The Public Broadcasting System, supported by our tax dollars, shows documentaries that sometimes are very good and sometimes very bad. The Frontline special, “Growing Up Trans” initially reached millions when it was broadcast nationwide. Now it has been viewed by nearly three-quarters of a million times on the internet.
Bottom line: it’s propaganda pushing transgenderism under the guise of education. In my entire five decades of vocational ministry I’ve never seen something so reprehensible.
Currently we’re in the midst of an explosive movement and national debate on transgenderism. Even though the American College of Pediatricians has gone on record labeling this ideology “child abuse,” some woke politicians and “enlightened” medical personnel promise success if we follow their advice. Their promise of better families and a more holistic society by yielding to their wisdom is seductive and pernicious. Why? Because it runs counter to God’s design for the family.
Joe Biden recently said, “Our entire administration sees you transgenders for who are, ‘made in the image of God’ and deserving dignity, respect and support.” He conveniently omits the rest of the Bible verse, which states, “male and female, He created them” (Gen. 1:27).
We’ve arrived at a place of moral insanity where our culture is unraveling because we’ve abandoned God’s absolute truth. Simply read Romans 1:18–31 to see the downward spiral of people who “suppress the truth … become futile in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise they became fools … dishonor their own bodies … God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not proper.”
This is an accurate description of our rapidly declining society. Demanding open access to bathrooms and showers, 0.06% of the population is supposedly “transgender” now and demand their “rights” as 99.94% of us ask, “What about our sons’ and daughters’ privacy and safety rights?”
Because some politicians, parents and medical personnel are no longer upholding time-honored biblical standards, we’re finding multitudes of moms and dads emotionally manipulated by children who are struggling with their identity and wanting to experiment with what is currently “cool.” And in the name of “non-discrimination” and “inclusion,” politicians, pop culture celebrities and “woke” corporations like Disney and Crayola are steering us down a path to destruction.
3 Biblically Informed Insights on Deceptive PBS Documentary
1. In the past there was a minuscule minority of confused adults who explored “transitioning” their gender but today we are catering to and celebrating children pondering this possibility. Conceding there is a miniscule percentage of people with chromosomal disorders, let’s keep in mind that children have wild imaginations, are immature and extremely impressionable.
When a young girl who is uncomfortable with her body stares at computer images of handsome young guys with flawless bodies and fantasizes about having that type of body image, should it surprise us that her imagination takes her down the path of changing into a boy?
Parents who foolishly allow their children to watch videos unsupervised on YouTube and TikTok internet sites that encourage transgender lifestyles for children need to wake up! Young “Trans” instructors encouraging onlookers on the “how to’s” of hormone injections, voice alteration and breast removal are dangerous manipulative propagandists.
Parents have a responsibility to monitor their children’s input. A gullible child needs parental supervision and guidance not unrestricted access to computer images and unbiblical concepts. Children in the documentary should have been instructed in no uncertain terms: This is not normal, natural or worthy of exploring.
2. When a 9-year-old boy thinks he’d be happier as a girl and wants to dress up and take on a permanent female identity, parents can’t be passive or “supportive.” They need to be involved in shaping and steering their child aligned with their biological makeup. Scripture instructs us, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).
In the program a little boy demanded that his parents and his grandparent call him a different Disney girl character every day to help him transition to being a girl. Bowing down to his royal majesty, every day of the week the adults in his life reinforced his distorted thinking by obeying his command by calling him “Snow White, Tinkerbelle, Cinderella, Ariel.” The mom also succumbed to letting the little boy dress regularly as a girl. Does it surprise you what transpired?
It is tragic to witness misinformed and misled parents reneging on their God-given role. It’s also sad to hear such fatalistic remarks when we serve a living God who transforms lives and can rescue us from deception and destruction.
3. Since the overwhelming majority of children in gender confusion (gender dysphoria) do not continue in this wayward path, parents must stand strong against politicians and some medical authorities pushing treatments to solve the problem. Subjecting boys to chemical castration and girls to hormones blocking periods and puberty is extremely dangerous and mostly irreversible. In Deut. 23:1 God prohibits “gender bending” and “genital removal.”
Observing a 13-year-old girl filling out consent forms to release medical personnel from lawsuits involving potential cancer, fertility problems, ovarian cancer, hair loss, mood change, depression, stroke, suicide and other serious ailments broke my heart. What happens when the child comes to his or her senses and wants to reverse course later in life?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently warned that puberty blockers can cause various side effects in children, including brain swelling and permanent vision loss. Plus, the rates of suicide among adults who use cross–sex hormones and undergo sex change reassignment surgery are ‘twenty times greater’ than the rest of the population even in such trans-friendly places as Sweden.
The program ended with an example of a transgender support group. Twenty young people sat affirming each other, laughing about their gender reassignment surgery and “new parts.” I paused the program at this point and had to stop and pray because I couldn’t go on with the pernicious propaganda.
Jesus Christ soberly warned us about mistreatment of children in Matthew 18:6. He stated, “But whoever misleads one of these little ones who believe in Me, it would be better for him to have a millstone hung about his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” While I pray for Biden every day, I, like you, should be grieved by his obsession with the LGBTQ agenda, especially transgenderism. His appointment of the biological male who tells us he’s now a woman (Rachel Levine) to be his highly visible Assistant Secretary for Health shows where his heart is on promoting the issue.
In a recent letter, Dr. James Dobson communicated with America his alarm at what the Biden administration is doing to destroy the fabric of America. He said, “The worst offender seeking to pervert and harm our kids is not a corporation or a school board. It’s our current president and his administration…Biden and his administrative agencies are determined to push America totally off its moral ledge as they take full aim at dismantling the mental, physical and spiritual welfare of our children.”
Yes, God help us at this crossroad of our nation’s history.