As my wife Pat and I reflect on the 15 years the St. John Paul II Life Center and Vitae Clinic which we co-founded in 2010 with Chris and Sheri Danze, we think about our goal to help women who have given birth to a beautiful girl or boy each being made in the image of God.
We have been witness to marvelous stories of personal courage of the young women, many of whom faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles to carrying their baby through birth. Yet they succeeded, with joy and surrounded by love and support thanks to the work of our clinic, staff and volunteers. This work has been—and continues to be—a quiet, wondrous witness to the beauty of God’s plan of creation.
That concrete and very real beauty contrasts with the time in which we now live; a time of strange, unnatural cultural upheaval by certain individuals and groups intent on reshaping the purpose of men and women’s existence in a way that would point to a new and very different anthropology from reality.
I must say I was not sufficiently aware of how technology would be used to further advance this insidious attempt to change “as He made them.”
Peeling back the context and substance of “my body, my choice”
Mary Hasson, JD, the Kate O’Beirne Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she co-founded and directs the Person and Identity Project, does a masterful and greatly informative job in her article “Sex and Sanity” of explaining the ramifications of the sexual revolution, relativism, and “my body, my choice.” I will use parts of her article to develop the context and substance of my observations.
Mary Hasson explains:
“Everyone knows teenagers are too young to make life-altering decisions with permanent consequences. The mantra of “gender-affirming care” (“Let the child lead”) is pure nonsense. Every parent knows this intuitively unless ideology overrides their parental instincts. 
… the harm of medicalized “gender” interventions…
This isn’t an age or maturity problem. It’s not an evidence problem either. It’s a deeper problem.
Young people have been seduced by an anthropology – a belief system premised on the oldest lie known to man: “You decide. You decide what’s true for yourself.” You decide who you are. You decide what’s good or evil. You decide what makes you happy. You decide what to do with your body. (My body, my choice, incidentally, is the shared slogan of both the abortion movement and gender activists. Their movements are very intertwined, with Planned Parenthood now the second largest provider of cross-sex hormones for “gender transitions.”)
… the unstated premise of this refrain, is that “You know better than God what’s right for you.”
Many of you are familiar with the unicorn or gender-bread person. These images sell children on a false anthropology, convincing them that there is no truth, no coherence to their creation as male or female or to the design of their bodies, – that what’s most important is “my choice.”
The individual gets to decide his or her “authentic self, regardless of the fact of the male or female body.
That’s a pretty heavy burden to lay on a child or teen. Imagine waking up every day, taking your emotional temperature, and trying to figure out if you feel more like a boy today or like a girl. (You’ll find plenty of videos of trans-affirming parents ask their children exactly that…
I decide. This is the refrain, the narrative, if you will, of man’s rebellion against sex and sanity – of our rebellion against God Himself.
A Clash of Anthropologies
Consider the claims of gender ideology – and how they compare to the Christian understanding of the person. Let’s do a head-to-head comparison.
As Christians…
As Christians, we know we are created by a loving God, in his image and likeness possessing an inherent dignity, with an eternal destiny. We are created male or female, equal in dignity but complementary. Our primary identity is as a son or daughter of the Lord – our identity is relational.
In Gender ideology…
Gender ideology, in contrast, is atheistic – with no room or need for God. It claims that the person is self-creating. Doctor Norman Spack of Boston Children’s Hospital, who first used puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to “transition” identity-confused children in the U.S., spoke of the marvel of children “creating themselves.” Gender ideology claims that “who we are” is “whoever we say we are.” Identity is self-determined, even fluid, unbounded by the reality of the physical body. Without God, the person has no inherent dignity, so dignity becomes contingent, dependent on external validation or legal recognition.
Born with a human nature, unity of body and soul vs. No human nature, no unity
Christianity teaches that we are a unity of body and soul, gifted with a human nature – a design for our good. Our bodies have meaning. They reveal something about who we are – that males and females are made one for another, oriented towards the gift of self in sexual union within marriage. Sex has a unitive and procreative 
meaning, and children are the fruit of that relationship, to be raised in a family – a communion of persons – that images the Trinity.
Gender ideology rejects the concept of human nature and posits a separation of mind and body. The mind is what matters; the body is merely a tool, a thing to be used, or a canvas for personal expression. Sex is reduced to a quest for pleasure, disconnected from reproduction, with no boundaries on who, how, or how many others we use, as long as there’s legal consent. Gender ideology redefines marriage as an arrangement to fulfill adult desires; “family is a chosen association, for personal benefit. Importantly, where Christian anthropology recognizes that we are all sinful and broken, in need of grace and redemption on the path to eternal life, gender ideology’s adherents have no transcendent purpose. Life is merely a quest for power, and drive to defeat one’s oppressors while journeying toward a personal utopia.
Every significant truth about the human person, as understood by Christians, is contradicted or undermined by gender ideology. Gender ideology’s beliefs about the human person are the core of the sexual revolution. An individual doesn’t even need to consciously subscribe to every tenet of gender ideology to be influenced by it.
Today’s compelling narrative
The compelling narrative today that shapes people’s decisions and defines their purpose (sometimes without them realizing it), are no longer Christian. Our culture is being reshaped, rendering the claims of gender ideology our default narrative about what it means to be a human person and how to be happy.
Gender ideology – and the normalization of all its fruits, from casual sex to masturbation, to pornography, to contraception, abortion, homosexuality and now transgender identification – is irreconcilable with the truth about the human person. This false anthropology is being baked into our assumptions, judgments, and relationships. Inevitably, it will make Christians less receptive to the truth.
In truth, gender ideology is a preposterous belief system.
The transgender deception is plausible when parents have already bought into its premises in their own lives. Perhaps they have accepted the lies that they can live their lives as they choose, regardless of the moral law, an
d “it’s all good,” as long as they choose it. Or the lie that there is no natural order, no Creator’s design-particularly in matters of sex – that a person must live by to flourish. Or that God, and by extension the Church, has no say in their sex lives. They get to decide.
This theme is a continuous thread winding through the past decades of sexual anarchy. The truth is that when you reject God, his created order, his moral laws – and disregard even the logic of the body – when you reject the basic truth about the human person, then you’re making it up as you go along. Anything is plausible. Anything is possible, given the right technology.
Isn’t this the story of the sexual revolution? And the role of technology in supposedly freeing us of natural constraints and enabling us to fulfill our desires?
FDA Approval of birth control pill 65 years ago
Sixty-five years ago, the birth control pill won approval from the FDA. The Pill in my view, was the very first, widely accepted “transgender” intervention.
Why? Because it established the premises; it set the narrative. The Pill’s widespread use conditioned people to see God’s natural design for sex – the complementarity of male and female bodies, the purpose and fruits of sexual union (children) – as a barrier, an obstacle to the self-defined human happiness to which they felt entitled.
Married and singles alike embraced technology’s power to sever the natural link between sexual union and procreation, in pursuit of a social goal – sex with no consequences. It met their subjective criteria for personal happiness. They were convinced that they knew better than God what sex and sanity meant.
The transgender revolution differs only in magnitude, not in kind.
The Pill also implicitly taught women that their bodies and their fertility were also problems – additional obstacles to freedom. There must be something wrong with God’s design. The solution: to exercise the power of choice, discard God’s plan, and do it their way. Women were persuaded that their freedom “to decide” their futures depended on thwarting and altering God’s natural design. They needed to be able to have sex like a man, sex without consequences. What a bad idea.”
As a Pharmacist I know the scientific consequences of Contraceptive Pills
As a pharmacist I have studied a number of the oral contraceptives and have learned what researchers have found that for each year a woman is on the “Pill” she loses three years of fertility. So for young girls being put on “The Pill” to help control acne. Let’s look at an example. A 20 year old girl is put on “The Pill” to control acne. She takes the pill for 5 years. She is now 25 years old, but for fertility purposes her body is now 40 years old. No wonder women now find achieving pregnancy so difficult after being on “The Pill” so long.
Mary Hasson continues:
“Interestingly, Jack Turban, a Stanford psychiatrist and one of the most vocal champions of hormonal castration and gender surgeries for adolescents – recently defended the use of cross-sex hormones in adolescents by saying (paraphrasing): “It’s no different than putting these adolescents on the birth control pill. And probably safer.” The Pill disables the healthy body’s natural functions to achieve a social goal. We’ve already 
accepted that. Why shouldn’t we accept puberty blockers, which do the same thing?
Consider another respect: once that link between sex and procreation was broken by technological manipulation, we – as a people – largely forgot what sex is for. We forgot that sex is about babies.
The consequences were predictable, as anyone who has read Humanae Vitae knows. When sex is neutered of its procreative potential, and its purpose reduced to personal pleasure, there’s no logical reason to limit sex to opposite-sex, married couples. There’s no reason why any non-normative sexual activity should be labeled deviant. If it brings the participants pleasure and complies with legal consent requirements, then why not? Homosexuality, polyamory, kinky sex, open marriages. It’s all being normalized now. Remember the mantra: “I decide. My Choice.” There are no boundaries.
First a word of caution: It is very possible that, in the short term, we may win the battle against medicalized gender experiments in minors, but lose the war against the bigger evil: the social, cultural, and political embrace of a false, degrading, and dangerous vision of the human person.
The consequences of embedding a false anthropology
The consequences of embedding a false anthropology not only in our cultural soil but also in the human heart are far-reaching. They include:
- The coerced participation of medical and counseling professionals in “transgender” medicine
- The suppression of conscience rights for Catholic healthcare providers and educators
- Restrictions on the religious liberty of Catholic employers, institutions, and individuals
- The denial of free speech
- The normalization of dehumanizing “transhumanist” medical experiments to satisfy consumer desires
- The absolute decimation of parents rights and family integrity, and
- The promotion of a sexualized, misogynistic, and inhuman culture
It’s a good thing to fight gender ideology on the level of medical evidence, exposing its harmful effects on identity-distressed minors, just as we highlight other human costs of the sexual revolution for example, in our fight against abortion. But we must recognize that the entire body of “gender medicine” rests on a false premise: the belief that there is no human nature and that each person is free to self-determine an identity, in contradiction to the reality of sexual difference.
Today, gender medicine is marketed less by appealing to Christian compassion, and more as a bold “human rights” claim rooted in the false anthropology of gender ideology. This is dangerous ground. As the Venerable Jerome 
LeJeune cautioned, “Human nature exists… and whether we like it or not, we are obliged to take it into account.” And to the extent that men “deny eternal Wisdom, they (will end up) doing foolish things, however intelligent they may be.”
So, What should we do?
So, what should we do?
- Live with integrity.
- Don’t be discouraged: Remember St. Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness. My grace is sufficient for you. And Pope St. John Paul II’s words of encouragement: We are not the sum of ourweaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son.’
- Be courageous and be convinced. There’s no daylight between truth and charity. Stand up for the truth and share it with others. Invite – don’t impose. God’s plan is indeed the only way to eternal life.
- Be kind, prudent, and patient. Evangelization is the art of presenting the right truth, at the right time, and in the right manner.”
Is Gender Common Sense (and Scientific Reality) returning?
We are only slightly into the Presidency of Donald Trump. His many Executive Orders to counter those that are most egregious to common sense and natural law that had been made by previous administration are leveling the playing field to bring some sanity and common sense back to the public stage recognizing that there are only two genders – woman and man.
Grounding our future generations in common sense, and in the beginning point of all science: Objective Reality
Let us pray that this awakening can permeate our entire education system from primary through secondary to higher education and start the truth being once more shared with our impressionable young women and men in order to have a sound future for America.
Let us once again honor man and woman as He made them!
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