News about transgender issues tends to deal with women’s athletic competitions and shelters, pronouns, girls’ locker rooms, public school sex education, competing rights claims (with parents on both sides of the dates) and resulting political and legal disputes.
There’s been less coverage of medical morality, especially concerning under-aged youths, and hardly any about how various religious groups understand gender and why.
Journalists should take notice when four vigorous arguments on the religious aspect appear in the space of just six days, as follows.
March 20: The leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops authorized publication (.pdf here) of an important but little-reported transgender policy. It declares that Catholic health-care agencies “must not” perform or help develop chemical or surgical procedures to transform a person’s bodily characteristics into those of the opposite sex.
The stated reasons are theological and moral. Key quotes: “We did not create human nature; it is a gift from a loving Creator,” so human dignity requires “genuine respect for this created order.” Sexual differentiation is a reality “willed by God” and a “ fundamental aspect of existence as a human being.”
Therefore, surgical and chemical techniques to switch a patient’s sexual characteristics, or puberty blockers to halt youths’ natural development, “are not morally justified.” To the bishops, such interventions are “injurious to the true flourishing of the human person” and violate doctors’ basic moral maxim to “do no harm.”
