Anderson: This is being done in our culture,
not by philosophers and theologians because in our culture,
the philosophers and the theologians
aren't the high priests.
In our culture, it's the doctors and the scientists.
The argument here that's being made
is that someone's sex is determined
by their internal feelings.
That sex is determined by how you identify.
That sex isn't a bodily reality,
but it's merely an internal identity.
Now, this is an interesting claim
because a claim about who someone is in our culture
is much more powerful than a claim about
how someone identifies.
So a decade ago, you could find many activists
saying that a transgender person
is a man who identifies as a woman
or a woman who identifies as a man.
The claim now is that a trans-woman is a woman.
No longer that he identifies as a woman,
but that she is a woman, right?
They're going to demand that you use the new pronoun
and that you affirm that the new identity
determines the reality.
This is being done in our culture,
not by philosophers and theologians,
because in our culture the philosophers and the theologians
aren't the high priests.
In our culture, it's the doctors and the scientists.
So this first slide.
Here we go.
From a medical perspective,
the appropriate determinant of sex is gender identity.
It is counter to medical science.
So you use chromosomes, hormones,
internal reproductive organs, external genitalia,
or secondary sex characteristics
to override gender identity
for purposes of classifying someone as male or female.
This quote was made by Dr. Deanna Adkins,
she's a professor at Duke School of Medicine,
she's the director
of the Adolescent Gender Care Clinic at Duke,
and this is just a remarkable claim
because just a generation ago,
we were told that sex and gender
were two different realities,
that sex was merely physical
and gender was a social construct.
Now this was an expert declaration
in a federal court case
where Dr. Adkins says
that your gender identity determines your sex,
and that this is, from the scientific perspective,
from the medical perspective.
Likewise, when all of you go through your biology classes,
I imagine some of you are taking those as we speak,
some of you have already completed them,
you'll learn the bread and butter of biological science
or things like chromosomes, hormones,
internal reproductive organs, external genitalia,
and secondary sex characteristics.
That's how scientists identify the male and the female
of the species across mammalian species.
Those are the things that scientists look for.
And so why is it now counter to medical science
to point to all of these aspects of our objective reality
if they conflict with someone's subjective identity?
This isn't a scientific claim,
this isn't a medical claim,
it's a metaphysical claim, it's a philosophical claim,
but it's being dressed up in medical garb.
Because again, the high priests in our culture
aren't actual priests,
it's the doctors and the scientists.
This isn't just happening in courtrooms,
this is also increasingly happening in classrooms.
Some of you are probably young enough
that you've seen this graphic before.
Although it depends
where you went to school for grade school,
but this is the genderbread person version 3.3.
And you will see that this
is the most up to date genderbread person.
And what it claims is that we have these
five different aspects of our identity
that they exist along spectrum,
that's why you see all of these arrows,
even biological sex exists along a spectrum
according to this,
and then the four boxes are, as
the fine print would say, four of infinite possibilities.
So you have gender identity,
gender expression, biological sex,
and then sexual attraction and romantic attraction.
And you as a young person have to decide
where do you fall along all five of these spectra.
Now the genderbread person got in trouble
for supporting the patriarchy.
The criticism was that this looks like a man.
It looks like a gingerbread man.
And so they have a new graphic
because they can't use this any longer
in kindergartens, in grade schools,
they use this new graphic, the gender unicorn,
which is, you know, an oddly appropriate graphic
to use a mythical creature to embody your worldview, right?
I mean there's probably a Freudian slip going on there,
but you'll also notice
that it's now sex assigned at birth.
So the two changes from the genderbread person
to the gender unicorn
is that we went from a typical body shape
for a human male, gingerbread person,
to kind of a mythical body shape of a unicorn,
but then also we no longer have a biological sex.
The new politically correct term is sex assigned at birth.
Now, some of you when you saw this,
you kind of chuckled,
thinking how ridiculous is this graphic.
This graphic isn't meant to persuade you.
This graphic is meant to persuade
your younger brothers and sisters,
this graphic is meant to persuade your future children,
that they could come to believe that their sex
was merely assigned at birth,
and therefore, if their gender identity
and their gender expression
doesn't line up with the sex that was assigned at birth,
a doctor could reassign their sex now.
This is meant to capture the moral imagination,
not of yourselves, but of your younger siblings.
Who does this look like?
It looks like Barney, right?
This looks like Barney,
and they do that intentionally because that's
who they're trying to appeal to.
Now imagine two otherwise similarly situated young people.
Two, let's say, five-year-old boys
who feel discomfort with their body.
One who believes that they're created male or female
by an all loving, all powerful God,
and that if there's a problem with how they're feeling,
the solution is to help them
align their feelings with reality.
The other who has been catechized with the gender unicorn
to believe that their real gender identity
is something that's in their head,
that their sex was merely assigned at birth,
and that if they're experiencing a conflict,
the solution lies with hormones and surgery,
because modern medicine can reassign sex.
More importantly though is,
what will their parents be told
when the parents take the child
to the Duke Center for gender care
and the expert doctor says, oh yes,
you know, the right solution here
is going to be puberty blocking drugs
and cross-sex hormones?
So that's the worldview.
Let me say a little bit,
I'll just read you this one slide and then we'll move on,
but they say biological sex is an ambiguous word
that has no scale and no meaning,
besides that it's related to some sex characteristics.
It's also harmful to trans people.
Instead, we prefer sex assigned at birth,
which provides a more accurate description
of what biological sex may be trying to communicate.
That's the ideological worldview behind this,
and then they point out that peer reviewed research
demonstrates that pre-pubertal children,
so a child before going through puberty,
we're talking single digits age,
asserting a different gender identity
from the one they were "assigned at birth",
are cognitively capable enough
to be aware of the gender they are asserting.
So just think about that what that would mean
for your younger brothers and sisters.
Your five-year-old brother or sister
is cognitively capable enough
to know that he's actually a girl
trapped in a boy's body,
and that therefore, he should be prevented
from going through puberty,
he should be placed on cross sex hormones,
et cetera, et cetera.