Denver Catholic

22 MARCH 10-23, 2018 | DENVER CATHOLIC Perspectives Parsing the "T" A bout fi ve years ago, a friend took her son with her when she went to a beauty shop to get her hair cut. The hairdresser was snipping away and the boy was engrossed in read- ing on his Kindle when another mother came into the shop with her daughter in tow. The daughter was carrying an American Girl doll, and the mother announced to the entire beauty shop, "We're here to get the doll's hair cut. We're transgendering her!" Thankfully, my friend's son, a big- time reader, missed all this. But if her seven-year old had asked, "Mommy, what's 'transgendering '?" what, my friend asked me, was she supposed to say? What, indeed? Many people seem tongue-tied when it comes to the "T" in "LGBT." The virtue-signaling mother in that beauty shop notwithstanding, there's an intuitive understanding that we're dealing here with real psychological distress – "gender dysphoria" in the technical vocabulary – and that this and similar problems ought not be political ping-pong balls, because lives are at stake. Unfortunately, that reticence to discuss the "T" storm inside the broader "LGBT" tsunami leaves the fi eld to partisans of "gender reassignment" in all its forms, which now include prescribing puber- ty-blocking drugs to pre-pubescent children claiming to be something other than what they are. Moreover, nine states, the District of Columbia, and thirty-three local jurisdictions have laws banning mental health pro- fessionals from o¦ ering "conversion therapies" to minors on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. California, leading the Gadarene rush over the cli¦ as usual, now provides state-funded "sex-reassignment sur- gery" to prisoners; the fi rst recipient of this "benefi t" was Shiloh Heavenly Quine, a fi rst-degree murderer/kid- napper serving a life sentence with no chance of parole. No one familiar with the relevant literature denies that gender dyspho- ria is real, or that the formation of gender identity is sometimes a com- plicated and tortuous business. In today's cultural and political climate, however, to suggest that the current stampede to accept claims that a decade ago would have been regarded as signs of serious psychological dis- turbance – and that are still regarded as such by eminent psychiatrists – is to risk being shamed and cast to the margins of society as a bigot. Like the rest of the "LGBT" phenomenon, the "T" has become thoroughly politi- cized, indeed weaponized. For those concerned that men, women, children, and their future happiness are being seriously wounded in all this – and that grave damage is being done to medical ethics and law – a good place to begin examining the whole "T" phenom- enon is Ryan T. Anderson's recently published study, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Encounter Books). Anderson (whose accomplishments include playing the hammered dulci- mer) is one of America's most engag- ing young intellectuals. And his virtues as a scholar – solid research, rigorous thinking, careful judgment, and a pro- found compassion for troubled human beings – are on full display in his book. So is his courage, having taken a public bludgeoning for his defense of marriage rightly understood prior to the Supreme Court's imposition of "same-sex marriage" on the entire country. Ryan Anderson has now tack- led another fevered social issue from what today's cultural tastemakers and enforcers regard as the wrong side of a red line. He did it, he tells us, because of stories "from people who had detransitioned" (i.e., had recognized that their "sex-reassignment" was a terrible mistake). Those stories, he writes, "are heartbreaking. I had to do what I could to prevent more people from su¦ ering the same way." Would that a medical profession increasingly cowed by politically-cor- rect bullying display a similar com- passion. Or a similar integrity, for, as Anderson writes, "the largest and most rigorous academic study on the results of hormonal and surgical tran- sitioning . . . found strong evidence of poor psychological outcomes." But as on euthanasia, as fi rst on abortion and now on "transgendering," the Hippo- cratic Oath seems to have fallen into the dustbin of history. Lent is a good season to refl ect on the givens of life, and how deny- ing those givens inevitably leads to unhappiness, sorrow, and even self-destruction. The revolt against Things-As-They-Are began in Eden; it continues today, and it always leads us away from the beatitude for which we were created. Ryan Anderson's book is a thoughtful reminder of that hard, but ultimately redeeming truth, and an oasis of sense in a desert of nonsense. The future of the Church in China M y last review focused on Pope St. John Paul II—not only a great saint, but also a hero in the downfall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Both Weigel and Kengor emphasized that the accommo- dationist policies of the Vat- ican and the United States had not only failed to contain Communism, but actually enabled its expansion. The fi ght against Communism continues, but many would like to return to the accommodationism that John Paul II and President Reagan together overcame. Currently, a debate rages about the attempt to reconcile the illegal underground Catholic Church and the Communist-sponsored Patriotic Catholic Association in China, which would place all bishops within the Communist controlled structure. In particular, the Vatican is negotiating a shared agreement with the gov- ernment covering the appointment of bishops, which includes deposing some underground bishops. In light of this controversy, I'd like to refl ect on the growth of Christianity in China and the possibility for greater inculturation of the faith there. RODNEY STARK AND XIUHUA WANG A STAR IN THE EAST: THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA (TEMPLETON, 2015) Rodney Stark became famous for his study The Rise of Christianity (Harper, 1997), examining the social dynamics that led to the conversion of the Roman Empire. Working with a Chinese graduate student, Xiuhua Wang, he explores the dynamics behind the current "meteoric" rise of Christianity in China. The authors o¦ er a short history of Christian- ity there from Matteo Ricci in the sixteenth century to the present. Catholicism by far was the largest Christian group in China until the rise of Communism. Since then, the authors detail how the government's persecution of the hierarchy dras- tically reduced the Church's ability to expand, while Protestant house churches exploded with growth. Stark and Wang rely on two extensive, recent sociological stud- ies for much of their conclusions. Overall, they describe how "tens of The Catholic Di¥ erence George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. GEORGE WEIGEL The Catholic Reader R. Jared Staudt, PhD, is a husband and father of six, the catechetical formation specialist for the Archdiocese of Denver, a Benedictine oblate, prolifi c writer, and insatiable reader. DR. R. JARED STAUDT

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