Simon Cox Blog: Where Evangelicals Stand on Transgender Morality

Thursday, 14 July 2016

Where Evangelicals Stand on Transgender Morality

LifeWay Research looks at how Americans feel about changing genders.

As politicians debate restroom access, employment protection, insurance coverage, and military service for transgender people, questions of morality have emerged.

Is it morally permissible for a doctor to remove healthy organs? Is it acceptable to give puberty-delaying drugs to children who feel gender conflict? Is it ethical for society to require people to live as one gender if they identify strongly with the other?

Most Americans with evangelical beliefs would say no, according to the latest survey from LifeWay Research.

LifeWay asked 1,000 Americans whether they thought that changing one’s gender or identifying with a different gender is morally wrong. Respondents also had the option to select “it’s not a moral issue.”

Overall, more than half of Americans (54%) said it was wrong to switch genders by taking hormones or having surgery.

Evangelical believers are almost twice as likely (61%) as non-evangelicals (32%) to say using surgery or hormones to change birth gender is morally wrong. Compared to evangelicals, significantly fewer Catholics (29%), those of non-Christian faiths (41%), or the nonreligious (21%) believe it’s wrong to alter gender by medical means.

Excluding evangelical believers, three-quarters of Americans cite no moral qualms about changing gender identification.

That’s because Americans don’t see moral significance in being born male or female, said LifeWay Research executive director Scott McConnell.

“A majority of Americans reject the view of a creator giving them a gender that shouldn’t be changed,” he said. “We freely change many things about ourselves—we have cosmetic surgery, we use teeth whitener, we dye our hair, we get tattoos. ...