOUS IS NOW REALITY
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, how times have changed in just a generation. It was in 1959 that the movie “Some Like It Hot” came out with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon dressed up as women to be a part of an all-women’s orchestra. It was a comedy that everyone thought was just hilarious and ridiculous.
DR. REEDER: And comedy, instead of a parody, becomes a prognosticator of future life. Sin, ultimately, is idolatry and that is the exaltation of the sovereign self instead of surrender to the sovereign God. There is a God who made us and this God made us for His glory and our joy is in living as he has made us.
Now, you can’t do that without coming to Christ, who will liberate us from a sin nature that declares the sovereignty of myself over the sovereignty of God. Now men and women sovereignly say to a sovereign God, “You made us like this, but we declare that we are this and so we will live as we sovereignly declare ourselves to live. And there is no such thing as objective truth to tell me I’m wrong — I can do what is right in my own eyes.”
SIN IS NOT NEW AND IT NEVER MAKES SENSE
None of this is new. It traces all the way back to the Garden. It traces all the way back to the Judges where, repeatedly, it says that they did what was right in their own eyes. It also traces back to the fact that sin produces death — the death of sports organizations, the death of competition, physical death, spiritual death. Sin always brings death and sin always brings confusion.
The reality is you can’t be on the field of life to play in the field of life if you take away the boundaries that God has established. Imagine going to play a football game in which there are no sidelines. What we’re telling God is, “Your boundary lines are not ours. We will worship and serve the creature and we will declare as null and void all of your distinctions that you have established. We will declare ourselves sovereign over those.”
The result: death and confusion. When a husband or a wife walks out of a marriage and the one who is the victim, having experienced the brokenness that comes when someone walks away from the marriage, looks at me and says, “Pastor, can you help me understand why they did what they did?” and my answer is always, “I can tell you what they are saying and I can tell you what influenced them, but I can’t help you understand because sin never is understandable. It never makes sense and it’s always destructive and it is always chaotic.”
SENSIBLE POLICY IS GOOD, BUT NOT THE GOOD NEWS
And what we are doing, telling God, “We will not be what you made us to be,” doesn’t make sense. It not only brings death and life, it also brings the death of hopes and dreams and it brings the death of order within life and now has introduced chaos and meaninglessness within a society as it descends into a neopaganism where humanity worships and serves itself.
However, there is an antidote to this and the antidote is not simply sensible public policy based upon creation law. It is also the glorious surrender to a proclamation of Good News that Jesus Christ can liberate us from our sins, not only the shame of them and not only the guilt of them, but the power of them so that, with great joy, we can be who he made us to be for His Glory. And, in that, comes an escalating joy that is glorious and I pray that, again, that would abound within our society.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin, editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News, who has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and whose work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
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