Nowhere is this battle more pronounced today than in the rise of the transgender movement. It is the front lines in Satan's scheme to deface and destroy the image of God that is stamped into our personhood, sexuality, marriages, children and families.

The problem is, most transgender (TG) people are unaware of the forces that drive them in unhealthy directions.

Forces of Confusion

There exists today a convergence of entities that collude with one another to promote dangerous and damaging lifestyles & identities, (such as homosexual and transgendered), as being natural and healthy alternatives to what they dismissively refer to as an antiquated "male-female binary" -- the idea that there are only two genders.

Entity #1 is a Wealthy & Powerful LGBT Movement (which for most of its history distanced itself from TG people) but who now see it as a cause that can be harnessed to increase their wealth, power and influence. (The Human Rights Campaign alone - sometimes referred to as "Big Gay" - brings in approximately $40 million each year, pays out more than $11 million in salaries, and spends more than a quarter of a million dollars every year on lobbying Congress). This is the same movement that once embraced pedophile and pederast groups like NAMBLA, allowing them to march in their "Gay Pride Parades" until several decades ago when it became politically inconvenient to do so. They have since focused on reducing the age of consent for sex acts with minors and changing the language of "child abuse" to "man-boy love", as more publicly acceptable ways for achieving the same goal.

Entity #2 is Wealthy & Powerful Professional Guilds, (such as the American Psychiatric Association & the American Psychological Association), who ceased using science as the foundation for their mental health diagnoses when they began caving to pressure from homosexual activists 45 years ago. It began in 1973, when gay activists began attacking the meetings of the APA committee that decides what disorders appear in their official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The attacks continued until committee members (three of whom were secretly homosexual) relented and removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. The decision was not based on any science or new studies. It was based on fear and intimidation.

In a poll several years later (1979), the vast majority of APA members (69%) disagreed with the decision but were ignored. Today you can lose your license if you disagree with the decision -- a threat that forces therapists to keep their mouths shut. For example, when Pure Passion Media attempted to interview therapists for its new documentary (TranZformed: Finding Peace with Your God-Given Gender), only one could be found (the late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi) to go on camera to talk about the dangers of promoting transgenderism.

Entity #3 is The Media -- Ephesians 2:2 tells us that Satan is the "ruler of the kingdom of the air". Almost all of TV, (including PBS), film & theatre, much of radio, (including NPR), as well as most newspapers & magazines have thrown themselves wholesale into promoting this great deception - partly because the media is riddled with LGBT people who pull strings from within, but also as a result of the agenda laid out by Marshall Kirk & Hunter Madsen (in their book, After the Ball) which was a manifesto for how to manipulate the culture so that it becomes pro-gay & pro-trans. Their scheme has worked so well that any reporter who dares to report on the actual science related to such issues will be vilified and almost certainly fired for daring to be politically incorrect.

Entity #4 is Public Organizations like government, education, the AMA, public schools, colleges & libraries, etc. which have likewise been pressured and deceived into promoting sexually immoral agendas. Today you have gay & trans activists welcomed into elementary schools to teach children how to perform the most perverted of sexual acts, how to transition to the opposite sex, and worse. One recent trans activist actually encouraged a group of very young children to become drag queens while he danced around the room in his make-up, wig and glittery dress.

Entity #5 is The False Church -- a conglomeration of mainline denominations that have been taken over by nonbelieving liberals and gay/trans activists in order to provide religious cover for the doctrines of demons that they promulgate. Although they do not themselves believe in the authority of Scripture, they invent twisted versions of it in order to sow theological confusion among those who turn to them for divine guidance. As Kirk & Madsen proposed in their gay manifesto: "Use talk to muddy the moral waters......raise theological objections about conservative interpretations of biblical teachings......undermine the moral authority of [conservative churches] by portraying them as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times......set science and public opinion against institutional religion". But take heed, as the Apostle Paul warned in Acts 20:29-30: "After I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them."

Entity #6 is a Deceived Public that continues to vote the deceivers into office, whether in government, on school boards, professional associations or elsewhere. As a result, those parents who have children who present as homosexual or transgender and who naturally turn to the world's experts for guidance are deceived into accepting and encouraging the world's fallen agenda. They want to do the right thing for their child and naively assume that cultural experts know what they are talking about, but it turns into the blind leading the blind.
Pedophilia and pederasty are the next frontier on the activist agenda. Already they have succeeded in having the wording in the APAs DSM changed so that pedophilia is now considered a disorder only if it causes distress to the perpetrator.

This same kind of semantic sleight of hand has been used to rename "gender identity disorder" as "gender dysphoria" -- again playing on the idea that it is disordered only if it causes distress to the transgendered person.

Current American Psychiatric Association Definitions

"Transgender" (TG) is a non-medical, umbrella term describing individuals whose gender identity or expression is at odds with the genetic sex with which they were born - now referred to as "gender dysphoria".

In modern parlance, however, transgendered individuals include transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, and (incorrectly) intersex individuals.

TG conditions are independent of sexual orientation.

Transsexual is a medical term that refers to individuals who have undergone some form of medical or surgical treatment for sex reassignment. But in modern use, the term also includes those who want treatment but are unable to get it, for one reason or another.

Transvestism or cross-dressing is a term that defines people who derive erotic pleasure from dressing as the opposite sex, but in modern parlance, it includes those who do so whether it causes erotic pleasure or not.

NOT included are those who dress as the opposite sex for political reasons (such as "Joan of Arc") or for reasons related to their job (such as "Queen Hatshepsut" who donned male clothing and a false beard in order to rule Egypt in 1503 B.C.).

Drag queens (or kings) are people who dress as the opposite sex for the purpose of entertainment. Some are true transvestites, but others (such as Milton Berle, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Flip Wilson, Tim Curry & others) have done so simply for laughs.

Some drag queens are driven by a desire to mock the opposite sex by exaggerating their sexuality, but others do it simply for the acceptance that it brings them from a very enthusiastic clientele.

A Brief Trans-History

In the beginning, God made human beings in His image, male and female He created them. He commanded them to multiply through sexual union in a lifelong covenantal relationship with a member of the opposite sex -- one that was to prefigure the relationship that Christ would eventually have with His Church (Ephesians 5:22-32).
When they sinned, however, the entire creation fell - all of it - both man and nature. Man's heart was darkened and he began to worship the creature rather than the Creator (Genesis 3; Romans 1:18-32).
Hatred, war and sexual immorality ensued. The very DNA of man became corrupt. Sickness and disease spread across the earth. Lifespans shortened. Babies died in childbirth and others were born with defects.

The vast majority of mankind lost all knowledge of the Creator, so they invented mythical gods who reflected their own corruption.

Reports from the Ancient Past

To explain the birth of those born with sexual malformities, mythical gods were invented who shared similar defects. According to Roman historian Plutarch, Cybele was one of the earliest intersex deities -- an ancient Phrygian god referred to as "Mother of the Gods" who was worshipped with orgiastic rites in the mountains of Anatolia, and later, Greece and Rome. Depictions of her can be found in artifacts dating back to the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Babylonia.

According to the myth, Cybele was born with both male and female sex organs and characteristics - an hermaphrodite according to Greek mythology.

The Roman poet, Ovid, later wrote that Hermaphroditus, (from whom the term is derived), was fashioned by the gods when they merged the son of Aphrodite and Hermes with the water nymph, Salmacis. Ever since, according to myth, hermaphrodites have long been a symbol of androgyny or effeminacy, and have been portrayed in Greco-Roman art as female figures with male genitals.

In the myth, Cybele's beautiful young friend, Attis, castrates himself in order to found a priesthood for her, called the Galli. Various ancient Roman sources refer to the Galli as a middle or third gender.
After Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century A.D., St Augustine wrote of seeing Galli "parading though the squares and streets of Carthage, with oiled hair and powdered faces, languid limbs and feminine gait."

Jewish rabbinic literature refers to two classes of intersex people.
- The Tumtum are persons whose sex is unknown, because their genitalia are hidden. There is a state of doubt about whether they are male or female.
- The Androgynos, on the other hand, are individuals who possess both male and female genitalia and/or characteristics.

These were not to be confused with Eunuchs, who were castrated pagan priests or temple prostitutes.
Historically, such intersex individuals have been considered the sex that seems to prevail in their behavior.

"Intersex" Conditions are Not TG Conditions

Today we define "Intersex" persons as those whose sex characteristics, including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals, are abnormal. They constitute between .5 and 1.5% of the population.
The most common intersex condition is Klinefelter's Syndrome, where the sex chromosomes display in variant ways such as XXY, instead of the normal XX or XY. This results in one or more abnormalities during sexual development, such as infertility.

Despite claims by trans-activists to the contrary, most of the ancient references to behaviors that appear to cross normal sexual identity boundaries are for what we now call "intersex" individuals.

Modern TG History in Brief

It was in the early 20th century that a handful of doctors began performing crude sex reassignment surgeries, the most famous of which was on Danish painter, Einar Wegener, who suffered through multiple surgeries in the 1930s in an attempt to become a woman and conceive a child. His story was retold in the 2015 film, The Danish Girl, starring Eddie Redmayne. Wegener died as a result of his fifth surgery.

In the 1940s, Dorothy Tipton lived as a male American jazz musician named Billy Tipton. Her own son did not know her secret until she died.

In the 1950s, after his discharge from the Army, George Jorgensen underwent sex reassignment surgery and began calling himself Christine Jorgensen. A now-classic headline declared: "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Bombshell".

In 1965, psychologist John Money persuaded Johns Hopkins Hospital to begin performing sex reassignment surgeries, but after a 1979 study found that those who had such surgeries were not more adjusted to society than their peers, the Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Hopkins Hospital (Dr. Paul McHugh) shut the program down.

Head researcher Jon Meyer declared, "Surgery is not proper treatment for a psychiatric disorder. These patients have severe psychological problems that don't go away following surgery" -- a finding reinforced in a major 2011 study out of Sweden.

According to Dr. Paul McHugh:

• Sex change is biologically impossible.
• Transgenderism is a mental disorder that merits treatment.
• People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women.
• Transgender feelings do not correspond with physical reality, in a way similar to an anorexic who looks in the mirror and thinks they are "overweight."
• 70%-80% of children who express transgender feelings will, over time, spontaneously lose those feelings.
• "People who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder."

Dr. McHugh also admonished those he called "misguided doctors" who administer puberty-delaying hormones to very young children -- even though the drugs stunt the children's growth and risk causing sterility. Such actions, says McHugh, come "close to child abuse."

Leaving science aside, the media continues to line it's pockets by promoting stories of celebrities who have declared themselves to be transgendered, including:

• Chasity Bono (who now calls herself "Chaz")
• Female model Tracy Beatie (who gained celebrity by giving birth to a child while calling herself "Thomas")
• Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner (who now calls himself "Caitlyn")
• Army soldier Bradley Manning (who now calls himself "Chelsea")
Even the Boy Scouts have yielded to media pressure and begun accepting girls into its ranks who claim to be boys.

Serious & Significant Problems Among TGs

1. Significantly higher risk of mental health problems.
2. High HIV, Drug Abuse & Prostitution Rates
• 28% of male-to-female-TG have HIV
• 18% of men who have sex with men have HIV
• Less than 5% of drug users & prostitutes have HIV
• Less than 3% of female-to-male-TG have HIV
• Less than 1% of the general population has HIV
• 30% of TGs abuse drugs and alcohol (vs 9% of general population)
• One recent study showed that 34% had injected drugs in the past 6 months.
• A 2011 study showed that 80% of TG in Los Angeles were prostitutes.
3. Surgery Risks & Regret
• 25% have bladder and/or stool leakage
• Infertility
• Loss of sexual function
4. Significantly Higher Depression Rates, even after surgery
5. Twenty Times Higher Suicide Rates, even after surgery. (The death rate increases dramatically approx. 10 years after "Sex Reassignment Surgery" -- "SRS".)
6. Three Times Higher Mortality Rate
7. Three Times Higher Psychiatric Inpatient Care
8. Dangers of Hormone Use
• Cardiovascular Disease (-e.g., Hypertension)
• Weight Gain
• Stroke
• Blood Clots such as Deep-Vein Thrombosis is a side effect of testosterone use.
• Liver Failure
• Mood Swings
• Heart Disease
• Increase blood sugar (insulin resistance)
9. Higher Lung & Hematological Cancer Mortality Rates
10. Major Problems with False Diagnoses
• From 2009-2014, there had been a 40-50% increase in children wanting to change their gender, but in 2015, that number jumped to a 100% increase (Britain National Health Service)
• 80% of youth w/GID eventually accept their true gender.
• The profits are so high and the expertize of "professionals" is so low that people are quickly pushed into SRS with little to no merit for the diagnosis (- as illustrated by Walter Heyer's testimony in TranZformed)
.
An Abrogation of God's Design for Human Sexuality

(per Dr. James Anderson of Reformed Theological Seminary)
A biblical anthropology has to be grounded in the first three chapters of Genesis. It must acknowledge both the order and design of creation, and the disorder and dysfunction introduced by the fall.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26-27)
(Note the basic gender binary.)

And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Gen. 1:28)

(Note the central place that procreation plays in the creation mandate.)

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." (Gen. 2:18)

(Note the complementarity between the man and the woman.)

Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen. 2:23-24)

The institution of marriage presupposes that basic gender binary.

Genesis 3 records the fall of man. Paul gives us more details in Romans 1, citing the following causes.........

o Idolatry
o Darkened hearts
o Sexual confusion

So all of this provides a theological and philosophical context for our response to transgenderism.
[Author's note] Deuteronomy 22:5 is the only Scripture that directly impinges on TG disorders.
A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.

God's command is grounded in protecting His design for human sexuality, (a principle whose application adjusts as dress norms change in any given culture), as a bulwark against anything that would reveal rebellion against His design or its holy and prophetic meaning.

Dr. Anderson concludes.........
"Gender dysphoria is a genuine condition which is best understood as a psychological disorder or dysfunction (and perhaps also as a deeper spiritual disorder). It doesn't appear to have any simple cause and it isn't something that's chosen.

The different aspects of transgenderism call for different kinds of Christian responses.
We must distinguish a cultural response from a pastoral response. Both are necessary and they are obviously interrelated, but we mustn't allow one to drive the other.

On the one hand, if we let the culture wars define our pastoral response, then that response will fail to engage with people on a personal level and will lack compassion.

On the other hand, if we let our cultural response be defined by our pastoral experiences, we run the risk of being too passive and accommodating of what is a destructive movement (which will lead to more pastoral problems).

Since the biblical view is that there are only two sexes, male and female, and biological sex is the primary indicator of ontological sex, any treatment for gender dysphoria should proceed on the assumption that a person's biological sex (rather than their gender identity) defines whether they are truly male or female. Consequently, treatments should seek to bring a person's psychology in line with their physiology rather than the reverse.

The sexual revolution and the LGBT movement don't merely invite God's judgment--they are themselves a manifestation of God's judgment (Romans 1:18-32)."

A Way of Transformation for the TG Person

(This assumes you are working with someone who has repented of sin, believed in & surrendered their life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.)

1. Address any childhood sexual abuse or other trauma that may have confused the child's sense of identity, being and/or sexuality.
2. Correct gender-based misinformation by parents, significant others and/or the culture (as well as any other lies of the enemy that they may have believed).

Parents or other family members may have wanted their child to be the opposite sex and either communicated that to him/her outright or more subtly in the ways they gave or withheld affirmation & acceptance when he/she acted like a boy/girl.

Pray for inner healing for any father-wounds and mother-wounds. Teach them how to be intimate with God the Father as a replacement for a male-hating mother or a female hating father.

Deal with any "sins of the father" that may have been passed down (Ex 20:5-6; 34:7; Lev 26:39; Num 14:18; Dt 7:9; Ez 18:14-20) / Generational Curses / Anger at God / Roots of Bitterness & Rejection / Inner Vows / Unforgiveness / Occultic Activity.

Pray for any peer humiliation that they experienced, (especially related to a rejection of gender), to be reversed by the acceptance of Christ & His Body, the Church.

Pray to renounce the rejection of their biological sex and/or the self-hatred that it induced.

Pray with them to accept their biological gender.

Repent of any use of pornography and masturbation and the core sin behind such behaviors -- Idolatry.

Pray for revelation of and deliverance from any hidden demonic strongholds.

Pray for any yet undiscovered biological contributors (-e.g., hormones, brain chemistry, etc.) to be healed.

Pray for being washed (Ephesians 5:26; 1 Corinthians 6:11) and having the mind renewed (Romans 12:2) with the Word of God.

3. Overturn any contributing cultural factors

If they grew up lonely & unaffirmed, yet were accepted and celebrated by the trans community (not having understood that their acceptance had more to do with their youth & beauty than anything else), pray that they learn to receive that needed acceptance & affirmation from God instead of man.
Help them to separate themselves from damaging relationships, (friends, music, media, etc.) and to turn their attention to God's Word and serving Him.

Help them find a church, ministry & other teaching resources that can guide them in the lifelong process of transformation, such as.........

Help4Families Ministry
www.help4families.com

Dr. Neil Whitehead's website
http://www.mygenes.co.nz/transsexuality.html
http://www.mygenes.co.nz/transsexual_brain.html

Dr. Robert Gagnon's website
www.robgagnon.net
Thinking Biblically About Transgenderism
http://www.proginosko.com/2016/11/thinking-biblically-about-transgenderism/
www.PurePassion.us
www.TranZformed.org
Transgender by Vaughan Roberts
Transgender Confusion by Denise Shick
Transformation: A Former Transgender Responds to LGBT Issues by Linda Seiler

* * * *

Dr. David Kyle Foster is the producer/director of Pure Passion TV and the documentaries, "Such Were Some of You" (www.SuchWereSomeOfYou.org), "How Do You Like Me Now? When a Child, Parent, Spouse or Sibling Says They're Gay" (www.HowDoYouLikeMeNow.org) and "TranZformed: Finding Peace with Your God-Given Gender" (www.TranZformed.org). He is also the author of Love Hunger (Chosen), Sexual Healing (Regal) and Transformed Into His Image: Hidden Steps on the Journey to Christlikeness (Laurus Books).