Transgender Student Housing

Now, Religion in the News—a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from Agape Press, June 3, 2003, with the headline: “Transgender Student Housing—Beginning this fall, Wesleyan University in Connecticut, named after John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and the Methodist church, will offer the first transgender college housing in the nation. The idea, pushed by a campus student life committee called Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer and Questioning People, or LGBTQQ, received widespread support from the administration.

“The objective, according to the school’s director of residential life, Jeff Ederer, is to create a space that is friendly and responsive to the needs of trans-identified students. Pro-family advocates believe providing students the option of living in a so-called gender-blind hall with only lead to more gender-confused students. Peter LaBarbera, of the Culture and Family Institute, says the move will have devastating consequences and regards it as ‘political correctness run amok. The homosexual groups have always been strong on campus, at least over the last decade. They have virtually no sustained opposition to them,’ LaBarbera says. ‘And now the transgenders are coming along, and they are every bit as militant as the gay activists were before them. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous,’ he says. ‘I have actually seen women who are trying to be men, showing off after their healthy breasts were removed surgically so that they could have flat chests just like men. These policies are ridiculous, but they also have severe health consequences for those poor kids who are gender confused.’

“The current accepted definition of transgender is an all-inclusive term for all persons whose expression of gender is outside the current cultural expectations or norms.”

Tom: Dave, this is, as this article indicated, it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. Talk about confusion! “Now I need a place…” not me personally,” but these young people need a place in which—they don’t know whether they are coming or going, whether they are male, female, or what they want to be. I looked it up on a couple of websites to get a definition of “transgender,” and even those who are advocating transsexual, cross-dressing, and all of that, they don’t like the term because they know it’s not physiological. These people, in their heads, don’t know where they are, and they can’t change themselves in their hearts and minds without changing themselves physically, and even that doesn’t do the trick for them. So, confusion is…

Dave: Well, Tom, the sex change operations—you can’t change your sex. There is no trans-gender—you can’t change your gender; it’s in the chromosomes, and what these poor people become are freaks. I don’t even like to talk about it, or think about it, but here is a Christian college, supposedly…

Tom: Well, at least initially. John Wesley would be pulling his hair out.

Dave: He certainly would, but you see, what the problem is, Tom, anything goes. It doesn’t matter what God says. It doesn’t matter anymore what the Bible says. And it’s not only in this particular area of sex, but it’s in the doctrinal areas of—almost every doctrine out there is up for grabs. I mean, “Why should we believe that salvation is only for people who believe in Jesus Christ?”

Well, of course that’s what Jesus said.

“Yeah, but that’s narrow-minded.”

So, this is the day in which we live—tolerance! Let’s be tolerant. But as we have often said, Tom, you want the police to be tolerant of crime? Do you want the doctors to be tolerant of disease? And have I used the illustration before? the big NFL linebacker—probably I have— and he just smashes some guy and stomps on him, and the referee blows the whistle, and he turns to the ref and says, “You are so intolerant!”

You can’t even play a game without rules. But these people don’t want any rules, and it’s like we have in Israel—“Every man that which was right in his own eyes.”

Tom: Yeah, and I think of another verse from Proverbs:14:12There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
See All...: “There is a way that seems right unto a man; but the end thereof are the ways of death.” So this does lead to death, destruction; it’s horrible, Dave. I picked up another article related to this story and it said that Wesleyan has—(this school, Wesleyan University)—has a reputation for liberal attitudes in both the way it treats its students and the courses it offers. It annually holds a gay prom, and its syllabus offers a course on pornography. This is sin. “The wages of sin is death”! This leads to destruction, not just eternal separation from God, but right now these things create problems that are just unbelievable.

Dave: If Wesley could come back from, come down from heaven, where his soul and spirit are, he would say, “Look guys, take my name off of that place. Don’t even pretend this is Christian. What relationship do you have with the Bible?”

But we have many pastors like that, Tom—people who call themselves Christians, but they deny that Jesus is God, they deny Jesus rose from the dead. Then please, don’t call yourself a Christian. We’ve said it many times on this program, I’ll say it again: You want to invent a religion, go ahead, but don’t call it Christianity! You cannot call yourself a Christian unless you follow what Jesus Christ taught and what He practiced. But these people have no regard for the Bible, they have no regard for God, they are going to make it up as they go along, whatever they want to do to cater to their own lusts.

And, you see, the tragedy is that young people are led astray. They say, “Oh, well, this is Christianity. I want to be a Christian. And you’re a Christian, you can just do whatever your want and believe whatever you want—it doesn’t really matter.” Just stick on the label. “I’m going to a Christian college, isn’t this great?”

Tom: Dave, let me read Romans, so people don’t thing this is just our ideas, that we’re just laying out things that come out of our own heads. No, this is Romans:1:21Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
See All...: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” This is an academic situation that we are talking about, an environment. “And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.”

Dave: Pretty clear, Tom, and it’s a tragedy, but when we ignore God’s Word, the wages of sin is death, and these young people are being led right down the path to destruction.