Staring into an abyss

Intense footage has been coming out of New Hampshire and Wisconsin as lawmakers hear clashing testimonies over proposed legislation banning all forms of transgender “care” for minors. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed such legislation before and is set to do so again. But New Hampshire could recover more ground for sanity under Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed a ban on trans surgery for minors last year.

Witnesses supporting the bans have included medical experts, concerned parents, and young people with their own stories of dysphoria and detransition. All were calm and incisive. By contrast, the opposition speeches from gender-confused youth and their parents have been more like rants. (Watch the full New Hampshire hearings here.) One mother protested through tears, “I did not force my child into this. Why would I? Why would I subject my child to this?” Using plural pronouns for her 8-year-old child, she insisted she just “listened to what they started telling me from the first time they started speaking sentences.”

Another New Hampshire mom spoke alongside her 13-year-old daughter, who was born with a rare syndrome affecting her body’s natural production of sex hormones. But instead of taking estrogen and going through female puberty, she’s demanded testosterone. “This bill seeks to destroy my family values,” the mother asserted. In Wisconsin, a mother and father took the stand with their 15-year-old daughter to insist that testosterone treatment “saved her life.”

The most explosive testimony came from a woman who seethed through two separate speeches about how her daughter “came out” at age 15 and has no “top surgery” regret ten years later. She asserted that she “believe[s] in science” as a registered nurse, then lambasted people implicitly comparing her to abusive parents who mutilate their children’s bodies. “How dare you?” she fumed. “Do not compare me to one of those people.” She also mocked a woman as “stupid” for pointing out that women without breasts can’t breastfeed.

These parents embody what journalist Helen Joyce presciently articulated two years ago in a viral interview clip: Transgender activism might be dying, but it’s not going to go down without a bitter fight, because for some parents, it’s personal. They aren’t just trying to earn social credit with the left. They resist the truth because they can’t admit they have done the unthinkable.

Two young detransitioned women had to share their testimony through friends and loved ones because they were too sick to make the journey, as a direct result of their “affirming care.” Friends of Prisha Mosley shared that she literally had a mental breakdown on the plane. (Read WORLD’s coverage of Prisha’s case here and here.) A woman on testosterone passingly acknowledged their stories but insisted the treatment had to be available for the sake of people like her. In an especially telling moment, she even agreed that the surgery “is not going to solve all your problems.” “You’re just chopping your [breasts] off,” she admitted bluntly. “That’s what it is. That’s what we all know it is.” But she wanted it, and that’s the end of it. Compare with essayist Andrea Long Chu’s concession that his surgery “Won’t Make Me Happy,” followed by the assertion that “it shouldn’t have to.”

This is the abyss that yawns before the mother or the father who has ushered a child through irreversible, body-wrecking procedures. It’s no wonder so many of them angrily turn away, just like so many mothers and fathers who have aborted their unborn children.

But Christians must be different, because we are the only ones who can face the abyss and not be swallowed up in it. We have something distinctive to say to those guilty mothers, just as we have something distinctive to say to the broken young people these wicked treatments are leaving behind. A number of the people boldly testifying on their behalf weren’t believers, and we can be very thankful for their courageous co-belligerence. Yet without the grammar of Christianity, we can merely diagnose this deep sickness, not heal it. We can bring the righteous judgment of the law, but we can’t offer the good news of the gospel. 

In the end, only Christians can confront the worst kind of human carnage, the worst kind of sin, and tell the truth about it—the whole truth. The whole truth that yes, you may have destroyed your body in this life, but you were also created in the image of a loving God who desires to raise you again in a new, incorruptible body. The whole truth that you may have committed the most unspeakable crime against your own child, but Christ died even for this. The whole truth that sin runs deep, but His shed blood runs deeper still.