Transport for London (TfL) who run the London Underground services announced last week that they will be changing the tube announcement greetings to say “Hello everyone” instead of “Ladies and gentlemen”. They have acknowledged how important language is to the LGBT community and want to ensure that all passengers, regardless of their gender, will feel welcome when using the underground service.
A couple who have raised their child for the past 5 years as ‘gender neutral’, have finally revealed that the child is a boy. They continue to dress him in girl’s clothing, saying that they don’t want to “push him in any direction”. The same article, includes comments from a psychology lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, Dr Daragh McDermott, who says that the effect of raising a gender neutral child is not yet known. He goes on to say that it’s difficult to know whether the child will suffer psychologically in the long term because there is so little research around this topic.
A recent disturbing article by paediatrician Michelle Cretella has drawn attention to the way in which children who express ‘gender dysphoria’ are being treated today, in contrast to how they were treated a few years ago, and the long term effects this could have on them psychologically and physically. She goes so far as to say that “transgender ideology is producing large scale child abuse”.
These are just a fraction of the articles that appear daily around LGBT issues. Views on them tend to be wide and varied among American Christians, or confused, like we’ve seen from retired pastor, Eugene Peterson, the man behind ‘The Message’ Bible translation. He said he would perform a gay marriage if asked to, and the following day, after a media storm, retracted his comments saying, “I affirm a biblical view of marriage: one man to one woman. I affirm a biblical view of everything.” Research shows that acceptance of homosexuality has risen in recent years, with younger Christians tending to be more accepting than their elder counterparts.
Dare I say it, ladies and gentlemen, the world we live in is changing drastically. We know that the divorce rate for Christians and non-Christians alike continues to rise. We have seen first-hand the effect that broken marriages have on families; especially children, and the far reaching implications that these effects can have for society as a whole. But there are changes happening today, the effects of which are “as yet unknown”. We haven’t had enough experience of certain family situations to know how they will affect the people being raised in them. And we are experiencing many ‘firsts’, even today: in the past couple of years we’ve seen huge leaps in LGBT laws concerning marriage and adoption, gender ideology is conditioning young children to impersonate the opposite sex, and just in recent weeks the first, but certainly not the last, gender-neutral baby…
We are raising our children in a society very different to anything we have seen before, and the love, respect and obedience that we train them up in will cause them to stand out in a world where rebellion and confusion reign. It is Christian families that will be shining lights: beacons for the lost and testimonies of the truth of God’s Word. “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify God”.
Louise Carter
