Welcome to Episode 13 of The Spectrum.

This was recorded on March 5th, 2025.

In this episode, we're going to look at the arguments some

Christians use to justify their bias against transgender people, and whether those arguments make any sense, or whether they are a smokescreen. When I use actual quotes from the Bible, I will use the new international version.

This is considered one of the most accurate translations.

While many do prefer the King

James Version, the language, which was considered somewhat archaic even at the time of its creation, can be a bit tough in some cases for modern readers. But it starts right away in Genesis 1.27.

Quote, "Though God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them."

Unquote. On the surface, that seems pretty clear. The problem, as with any Bible passage, isn't interpreting it. Context matters, both in the text and the historical context in which it was written. Then we have the reader's context. We read this as 21st century humans living in a modern society. Genesis was probably first written down about 2500 years ago, and is thought to have been an oral tradition as much as 3500 years ago. It's safe to say that the Bronze Age Israelites that created the stories that ultimately became

Genesis didn't know a lot of biology. Nor can it be said for the people who formed the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and who first committed Genesis to

Papyrus. And that can also be said for the early Christians of the Roman Empire, who went through the process of deciding what was going to go into the Christian

Bible during the first few centuries of

Christianity. So the historical context is one of relative ignorance about biology compared to the modern reader. This isn't to say they were stupid, they weren't. They were just like us, but their society didn't have the tools available for a deeper understanding of biology. They wrote down the best understanding they had. Unfortunately, that was an overly simplistic view of what really happens. But they didn't really have any way to know that. They hadn't yet discovered genetics, they had no understanding of intersex people, they existed, but there are a lot of ways that that can manifest, and a lot of it is subtle or even invisible without modern medicine.

And if it was different, well, ancient societies in that part of the world were not especially kind to those who had any sort of physical differences from the norm. They were often considered cursed by the gods. Some of you are probably getting ready to say, "Hey, wait, humans may have written the Bible, but it was inspired directly by God, so it can't have mistakes."

Unfortunately, it does. Even if inspired by God, it was written down by humans. Humans make mistakes. Until

Gutenberg, every Bible in existence was copied by hand.

Humans have agendas and make edits to support those agendas, and they also sometimes make innocent mistakes. I highly recommend a book by biblical scholar

Bart Ehrman called "Misquoting

Jesus." He goes into the history of the

Bible and how scholars can track how it changed over time.

He goes into far more detail than we have room for in a podcast, and this field of study is his life's work. He's an expert where I'm just a person who has done a lot of reading and given the subject a fair amount of thought.

It's a great book and very accessible. It is written for the lay reader and not academics. Given the influence that the Bible has had on Western societies,

I think it makes sense for all of us to understand the history of the Bible itself. Let's say you don't want to accept that the Bible could have a mistake in it. There are people who think that it is the inerrant word of God, to use their phrase. Let's accept for the moment that this could be true. Does that end the discussion? I would argue that it does not. The question now becomes how to interpret that phrase, "male and female he created them." Those

Christians who have argued against accepting transgender people have interpreted it to mean that God created male and female bodies, and that's all that matters. However, I would argue that God also gave us souls. Are those male or female? Is it possible that a male soul could end up with a female body or the other way around?

And this whole thing ignores the whole intersex question as the people who make this point don't seem to even want to consider it, probably because it's a big hole in their argument. But putting that aside, how are we to know whether

Genesis 1.27 is talking about bodies or souls? There's no context in the text to guide us. All we can do is bring in our own preconceptions. There's just no way to know. And since we can't know, we shouldn't presume that we do.

But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that these people are right in their interpretation to Genesis. Why then do transgender people exist? Well, it's an imperfect world, but God allows it to happen to people.

Why would God allow people to suffer like that who have done nothing wrong? I don't know. There is an awful lot of suffering in the world, and a lot of it is upon the shoulders of people who have done nothing wrong. Though the question becomes what should a transgender person do?

Does God want you to live with the dichotomy of a body and spirit that don't match, and to learn to endure that pain for your entire life? Or does God want you to find the strength to speak up and do something about it?

Both approaches require great inner strength. Both are paths that will test the person. But which one does Genesis encourage? You have a perfectly good body and a perfectly good mind, but they don't match. Which one is right? What does God want you to do? I don't know. But I don't think any Christian can claim to know either. If they do, then they are either giving a surface reading to Genesis 1.27 and jumping to conclusions, or they are grabbing at justifications to push back against something that makes them squeamish.

Personally, I don't think Genesis 1.27 says anything at all on the transgender subject, and that Christian opponents of transgender people are cherry-picking a statement and using it completely out of context to justify their point of view. Now let's turn to another favorite for the anti-transgender Christian,

Deuteronomy 22.5. "A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear woman's clothing, for the

Lord your God detests anyone who does this." Like Genesis,

Deuteronomy is a Bronze Age oral tradition that was first written down about 2500 years ago.

Social gender roles were fairly rigid in most Near Eastern ancient societies. They were also fairly repressive to women. There isn't any context in Deuteronomy to say why this role existed.

It's possible that at the time the reason was obvious, but as time went by, that reason became less and less obvious and was lost to memory. It's another case of cherry-picking and ignoring context. But let's go with it for a bit.

First, if a transgender female is wearing women's clothes, she isn't cross-dressing by Deuteronomy's standard. She is a woman, so she's wearing appropriate clothing. And this whole thing ignores what is considered gender-appropriate clothing, and how that's morphed from culture to culture and century to century.

Could modern humans be bound by the clothing customs of 2500 years ago?

Deuteronomy 22.11 says, "Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together."

While verse 12 says, "Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear."

Does any person follow these practices?

So then why can they ignore much of what is here, and then choose to pick out a single line to justify their views?

The passage is so weakly tied to the subject that it really doesn't hold any weight.

And speaking of cherry-picking, do the people quoting this passage follow the dietary restrictions in Deuteronomy? Do they sacrifice animals at the temple? Do they completely destroy the inhabitants of conquered lands? Do they stone people for blasphemy or adultery? If not, then aren't they being hypocrites? If most rules in Deuteronomy no longer apply to Christians, then you need to make a much stronger argument than they are about why this one rule should apply.

Now let's look at another overreach of biblical interpretation.

Psalm 139, "I praise you because

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well."

The implication here seems to be that God doesn't make mistakes.

But what about people that are born with a disease or born with a defect, like a heart valve defect? The list of ways in which a baby could be born with problems is too long to list, and each of us knows there are children born every day that require medical treatment to live good lives or even to live at all. Are these children "wonderfully made"? If so, then should we not treat them? Is treating them thumbing our noses at God and saying that we know better? If so, I want to be there when that claim is made to the parent of a child needing help to survive. If we are all "wonderfully made," then is not the very existence of a transgender person something wonderful because God made them that way? Or maybe, maybe, perhaps this is another example of someone taking a statement completely out of context and projecting their own meaning onto it. There are more verses like this that are used, but they all have one thing in common. They are always used out of context, and the person using them is trying to project their own point of view onto them.

Since we're talking about

Christianity and the Bible, I need to be clear about my own view on it. I was raised in a nominally

Catholic house. As a child, I believed in the stories I was told in church. Everyone around me did. When I was in late elementary school, one of my sisters became very involved in a local Baptist church and wanted me to go with her. I did, and I liked it. It was welcoming, and the energy was amazing. But as a student who was also interested in science, they said some things that were incredibly hard to swallow. Things like

Noah had dinosaurs on the ark. They went to enormous lengths to rationalize how the world could be 4,000 years old instead of 4 billion. At 12 years old, I could see the logical flaws in these arguments, and I was really trying not to. I liked the place, and I didn't want anything to challenge what they were saying. But the questions were there, and the more

I learned, the less I was willing to concede to a faith that required me to deliberately cover my eyes, especially when more reading of history showed me how religion had been used to hurt people.

Things like the Crusades and the

Inquisition. The more I learned about the history of Christianity and the history of the Bible, the less credible I found it. That isn't to say that the Bible isn't full of wonderful words that have real-life lessons in them, or that

Christian churches haven't done wonderful things. But for me, I no longer could call myself a believer. I don't have a problem with those that do. Who am I to judge how someone else lives their life/ Except when their religion is used as a weapon to hurt people. The

Bible has been used to justify slavery. It has been used to justify bans on interracial marriage. It has been used to justify mistreatment of Native Americans.

It has been used to deny gay people equal rights, and now it is being used to deny transgender people's very existence. These are things

I have a problem with. It isn't

Christians being Christ-like.

It's Christians being repressive.

Unfortunately, there's a long history of

Christians using their holy book to justify attacks on groups they don't like. We need the Christians who also don't agree with these repressive attitudes to stand up and be heard. Our

Constitution guarantees that the government must be free of state-sponsored religion. These

Christians are entitled to believe whatever interpretation of the Bible they want, but they aren't free to impose these views that they overtly ground in their interpretation of the Bible on everyone else. Not all Americans are

Christians, and not all Christians agree with their interpretations. Take those debates back to the churches and leave them there.

They don't belong in our government. If you have an experience of LGBT life you would like to share, or you're a Christian who thinks my arguments are just so much hot air and want to refute my arguments here, please reach out to me at spectrumpodcasthostedgmail.com.

Until next time, take care.