See here. If you go to the main article cited in the post, you'll find further details. For example, Protestants are significantly more opposed to transgenderism than Catholics are.
As I've said before, most Americans are highly persuadable on issues like these. But the large majority of parents, pastors, and others in positions of influence aren't making much of an effort to persuade people on these matters, if they even address the issues at all. Our priorities are desperately false, our time management is horrendous, and we're often intellectually apathetic, if not anti-intellectual.
I'm afraid you could have stopped at "Think", and the truth of your thesis would have been more fully captured. What a sad statement on not only the state of the world, which we should expect, but the state of the church. It's like the book of Judges come to life in the church.
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt that many Americans are morally confused on this issue. That said:
ReplyDeletei) There may well be a percentage of respondents who disapprove, but are afraid to give a pollster an honest answer for fear of reprisal.
ii) The answer depends on the wording of the question and what they think of when they hear the word "transgender."
Do they think of a psychological condition, i.e. gender dysphoria?
Or do they think of behavior, viz. cross-dressing, hormone therapy, sex-change surgery?
In principle, one could be nonjudgmental about mental illness, but disapprove of certain behaviors.
Since most folks are normal, since most folks have no occasion to give much thought to trangenderism, I wouldn't expect them to have a clear position.
Certainly, though, it's something pastors ought to address. And there's lots of preexisting material they could draw upon.
In the age of church websites, it would be easy for a pastor to link to some good analysis of the transgender issue. That's readily available.
I have been trying to educate myself on this lately, what would be some good "preexisting material" that I could read?
ReplyDeleteBrett,
DeleteRobert Gagnon has a lot of good material on transgenderism and related issues. Paul McHugh has some good material, like here. And you can click on the labels of our posts on transgenderism to find archives of other posts on related issues. See the archive here, for example.
Denny Burk is also a good resource. Just Google him.
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