Are you a he,” or a “she”?

Do your gender and your sex agree?

These might seem like odd, almost absurd questions. And yet they are the very questions that many college students are wrestling with. For example, Skylar Crownover is a female attending Mills College in California, an all-girls school. She is the president of “Mouthing Off!” a campus group for LGBT students seeking to vent their frustrations. Each week when they meet they being by stating their name and the preferred gender pronoun they would like to be identified with throughout the meeting.

Skylar told one interviewer that she prefers to be addressed with the singular “they,” though she will answer to “he.” When asked how she got into an all-girls school if she does not identify as a female she said, “the application asks you to mark your sex and I did. It didn’t ask me for my gender.”

Skylar is just one of many people that are beginning to believe it is possible to divorce your gender and biological sex. In a twisted game of semantics they are seeking to separate two inseparable aspects of human sexuality. While Skylar and her friends play word games the reality is that gender and sex are one in the same.

The very fact that some applications will ask a person to list their “sex” and then list choices such as male or female, while another will list the same choices and ask a person to list their “gender” is a small bit of proof that only until recently did anyone even consider the two separately.

To be clear, we are talking about the inseparable nature of the terms sex and gender as applied to the biological makeup of a person. I do recognize that a person can have a specific gender identity while holding to another sexual orientation. But that is another discussion for another time.

The Washington Times reported on this linguistic side-show recently, stating:

“On high school and college campuses and in certain political and social media circles, the growing visibility of a small, but semantically committed cadre of young people who, like Crownover, self-identify as ‘genderqueer’ — neither male nor female but an androgynous hybrid or rejection of both — is challenging anew the limits of Western comprehension and the English language. Though still in search of mainstream acceptance, students and staff members who describe themselves in terms such as agender, bigender, third gender or gender-fluid are requesting — and sometimes finding — linguistic recognition.”

This is yet another chapter in the war on sexual ethics our society is facing. Where once logic, common sense, and even faith played a part in determining how we understand sex and sexuality; such things have been replaced with inferior notions based purely on subjective opinion. That’s easy to prove. At one time the world recognized only two genders. Not because we are discriminatory or narrow minded, but simply because based on biology there can be no more than two genders. With this in mind we logically concluded that a person was either male or female. If you are not one, you must be the other.

But in the new world of sexuality and sexual ethics we’ve replaced logic and common sense based on biology with opinions based on feelings, perceptions, and cultural trends. Now a person might be a male one day but just as easily declare himself to be a female the next. Rather than be concerned for the mental state of such a person we are supposed to cheer how “brave” and “courageous” such a person is. The new sex and sexuality ethics demand not mere tolerance of such a person, but celebration. The end result of such confused notions of sexuality is a loss of sexuality. Rather than creating an environment for strong families, where parents raise strong men and women; we’ve created an environment for cultural confusion that produces sexually inferior adults tainted by cultural depictions of sexuality.

From a Christian perspective I see no way around the conclusion that humans were created “male and female.” From beginning to end the Bible calls men and women to biblical masculinity and femininity. This calling agrees with an understanding of sexuality that concludes there is but male and female and sex and gender are one and the same. Any other conclusion is surely missing the mark of God’s intended purpose for men and women. Any other definition of sexuality and marriage distorts the image of Christ in people and the picture of Christ and His church intended to be seen in marriage.

This war on sex and sexuality is taking place across nearly every landscape the world over. Sadly, under the current administration, America is seeking to force other smaller, weaker nations to abandon their traditions and religious convictions and accept efforts to redefine sex, sexuality, and marriage.

Thankfully many scholars, academics, pastors, and parents still adhere to a logical, common sense (even Biblical) view of sex, sexuality, and marriage. Many of these scholars work diligently to defend a proper view of sexual ethics.

I find the situation of Skylar and others like her heartbreaking. For anyone to wrestle with confusion on a biological level and be affirmed in that confusion rather than lovingly counseled with transcendent truth is sad. This is more evidence that self-image is a powerful aspect of humanity and it has been abused and distorted by a culture that does little more than consume. I hope someone around Skylar will reach out with compassion and love her enough to be honest.

Perhaps if parents sought to be honest with their kids regularly we would see the number of “confused” kids decline. They are going to be affirmed by pop-culture and politically correct groups with an agenda. That doesn’t mean parents have to cave to such pressure and affirm the confusion. A parent’s influence is still greater than any other and should be leveraged to the fullest. For parents the only agenda should be the well-being of their children.