So as a Christian especially, you see no problem with the concepts of male and female being radically redefined?
This doesn't follow from anything I've posted. You asked if I thought kids should be taught "complex controversial ideology regarding sexuality", and I replied that I don't think that kids would necessarily understand it as being controversial unless they were being given feedback by the adults around them that it is, and gave an example of the kinds of things I would like kids to be taught so that they can learn the values of supporting those around them in their struggles
without having to broach the question of their own personal identities in a way that would be moderated by the school (since I don't think that's appropriate; it's not any school's job to make sure that their students graduate with a diploma and a 'gender identity').
See, I don't buy into your whole "yes or no" viewpoint with regard to this question, because I think the underlying message of "treat people with respect even if they live in ways that you don't understand" and/or "help the people around you in their struggles in life"
doesn't need to be sexualized or genderized or whatever in the first place, regardless of its target audience. This fits in with my larger point against LGBT-ifying everyone's worldview because that is so reductive and harmful to the sense of what it means to be a whole and complete person. I can only imagine that this could be even more harmful, then, when the people involved are children who
already don't know who the heck they are more generally.
I know that a popular narrative among LGBT people (including LGBT people I personally know) usually includes something about how they always knew they were different than the people around them, since long before they knew what that 'meant' in a sexual or gender sense, and I don't doubt that this is true. But just as with anything else we could be talking about (so again, NOT JUST SEX AND GENDER STUFF), there's having some kind of internal sense that something is going on, and then there's having someone in 'authority' (a school teacher, a counselor or therapist, etc.) tell you what that 'means', which often has the effect of influencing your choices going forward. I know this because, for instance, I have known people who 'were gay' in high school (20+ years ago, in this context) who have not 'been gay' in many years, not because they went through any kind of so-called 'conversion therapy', but because it literally just took them that long to figure out that they
weren't in fact gay -- they had just had a social group at that time in their life that in some sense prejudiced them towards declaring themselves as being gay when in reality they were going through the process of wondering about themselves and their own sexuality, which is normal for teenagers given the massive influx of hormones and the related confusion and frustration that this can cause as they go through puberty.
You may have a lot of "yes or no" type questions in this or any other area of life, but I think part of being consistent in our insistence upon traditional Christian anthropology (wherein we are created not to attain some kind of Transformers-esque 'final form' by the application of our will and insistence that we
are XYZ, but rather to be partakers in the divine nature, in true union with God) over and against the muddled view of what it means to be a person in the secular world must at the same time involve recognizing that we still live in the world as it is, not as it would be if this were the best of all possible realities (because it obviously isn't; this is why I don't buy into utopianist versions or critiques of Christianity). In practice, this means recognizing that things that, yes,
ideally have very simple answers that everyone should be able to get behind (e.g., the existence of men and women as biologically-distinct members of the human species) are often complicated in practice (in this example, by the existence of biologically 'intersexed' people), and hence fall well short of the ideal. This way, instead of peddling easy but often inadequate 'yes or no' questions and answers, we can actually start engaging with people where they are, in the depths of human confusion and uncertainty, and point them back to the only One Who has remained unchanged and true throughout all time. Once they're there, of course, things are likely to become a lot clearer (not necessarily
easier, but clearer), but you've got to get down into the trenches with people, you know? You can't simply repeat your one or two talking points on some coincidentally very hot political wedge issue and call it a day. American society is over that passing for Christianity (and in record time!), and I believe rightly so.
