Is the C of E’s ‘Living in Love and Faith’ project coherent?
by Andrew MacFarlane, Psephizo:
‘Andrew MacFarlane’ writes: This is a short précis of a longer piece that included many references to current literature on the issues contained within Living in Love and Faith (LLF). This précis is not exhaustive but provides some key discussion points.
The ‘LGBT+’ grouping
The singular grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-sexual, intersexual, and others (LGBTI+) is an increasingly problematic term that elides a number of different issues. LGB refers to a grouping based on the attraction to specific sexual organs; trans-sexuals are a grouping based on gender identity that typically differs from their natal sex. Intersex peoples are a group comprised of specific medical conditions, often with chromosomal abnormalities or androgen insensitivity, based on differences of sexual development (DSD). LLF assumes that LGBTI+ is a meaningful and accepted umbrella term, but that term is actually fracturing.
There is clear and sustained pushback from the ‘gender-critical‘ feminist and lesbian communities (whose views are not discussed in LLF at all) against the invasion of male-sexed women into female-only spaces. Lesbians, for whom biological sex is the only thing that matters to their sexual identities, report the sustained pressure that they face to have sex with heterosexual transwomen who retain a penis, as trans activists assume that gender identity equates to sexual phenotype. Despite reports otherwise, this is not a settled area of cultural debate (something not discussed in LLF). There is also no discussion of professionals who are unsettled by practices within gender dysphoria clinics, that rapid-onset gender dysphoria can have social components, that some children are coerced into transitioning, or that the risk of suicide in trans people is no higher than for other mental health conditions (p 96).
Indeed LLF focuses on the often-misreported harm faced by transgender people in Britain (for this is a highly nuanced issue), but fails to focus Christian concern on the 6000 Christians martyred in Nigeria this year alone. Transgender people do not face anywhere near this level of persecution anywhere in modern Britain and that is something that should temper the assertions of LLF. The lack of balanced discussion in LLF tacitly supports ‘trans’ ideology – without explanation as to what that means – at the expense of biological reality.
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