Oh Gender, Thy Name is Legion: The Dangers of the Gender Identity Movement

There is a new Legion among us in the form of transgender community, a legion of genders.  This community bases itself on a false philosophy of sexuality which is gnostic and dualistic in nature, and deeply anti-marriage and anti-family.

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - The Bible tells the story of Jesus' confrontation with the Gerasene demoniac.  "And Jesus asked him, saying, 'What is your name?'  And he said, 'Legion,' because many devils were entered into him."  (Luke 8:30; see also Mark 5:9; cf. Matt. 8:28-34).

In the Greek text, the word "Legion" (Λεγιὼν) is used; however, the word is Latin in origin.  It refers to a unit of soldiers in the Roman army, varying between 3,000 to 6,000 foot soldiers and cavalry.  Figuratively, it means a large number.

There is a new Legion among us in the form of transgender community.  This community bases itself on a false philosophy of sexuality which is gnostic and dualistic in nature.  It is fundamentally anti-God and anti-Christian, and deeply anti-marriage and anti-family.

It is gnostic in nature in the sense that it rejects the human body as providing any norms, as being in any way a gift of a Creator to which one is answerable.

It is dualistic in that it divides the body from the soul or mind into two separate substances, deprecating in the process the body.

The proponents of this deeply-flawed philosophy (which is mainstream in our education facilities and academia) start with the demonic (and irrational) assumption that sex identity is not something one is given by nature or nature's God.  It rejects the teaching of nature and nature's God.  It rejects the teaching of Scripture.  It is therefore anti-God. 

Because it challenges the complementarity of the sexes, an essential component of marriage and family life, it is also intensely anti-marriage and anti-family.

Instead of relying on nature, on what is, the proponents of modern gender theory argue the real reality is ideal, that is, in our minds.  The more important reality is not our sex, but our gender, which is something one decides for one's self.  In other words, a person who subscribes to a transgender philosophy believes that he or she has autonomy to decide whether he will be he, he will be she, she will be she, or she will be he.  And all these decisions are equally good.

These crazy ideas appear to have their source in the atheist rantings of the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.  Drawing from the study by the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, Pope Benedict XVI recently tackled this matter in 2012 in his Christmas Address to the Roman Curia. 

This notion of gender fluidity stems from Simone de Beauvoir's seminal idea: "'one is not born a woman, one becomes so' (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient).  These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term 'gender' as a new philosophy of sexuality."

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(One ought to avoid the use of the term "gender," which is traditionally a grammatical or linguistic concept, and maintain the notion of "sex," as once one uses the term "gender" to describe one's sex, one has fallen trap to the implied assumptions of this new philosophy of sexuality.  The left always starts its battle with language.)

"According to this philosophy," Pope Benedict XVI continues, "sex is no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society."

As Pope Benedict XVI stated (pulling no punches), "The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious."

"People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being" if they follow this fallacious sexual philosophy.  "They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves."

The denial of nature is a denial of reality.  It is ultimately a form of modern gnosticism (reality and freedom is in the mind, in the form of knowledge or gnosis, and is not related to matter).  It also is gnostic in that it shares a hatred, or at least a utilitarian view, of the human body.  The body is subject to my manipulation: it means nothing to me but what I make of it.

A "Theology of the Body" cannot exist if one can use the body what one wishes.  In the view of these radical sex and gender philosophies, the body has no message of God for us; it is not gift that should be used in accordance with the Giver's design. 

For the purveyors of this modern philosophy, the body is, rather, the raw material we have to use however we see fit.  We are not answerable to God, or to society, or to anyone else but ourselves, for the use of our body.

To reject the body as having any normative meaning is quite frightening for what it forebodes.  If the body--and its maleness or femaleness--means nothing, and the message of the body may be called into question, man becomes "merely spirit and will." 

Again, for the promoters of this radical philosophy, the body means nothing.  It is sort of an Aristotelian prima materia, or prime matter, upon which we impose the form we wish. 

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If the body is not fundamental to us as humans, then humans are abstractions--"spirit and will"--and the real us has nothing to do with our bodies, but has only to do with our will.  This again is gnosticism. 

This philosophy also proposes a radical dualism between body and mind beyond anything ever imagined in the past.  So extreme is this dualism, that the body can be a "he" and the mind a "she."  One can have a female ghost in a male machine.

Jesus taught that God made us male and female, and this from the beginning.  (Matt. 19:4; Mark 10:6)  In this, he was plainly standing on the revelation of God in the book of Genesis.  (Gen. 1:27; 5:27). 

Jesus taught that in God's design there are two sexes, male and female, and that's it.  Frankly, in a saner milieu, such teaching ought not to be controversial, as it is an obvious natural truth that there is man and there is woman, and that the sexual complementarity found in nature is ordered toward marriage, procreation, and family life.

This binary reality of the sexes (that there are two and two alone) is part of God's design: "According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God," Pope Benedict XVI explained to the Roman Curia.

The radical sex and gender philosophies, which teach to the contrary, come from spiritually diseased minds.  In a grand "non serviam," the transgender cadre want to be autonomous from Nature and Nature's God, and so what God made two (sex), they make into Legion.

(Actually, the illuminati of this group define sex based upon a continuum, with male on one end, female on the other, and "intersex" in between, with all sorts of grays in between.  The varietals are infinite.)

For the gender alumbrados "enlightened" by this philosophy, sex is defined biologically (anatomy, chromosomes, hormones, etc.).  But this is something entirely different from gender.  Gender is based upon what one thinks one is, or what one wishes to be, so, under this new sexual philosophy, one's gender need bear no relationship to one's biologically-determined sex.

Again, whether one wants to have the gender of a man, or the gender of the woman, or in between (a bizarre gender called bigender or genderqueer), or anywhere within that wide continuum is one's choice.

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If we add the notion of sex to the notion of gender, we can get all sorts of combinations, sort of like dog breeders can get breed labradoodles and pekepoos.

Ignoring the problems associated with continuum between sex and gender classifications, one can up to nine combination (male/man, male/woman, male/bigender, female/woman, female/man, female/bigender, intersex/man, intersex/woman, intersex/bigender).

Yet this is still not enough freedom from the body for the radical proponents of this philosophy.  There is also this concept called "gender expression" that must be taken into account.

Gender expression is the liberty to express your gender to others, so that you can control the gender of how others perceive you.  If you are a man and want to wear a dress and high heels so that others think you a woman, why, whatever floats your boat, or, perhaps better, whatever tickles your fancy (since all is fancy).

In the matter of gender expression, the ends of this continuum are masculine at one end, feminine on the other end, with androgyny in the middle.

Presumably, then, one can be by sex a he, by gender identity a "she," but have as a gender expression the desire to show oneself a "he."  This is where someone born a man, who identifies with the opposite gender, but wants others to think him to be a man fits in.

Taking this into account and again ignoring the problem of the continuum, we have a total of 27 possible combinations.  We are approaching Legion.

But this farce gets a bit more complicated when sexual orientation is added to the mix.  Here, the purveyors of sexual autonomy not only insist in the liberty of choosing their gender (and how it is to be expressed), but also liberty in choosing their sexual orientation, that is, how (and with whom) they wish to express themselves erotically or sexually.

Here, all sorts of variety and combinations exist, but the advocates of this sexual philosophy use such categories such as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, and even asexual.  (Some, presumably the more emancipated ones, think that this categorization is still too restrictive.) 

But taking a "traditional" approach, you can have a he that wants to be a "she," and then chooses to express himself to others as a "he," but then wants to express his new "she-ness" (which is expressed as "he-ness") by having sex with a she.  Such a person would have the male sex, a female gender identity, a masculine gender expression, and a (from the perspective of his/her gender identity) homosexual orientation (since this he, who thinks he's a "she," likes sex with shes), though from a sex perspective, he would be heterosexual (since by sex he is a he).

Or, to be a little less subdued, we potentially can have a he that wants to be a "she," then chooses to express himself to others as a "he," but then wants express erotically his "she-ness" by having sex with a she that wants to be a "he," and who likes to express herself to others as a "she," yet chooses to express her new "he-ness" by having sex with a he that wants to be a "she," who likes to have others think he is a "he," and yet chooses to express his new "she-ness" erotically by having sex with him.  (I'm not sure I got that right, but I'm kind of new to this way of thinking.)

So now, if you take the three sexes, the three genders, the three gender expressions, and the six sexual orientations, you have the delightfully chaotic mix of 162 varieties.  Again, this is not considering the virtual infinite varieties that can exist if you take into account that we are dealing with continuums.  For example, I've heard some people say that they are 20% homosexual and 80% heterosexual.

Oh Gender, you are Legion!

This is all quite bizarre, and hardly based upon natural reality.  It is a recipe for sexual chaos and psychological and spiritual disaster, but, in addition to that, it has consequences far beyond individuals.

This is not a game.

It is calculated to destroy not only male and female sexual complementarity, but to destroy marriage and families which rely on this complementarity. 

"Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed" by this new sexual philosophy without basis in nature Pope Benedict XVI taught.

"But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation," Pope Benedict XVI observes, "then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation."

Ultimately, this sexual irresponsibility comes down to harm children because under this aberrant philosophy of sex, "the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him." 

The reason for this is that the child's status is changed.  It is changed "from being a subject of rights," rights which are found in nature within the complementarity of man and woman and family life whose nucleus is the marriage of one man and one woman.  Instead of this, the child is transformed to being "an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain."

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Ultimately, this new philosophy of sexuality is a rebellion against creation and against creation's God.  Under the guise of sexual and gender freedom, it dissolves the very foundation underlying the dignity of man.

"When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself," even against nature, "then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being."

As Christians, we must insist on the realities of nature and fight the new gnosticism and dualism found in this dualistic sexual philosophy that distinguishes between sex and gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

In so doing, we are defending God's truth, reason, and the family, which is defending man himself.  Pope Benedict XVI, who first-hand saw the evils of the Godless Nazi regime, ought to be heard when he warns that it is "clear that when God" or his creation "is denied, human dignity also disappears."  "Whoever defends God," or nature, "is defending man."

Conversely, whoever fights against God or nature is destroying man. 

This new philosophy of sex and gender is the bane of mankind.  Catholics must, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI to the members of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum in January 19, 2013, say a "great 'yes' to the dignity and beauty of marriage as an expression of the faithful and fruitful covenant between man and woman." 

In so doing, they necessarily must say a great "'no' to gender philosophies, because the reciprocity between male and female is an expression of the beauty of nature willed by the Creator."

Saying yes to the good, necessarily means saying no to evil.  In such instances, the "no" stands for something affirmative.

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Andrew M. Greenwell is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas, practicing in Corpus Christi, Texas.  He is married with three children.  He maintains a blog entirely devoted to the natural law called Lex Christianorum.  You can contact Andrew at agreenwell@harris-greenwell.com.

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