A basic Christian primer on sex, marriage and family life. Article 10 – Intersex and Transgender

Apr 27, 2020 by

by Martin Davie:

In the remaining four articles in this basic Christian primer series we shall be considering four issues which raise challenges for traditional Christian sexual ethics. These issues are intersex and transgender, sex outside marriage, divorce and re-marriage and birth control and infertility treatment. In each article we shall consider the challenges that these issues pose to traditional Christian sexual ethics and how Christians should respond to these challenges, both theologically and pastorally.

The challenge of intersex and transgender

In this series we have noted that traditional Christian sexual ethics is based on the premise that human beings have been created by God as embodied creatures who are either male or female. Today, however, this premise is being challenged on two grounds.

First, it is being challenged on the grounds that experience tells that the human race is not neatly divided into those who are male and those who are female. There are also, it is argued, intersex people who don’t fit into either of these two categories, and our thinking about what it means to be human has to be expanded to take this fact into account.

Secondly, it is being challenged on the grounds that there are transgender people whose personal identity or ‘gender’ does not accord with the sex of their bodies. There are, it is claimed, people with male bodies whose true gender is female and vice versa and there are also people with male and female bodies whose gender is neither male nor female but comes under some other category such as intergender, genderfluid or pangender.

The remainder of this article will respond to each of these challenges in turn.

Read here

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