Religious Views on Transgender People

Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. These rules seem like pretty logical constraints for civilized society, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a truly decent person who disagrees. There are so many religious dictates on how to live, and for the most part, they are straightforward and essentially harmless—even beneficial. However, when people use their religious beliefs as a moral authority to dictate how others should live, religion can become the justification for harmful policies and practices that directly affect people’s physical safety.

Staunch religious beliefs, especially those of Evangelical Christianity, lead people to believe that they are living according to the literal truth put forward by god, and that theirs is the only way to live. This narrow-mindedness creates real danger for marginalized populations viewed by the extremely religious as “other.”

For the most part, religion does wonderful things for the faithful. It helps explain the mysteries of the world and gives people a strong sense of community.

It gives people hope and comfort in the face of adversity. It’s no wonder, then, that as the global population continues to spike, religious affiliation is increasing at an even faster rate (Wormald). Yet while people all over the world are finding this sense of purpose and belonging within religion, there are still far too many being persecuted by its supposed will. The main difficulty with religion is that it is inherently dogmatic. To have faith, the central element of religions the world over, demands that believers follow a set of rules without question.

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There is little room for cultural context or accounting for the realities of how religious rules translate into everyday life. While plenty of people are less strict about their beliefs, it is those who purport to know better than everyone else that create the real danger for others.

From its earliest days, the United States has used religion as the justification for discrimination and violence. Non-Protestants were kept out of office, denied civil rights, and even exiled altogether. Religious freedom was protected in the First Amendment, but that was after the Pilgrims had already slaughtered the “heathen” natives already living on the land when they arrived (Davis). In modern America, the tangible manifestation of Christian beliefs is most often imposed by people whom it will not directly affect. Nearly three quarters of American adults identify as Christians, yet the decisions that people make based on religious authority are directed toward non-Christians (Newport). Religious beliefs translate into actions like protesting others’ rights to family planning services and marriage equality, and even public denial of a person’s right to exist exactly as they are. The people waging these protests are more often offended by the notion of someone else’s actions, rather than actually affected by them.

This is perhaps best demonstrated by religious views on transgender people. In the United States, less than 0.5% of the population self-identifies as transgender or genderqueer (Meerwijk and Sevelius). Over the past few years, a debate has sprung up over which restroom a transgender person should use—the one that matches their birth gender or the one that matches their gender identity. By definition, a transgender person does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, a determination that is based solely on the presence of sex organs. Nearly two thirds of people who attend church weekly think that transgender individuals should use the restroom corresponding with their birth gender as opposed to their gender identity (McCarthy). They often argue that allowing transgender women (whose birth gender is male) to use a women’s restroom will mean that male predators will be able to attack women and girls in the restroom. Meanwhile, there are no reported instances of such occurrences, and hate crimes against transgender individuals have reached an all-time high after increasing each of the past three years (Pitofsky).

While there is no proven correlation between religious beliefs and the actual hate crimes perpetrated against transgender people, denial of the fact that people can be transgender or even homosexual is a dangerous belief, for which religion is most definitely directly responsible. In a recent conversation, an Evangelical Christian classmate informed me that people only think they are transgender due to the media and non-Christian adults suggesting the idea of being transgender to children while they are developing hormonally, and therefore susceptible to these harmful outside influences. She argued that because all human bodies are created by God, they are perfect and must therefore be the correct expression of an individual’s gender (Alessi). This appeal to the authority of God is a common feature of the religious argument against transgender rights, with little to no regard for the scientific research on the matter. Major professional medical associations around the world, including the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the World Health Organization, and the American Medical Association, have made public statements that differing sexualities are in no way abnormal or pathological. They go on to note the extra dangers associated with being LGBTQ+ as a result of the social stigma placed on differing sexualities (“Conversion Therapy”). The primary cause of this social stigma is the level of religious acceptance, or lack thereof. LGBTQ+ youth who feel religion is an important part of their lives were 38% more likely to consider suicide than their less religious counterparts (Kuruvilla).