Transphobia: The Bible Is Better Than That

2025 is becoming a crucible year for trans people and those who would be their allies: the Pete Hegseth-Trump Defense Department is after them; Iowa’s legislature just deleted them from its anti-discrimination statutes; other states may follow. And don’t even get me started on the Supreme Court.

But this post is not aiming for a comprehensive summary of ongoing transphobic crusades. Instead, I want to retrace my search for what’s at the root of the support for them. I have some idea of the politics, and a few of the major personalities; but what’s the nub, the “bottom line”?

It isn’t the “science” cited on behalf of anti-trans laws — much of it a curdled combination of cant and charlatanry. Or the panic over predators stalking “little girls” in public restrooms, which is almost all trumped up, and such assaults have long been illegal anyway.

Then there’s the huge public panic over a vanishingly few trans women competing (and not always) winning in girls’ sports. From all this and more we already know the cultural right has big issues over a gender binary (and male dominance), and that riling up its base about sex reliably works to boost its voter turnout.

But what is its basic justification?
Many of the sources are probably buried in dim caverns of the culture’s subconscious, beyond the reach of mere mortal seekers or everyday reason. But several years ago I found the text that serves as the bedrock rationale, that puts the holy in their holy crusade. Maybe it’s only a fig leaf, a pretext covering a big wad of rationalization. But at least it’s definite, and, for them, definitive.

I found the text in what counts as a “primary source,”  issued by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the religious right’s anti-ACLU. It has provided the model text, the organizing chops, and the legal muscle behind thirty years of homophobic and anti-trans litigation and lobbying. (ADF was also the longtime employer of Mike Johnson, and the launching pad for his election to Congress. )

This ADF resources for its followers from Johnson’s time is a handbook, Protecting Your Ministry from Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity lawsuits (free download here ). In it there’s a “suggested Statement of Faith” which tips the hand. The “credo” there comes in three versions. Let’s look at them:

#1, Preliminary:
“Gender, likewise, matters. God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female, and these distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God. (Gen 1:26-27.)
But some individuals reject their biological sex and often present as the opposite sex. In so doing, these confused individuals reject God’s design and the person He created them to be.”

#2. Specifically Protestant:
We believe that God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female. These two distinct, complementary genders together reflect the image and nature of God. (Gen 1:26-27.) Rejection of one’s biological sex is a rejection of the image of God within that person.

3. Catholic:
Man and woman are created by God in His image and likeness. . . . Therefore, to reject one’s biological gender is to reject the work of the Creator and imply that God made a mistake. God does not make mistakes.

The biblical reference here is to a single, very short passage, Genesis chapter one, verses 26 & 27:

Genesis 1:26-27:

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion . . . . (Emphasis added.)

27 So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

I’m familiar with this passage, and the striking thing for me is how much baggage the ADF shovels into it. The text is actually much more flexible (and interesting) than the ADF take on it admits.

This flexibility leads to another striking realization, that overall, how much the defenders of trans people mainly ignore this text rather than engage it.

Like many biblical passages, this one is rich and provocatively ambiguous. Note how God speaks there in both plural and individual (mostly but not necessarily all male) voices. “Let US make man in OUR image . . .” And the Hebrew is also packed with meanings, vocalized and potential.

What’s rendered “man” here is a generic term, more properly translated as “humankind,” “people,” “anyone,” or as one writer put it, “earthling.” This new “earthling” is not initially either exclusively male or singular, but it is of the divine “us” and embodies “our” image. That is, it’s potentially both male and female (and maybe more and other than that).

When this proto-human is then rendered into male and female image-bearers, the key word is an inclusive “and” — “male AND female”) rather than the ADF’s asserted exclusionary “or.”

Then not least, the verses say nothing about this part of creation being either “immutable” or necessarily a fixedly “complementary” binary  pair.

Thus these verses are freighted with much more fluidity and ambiguity than the ADF reading permits. For ADF, God “immutably creates each person as male or female, and these distinct, complementary genders, which properly connected reflect the exclusive image and nature of God.” (Gen.  1:26-27, emphasis added.)

Really? Or could male/female couples make up the most frequent arrangement, but with space for others? Could they embody only two aspects of the much broader, richer creative image (images?), aspects which are neither “immutable” nor automatically “complementary” (ditto).

Of course, ADF is not having it. Anything outside their strict binary frame means that “some individuals reject their biological sex,” and such “rejectors” then go on to “often present as the opposite sex. In so doing, these confused individuals reject God’s design and the person He created them to be.” This rejection, as ADF alumni Johnson has often said, is not only morally wrong, but also personally and socially destructive, and he has strongly supported criminalizing it.

Evidence for the inherent evil and social destructiveness is not presented; these statements are not research results, but dogma and doctrine. The same is true of the new White House stance:

In an Executive Order “issued  January 27 this year, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, Donald Trump asserted that gender transitions involved fundamentally dishonorable  actions based on untruthful actions and falsehoods:

Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.  A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

The executive order offers no evidence; it states dogma, unvarnished diktats. Trump’s views were harshly repeated by his Secretary of Defense, former Fox News talk show host (and self-identified theocratic Christian crusader) Pete Hegseth, in an official Pentagon memo issued  in early February:

Efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated.” . . .
“As the president clearly stated … ‘expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service’.”

A subsequent order has commanded removal of all transgender servicemembers.

But back to Genesis. The verses in Genesis 1 do not declare that “either male OR female” are the only options for humans creatures; nor do they exclude or condemn, either explicitly or implicitly, any departures from these types. They’re better than that.

And while, to be sure, there’s plenty of sexism and homophobia to be found elsewhere in the Bible, there are also texts which affirm the more flexible potential of this suggestive tale of origins.

For instance, in the New Testament Gospel of Matthew 19, when Jesus is disparaging divorce, and the disciples object, he replies:

11“Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

“Eunuchs who were born that way”;  Jesus is saying here that God has created some individuals outside the typical male-female frame; and that’s okay. They should be who they are.

For that matter, a few chapters later Jesus suggests that gender is but a temporary condition: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (Matthew 22:30) So “genderless” (presumably celibate) angels also bear the image of God.

Moreover, even Paul (maybe on an off day) insists in Galatians 3:28 that for believing Christians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

No male or female? If that’s not “rejecting” what ADF calls God’s “immutable design,” at the least it relativizes and shrugs it off.

But in fact, ADF will have none of it: “Therefore, to reject one’s biological gender is to reject the work of the Creator and imply that God made a mistake. God does not make mistakes.” 

So, add blasphemy to the other inherent “evils” ADF finds with their interpretation. But that’s their doctrine talking, not Genesis.

Being born and living outside their rigid and limited doctrinal frame of “biological gender” is acknowledged in scripture (if too rarely) as part of “God’s design,” within the presumably inexhaustible variety of its plural divinity. And if “God does not make mistakes,” then that variety is not a mistake either.

I don’t expect these reflections to persuade any strong supporter of the ADF outlook, common among more conservative evangelicals and their political/cultural allies. Their interpretive frame, (what scholars call a hermeneutic) utterly forbids it; and for them their hermeneutic rules (and they believe it should rule us too). They’ll be tough nuts to crack.

But this study has helped me in a couple of ways: For one, it shed light on a basis pillar of their view. No doubt the deeper origins are influenced by history, sociology, group trauma or political will to power. Still, at bottom, behind whatever veil of constitutional contortion, or pseudoscientific posturing, what we find is this brief but bedrock two-verse passage from Genesis, restrictively interpreted through a dualistic doctrinal  lens that is brought to bear on it from — well, somewhere else.

Finding, digging out those doctrines, and reforming that “somewhere else” that shapes them are important, maybe for many, urgent, even life and death tasks. Champions of the ADF views, such as Pete Hegseth and Mike Johnson, are warriors in a self-conscious theocratic movement that has captured many of the highest seats of power in the USA, and means to roll back as much of the progress toward equality and affirmation as they can. Many of us are caught up in the conflict willy-nilly.

Yes, many biblical texts are repressive. But not all; and not even Genesis 1. The Bible overall is better than that. Those of us opposed to the oncoming theocratic coup will be better-equipped for the struggle if we learn how to challenge and rebut its abusive misuse.

And then stand up against it.