gender identity

Nothing Says Woman Quite Like a Dress

I emerged from the womb thrilled to be a girl! I tell you, I came into the world wearing the sweetest little dress with black patent leather shoes and a matching handbag. Similar to the surprise, exhilaration, and gratitude one feels at being chosen for the most favorite part in the school play, from my earliest … Read more

Losing Our Identity

Dear Swillpit, Have you noticed how obsessed earthlings have become with protecting their personal information for fear of identity theft, oblivious to the fact that they’ve been losing their identity long before the digital age? There was a time when they accepted their humanness as something innate, immutable, and ennn-dowed. Ulckk! That word never fails … Read more

Navigating the Confused State Of Manhood

To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions. Boys, though, have been left behind. No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to “be a man”—we no … Read more

God is Not the Author of Confusion

Two “diversity consultants” recently visited my college to instruct the administrators about, among other things, the harm of assuming what is now called “heteronormativity.” “Have you not read,” says the Lord to the Pharisees who had wanted to catch him saying something erroneous about divorce, “that in the beginning God made them male and female? … Read more

Personal Identity is Not Chosen

Brexit and the Trump movement, with their emphasis on the decisive importance of national identity, show that explicit identity politics has spread to all points of the political compass. That’s not surprising, since identity is radically contested today. The questions relate not only to who gets placed where, or the common concerns of this group or … Read more

Why Attractions and Emotions Become “Identities”

For years to come, a range of experts and armchair analysts will likely argue about the origins of same-sex attraction and “gender” confusion and to what extent either counts as a psychological disorder. But there is one aspect of the LGBTQ(etc.) phenomenon that, it seems to me, is beyond dispute: basing identity on attractions and … Read more

Gender Dysphoria and Hope

“Oh my God. I’m home. All the time … you finally really did it. You maniacs. You blew it up. Damn you. G-d damn you all to hell.” Wearing only a loincloth and a look of despair Charlton Heston slides off his horse and falls to his knees. Still on the horse sits a beautiful … Read more

How Choice Replaced Human Nature

The age of Jenner, Obergefell, and #BlackLivesMatter puts issues of identity at the center of public life. As Catholics and citizens we need to understand what that means. Personal identity orients us in the world. As such, it has both individual and social functions. It enables us to order our lives by telling us what we … Read more

Saint Nero, Patron of Gay Marriage

Regard this essay as a qualified mea culpa. I have long maintained that there is no point in arguing against “gay marriage,” because there are no arguments for it. To argue that a “homosexual” has no right to marry another man is not unlike arguing that a unicorn has no right to be a computer … Read more

Preaching About Bruce Jenner?

Over at First Things, Presbyterian Peter Leithart ponders whether or not Bruce Jenner’s sex change should be addressed from the pulpit. While acknowledging that “[t]here are good arguments for ignoring the whole thing,” Leithart maintains that doing so is a “pastoral mistake.” I agree. There is a certain mentality in the Church that thinks (believes? hopes? … Read more

Same-sex “Marriage” and the Persecution of Christians in Canada

Canada legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2005, the fourth country in the world to do so. During the rushed public debate that preceded legalization, the Christian and traditional understanding of marriage as the union of a man and a woman had strong support. Polls showed a deep split among Canadians, and the majority (52 percent) were … Read more

The Protohomosexual

Why are so many straight people pro gay? Because the normalization of homosexuality is the premier achievement of heterosexual ideology. “Gay” and “straight” are not taxonomies but ideologies. They are not orientations but disorientations: whether bi-, homo-, or hetero-, hyphenated sexuality makes us lose our sense of direction toward the truly sexual, and the victims … Read more

The Left vs. Human Nature

The Left does not like the idea of human nature. It tells them they are not free to do what they want. From a factual perspective, it tells them people do not change much, so the way things were in the past is mostly how they will be in the future. From a moral perspective, … Read more

Pope Francis Defends Human Nature Against Gender Radicals

Disappointing progressives yet again, Pope Francis has now condemned contemporary gender theory as denying “the order of creation.” In an interview published in a new book, Pope Francis: This Economy Kills, by Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, (portions of which were also published last month in the Italian daily La Stampa), Pope Francis appears to reject … Read more

Is “Gay” Just Another Adjective?

In the current debate about the wisdom of the proposals being made by those who call themselves “gay celibate Christians,” many find a problem with their self-identification as being gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer or anything other than their God given male or female natures. The usual response they give to their critics is that those … Read more

Gender: A Word Worth Saving?

I have been largely skeptical about efforts to revive words or ideas that the left has either invented or eventually swamped. Take feminism, for instance. Even John Paul II talking about the New Feminism made some of us itchy. How can you make nectar out of something that was poison to begin with? For the … Read more

Don’t Say Gender When You Mean Sex

For many years now, I have pondered the use of the word “gender.” Before I began my work on same-sex attraction and wrote the book One Man, One Woman, I spent 9 years studying “gender” and wrote a book on the subject (The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality). Originally, “sex” was an inclusive term, which referred … Read more

Sex: Our Greatest Natural Resource

Sexual differentiation is our greatest natural resource. The fact that Adam and Eve are not identical, but corresponding, is not just a part of God’s creation. It is the best part. The fruitful tension between husband and wife, the unity-in-diversity of humanity, along with its vital outcome of children, is how continuity and diversity are … Read more

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