So a 69-year-old Dutch man wants to reduce his age by 20 years. Emile Ratelband has launched a legal battle to change his birthday from 11 March 1949 to 11 March 1969.
I guess that most people would greet this news with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders. After all, “there’s nowt as strange as folk”.
But look at Ratelband’s reasoning:- “We live in a time when you can change your name and change your gender.…
I don’t often expect to be in agreement with Robert M. Price. But, looking for something else on his blog, I found this:-
…‘I view the burgeoning gender confusion, as I consider it, a major symptom of the dissolution of Western culture and civilization. Various factors are fragmenting the “sacred canopy” of values and beliefs that historically hold any society together, providing a common identity. Definitions of marriage and family, together with wise child-rearing, are rapidly eroding.
Egalitarians often complain: ‘When you complementarians claim that women and men are “equal but different”, you really mean “unequal and different”.’
This is a charge that must be taken seriously.
But what says Scripture?
In Gen 2:18, ‘the woman is called the man’s helper; not the other way around. From a fair reading of Genesis 2, it doesn’t seem that male-female roles are reversible.’ (Kostenberger, AJ & ME, God’s Design for Man and Woman.
In their commentary on Genesis 2:18, Bruce Waltke and Cathi Fredricks, while affirming the essential equality of the man and the woman, suggest that role of the latter as ‘helper’ to the former does imply a certain structure of relationship. …
As noted recently by Sam Hailes on the Premier Christianity blog, issues relating to transgenderism have been hitting the news with considerable frequency:-
Transport for London recently announced they’d no longer use the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” when making public announcements. TFL said the phrase was “outdated” and “belonging to yesterday”.
Last month a Canadian transsexual refused to give their baby a gender. Kori Doty complained the baby had not been issued a birth certificate because officials say a gender of either male or female must be registered.…
Children as young as three are being asked what gender they identify with.
Parents in Brighton and Hove who are seeking a place for their children in primary school, have been asked to ‘support your child to choose the gender they most identify with or if they have another gender identity please leave this blank and discuss this with your child’s school.’
Read a more detailed report, along with some thoughtful comments from one of the parents, here. …
Transgender people believe that their gender identity does not match their biological sex. The spotlight is now very much on the extension of human rights to this group of people. Recently, the debate in the US has been around whether people be allowed to use the public bathroom of their choice.
As Trevin Wax observes:- ‘the unmooring of “gender identity” from “biological sex” leads to a number of unresolved questions, as well as troubling inconsistencies among advocates of transgender rights.’…
It is argued by many that God is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we are not at liberty to tamper with divine revelation simply in order to satisfy our liturgical needs or to bow to cultural pressures. Maternal images of the Godhead do occur in Scripture, Num 11:11-12; Deut 32:18; Isa 42:14; 46:3-4; 66:7-9; Hos 11:3f; 13:8; Mt 23:37; Lk 13:20f; 15:8-10. Are these sufficiently numerous or weighty for us to demand that liturgical language be either inclusive or gender-free?…
