Man, oh man.
Sorry, was that a gender-biased way to start this column?
Oh boy.
Well, I just did it again.
Is there anything inherently wrong with saying something that uses a word for one gender but not another? It seems pretty silly, really, but that’s essentially what started the misnomered “feminism.” It all began back in the 1970s when common sense ideas got out of hand. The real message was and is that somehow men and women aren’t really meant to play out the gender roles that our Creator established for us.
The feminist movement laid the foundation for every other gender-based “civil rights” movement that has come since, including all of the current issues about LGBT rights, same-sex marriage, and even small fringe (so far) movements to legalize polygamy or ban marriage altogether.
Earlier this month the editor-in-chief of the Kentucky Kernel urged the University of Kentucky to change all campus bathrooms into gender-neutral facilities. We’re all grown-ups, his argument essentially went, so having a bowel movement in the same room as someone of the opposite sex isn’t a big deal.
This misguided gentleman isn’t a lone voice. He’s the latest echo of a growing movement to require gender-neutral bathrooms in every public space (and some private one). New York is considering legislation that would require businesses to offer gender-neutral bathrooms. If you live in Seattle, you may know that all public single-stall bathrooms must now be gender neutral.
And the University of Tennessee’s Pride Center is urging all students to stop using pronouns such as “his” and “her.” Instead, we are to use “ze.”
So are these changes bad? Should we all just “grow up” and get over it?
What does God say about it? Well, one of the first things He said about anything at all was this: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). He then called His creation “very good.”
On the gender-neutral (or all-gender) bathroom situation, most of them apply only to single-stall bathrooms. That means only one person can be in them at a time anyway, like a port-a-potty. That’s not really a big deal.
This, though, is the problem: These individual incidents and issues in and of themselves really are a little trivial. However, taken as a whole the big picture is clear: Gender roles are being diminished and eliminated, slowly and steadily. That’s why Franklin Graham came out against Target dropping its grouping of toys by gender. Quoting Matthew 19:4, Graham quoted Jesus, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female.”
It’s not about girls playing with trucks. It’s about the order set up by God when He created the world and how He intended us to manage it until Jesus returns. Men and women were created different and are different. God made us male and female, and, to quote the Bible, it was “very good.”
This is the stickiest of subjects in our modern times, but we each must decide whether the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God or not. If so, then two set genders are clearly established.
Gender neutrality is definitely and clearly in opposition to a biblical worldview. These small steps are part of a very large and slippery slope that we are already sliding down. We can’t get caught up in the trees, or we’ll be forever lost in the forest.
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