These mental health problems are usually related to the social stigma still attached to being trans and are not integral to being transgender. It is true that in the 1980s, consultant psychiatrists became the principal gatekeepers for trans people’s treatment, but this was mainly to ensure that the person had sufficient mental stability to transition. Today, the care of trans people tends to be multi-disciplinary in character.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is the leading international multi-disciplinary body in the field and its evidenced-based Standards of Care (SOC) Version 7 are emphatic that:
• Being transgender is a human variation and not a pathology.
• It is both ineffective and unethical to attempt to persuade someone to alter their gender identity – (i.e. being trans is not a ‘choice’).
WPATH emerged in the late 1970s and was originally named after the esteemed clinician of transgender care, Harry Benjamin. It aimed to promote humane, evidence-based treatment following the withdrawal of gender confirmation surgery by the gender identity service at Johns Hopkins University in the US. The withdrawal of confirmation surgery was at the instigation of Dr Paul McHugh, a conservative Catholic. McHugh continues to expound views that are contrary to what developed into the WPATH principles. He regards being trans as a mental illness and believes that trans people’s minds should be altered to prevent them from transitioning. His writings are seized on by conservatives, including conservative Christians, who often quote his belief that being trans is a mental illness to support their theological conviction that trans people’s behaviours can and should be restrained.
We return to this topic in Chapter 3 (where we look at the impact of the culture wars on trans people) but as a rule of thumb: talks or books that refer to trans people’s ‘gender confusion’ and emphasise their ‘gender dysphoria’ usually assume that trans people have a psychological ‘problem’ that can be ‘cured’. This is in defiance of the UK’s therapeutic consensus condemning conversion therapy and calls from Church and State for it to be banned.
The Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy, Version 2, of October 2017 was signed by many UK therapeutic bodies, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Psychological Society and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Version 1 aimed to protect the public from efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation. Version 2 extends this aim to gender identity.
There is a scientific basis to this therapeutic consensus. The significant study by Zhou and colleagues (1995) appears to be supported by subsequent research as summarised by Roughgarden 2017 (pp.50–2), who reports that ‘many studies are now reporting that the physical brain structure of transgender people more closely resembles the sex they identify with rather than with their genital sex.’ This evidence confirms that trans people are not confused cisgender people, sexual deviants or mentally ill. They are simply different from cisgender people and no less worthy of respect.
1 Now based in West London and part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.
Chapter 2
What the Bible Really Tells
Us About Trans People
Introduction
This chapter looks at several ideas simultaneously. It begins with a discussion of how the Bible is read. We have come to believe that this is the core of ‘the controversy’ regarding trans people and the many other sharp disagreements that exist about gender and sexuality within the Church.
The chapter also considers several theological tools that will help create a trans-friendly theology. First, we look at biblical characters who may provide inspiration to those seeking to find gender-variant people within the pages of the Bible. We then briefly summarise our chapter on Natural Law from Transfaith before exploring one of the controversies of the early Church, and what it can tell us about our arguments about inclusion today. Finally, we discuss principles that should guide any discussion of gender-variant people (or any people for that matter) no matter how the Bible is read.
While there is much variation between individual congregations, there are two dominant ways the Bible is being read in our churches today. These two ways of looking at the Bible are mutually exclusive and there is genuine puzzlement and consternation between the two different groups of people who see such different things from the same words on the same page.
A preference for one of these two different ways of seeing the Bible is not in itself an indication of intelligence, concern for humanity or genuine faith. They are the product of church tradition, personal preference and world view. Neither way of looking at the Bible is bad or mistaken.
The problem is that this divide has created situations where there is such bad feeling that it can be impossible to sit in the same room with both views being respected. Debates have stopped being debates and have weaponised scripture, to the point that biblical verses are being used to try to win the argument, no matter what emotional and spiritual damage is caused. As Chapter 4 shows, families are being literally ripped apart. The tragedy of the current Church is that many of us exist within our own theological echo chambers and hurl insults across this theological divide to no good effect.
These two different views have created two very different reactions to the recognition of trans people within the Church. In the middle of this is a society that is losing patience with a Church that is fighting a civil war that it neither understands nor cares about, but that it increasingly feels is mean-spirited and irrelevant.
The Bible as a jigsaw puzzle
The Bible contains many stories and sayings, philosophy and rules. It is a complicated set of books that is bewildering in its complexity and its own contradictions. For example, Leviticus 11.1–31 and Deuteronomy 14.3–20 have bewildering lists of what may or may not be eaten and include many things that we would eat today. Many modern churches have added to this fragmentation by using the lectionary (a set of readings that span the Bible but do not contextualise it or produce a coherent narrative). This makes scripture for many Christians a bit like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Consider the story of Noah and the Ark for example. Countless Sunday schools have created art, plays and songs based on an engaging story of a man who put two of all sorts of animals within a boat and saved them when God sent a big flood to wash away a sinful humanity. The end of the story is often presented as Noah building an altar and God sending a rainbow to promise never to wash away humanity again.
Most of us would struggle to tell the second half of the story. Noah plants a vineyard, makes some wine and gets very drunk and naked. Something very odd happens in his tent with his son Ham. Noah curses Ham and condemns his children to servitude in perpetuity.
Even fewer people would be able to place it within the Genesis narrative as one of the four events of the first 11 chapters of Genesis: Creation, Fall, Flood and Confusion of Tongues. Fewer still would be able to locate Noah in the lineage from Adam and Eve’s third child Seth. Yet the whole picture is important if we are going to entirely understand the story beyond a cute Sunday school story.
If we view segments of scripture as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, scripture will give a very clear picture if all the pieces are laid down. Taking one piece of the Bible puzzle, such as the story of a man building a boat, gives us a very incomplete picture of the story of Noah.
Noah is not just a man who saves animals in a boat but also a man who will drunkenly curse his descendants to slavery for an affront to his dignity. God tries and fails to create a better humanity in Noah and his family. The richness of the story is that God continues to try to engage with all of humanity and continues to persevere.
Taking