Gender ideology goes against the fundamentals of the Christian faith

A friend recently told me that my refusal to accept concepts like “nonbinary” and “transgender” is hurtful. Similarly hurtful is my refusal to use the wrong pronoun for men and women, such as using “they” to refer to a particular female athlete who identifies as “nonbinary” and has “chosen” they/them as her pronouns. The implication is that, even if I disagree with gender ideology, it is uncharitable not to use a person’s chosen gender identification and pronouns. What is the harm in using preferred pronouns and gender identity for people who are doing nothing other than expressing their lived experiences? The person who made this suggestion is a faithful and knowledgeable Catholic whom I greatly admire and whose devotion to Christ and his Church is beyond dispute.

But I cannot accede to the request. Nor should my friend or any other Catholic Christian.

Words derive their meanings from the broader political or theoretical narratives in which they are coined and used. When one uses the language of those narratives, one is — at least implicitly — affirming their truthfulness. The language of gender ideology is rooted in a fundamentally false and dangerousideology. Its purpose is to eliminate the very notion of sex, and even what it means to be a human person. Even aside from its falsity, the practical, harmful implications of gender ideology are legion. Among other things, gender ideology is the tool for oppressing women, abusing children, and falsifying sex-based categories and data, such as athletics and other forms of public sex-based recognition. Moreover, it makes a mockery of medicine, forcing health care workers to go down a clinical rabbit hole of nonsensical and dangerous babble, compromising sound medical care.

If, for example, we use the term “cisgender male,” we implicitly endorse the false notion that there is another kind of male, namely a “transgender” one. There is not. Similarly, if we refer to a man by female or plural pronouns, we are affirming a truth claim that a man can change his sex, or that he is “nonbinary.” He cannot and is not. To use these false words and phrases is not just a matter of legitimating a person’s life choices. Rather, to use them is to participate in the very false theory that invented them and gives them meaning. Worse, of course, it is the affirmation that the theory is true. But if gender ideology — and the language it has engendered — is true, then Christianity is not. One cannot simultaneously hold to a religious tradition and yet affirm the propriety of language the provenance of which rejects that tradition as false. This is not a matter of accommodation or politeness. It is a matter of speaking truth against ideological falsehood.

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