The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has released a guide for schools rejecting radical gender theory in favor of a Christian understanding of sexuality.
In their text Created and Loved: A Guide for Catholic Schools on Identity and Gender, the bishops note the intrinsic relationship between biological sex and the socio-cultural role of gender such that “they cannot be completely separated.”
“Popular rhetoric around gender variance sometimes accepts perceptions of sex and gender that are inconsistent with a Christian understanding,” the text states, that “gender is something entirely separate from biological sex; that gender is arbitrarily assigned rather than (usually) a given aspect of the gift of life; and the concept that gender can be fluid and oscillate between a male or female gender identity according to a subjective personal choice.”
Importantly for schools, the guide cites data strongly suggesting that “for the vast majority of children and adolescents, gender incongruence is a psychological condition through which they will pass safely and naturally with supportive psychological care.”
Studies show that “between 80-90% of prepubescent children who do not seem to fit social gender expectations are not gender incongruent in the long term,” a fact that militates against the “gender-affirmative model” involving medical intervention such as use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, the bishops write.
“Traditional medical ethics and Catholic Church teaching maintain that health professionals should not disable or destroy healthy bodily organs or systems, or perform and/or advise actions that render a person incapable of parenting a child,” they assert.
The text also notes that in the Christian vision, “human beings as a species are and always have been fundamentally binary – male or female,” absent a rare intersex condition.
This Christian vision “acknowledges the biological fact of a person’s sex as a ‘given’ foundation of their personhood, not an arbitrarily assigned category.”
Regarding language to be employed, the bishops recommend against using the term “cisgender” because it “reflects a misunderstanding of the significance of biological sex.”
They also advise using “the terms ‘gender dysphoria’ or ‘gender incongruence’ when referring to students rather than using the term ‘transgender,’” since the latter suggests a semi-permanent condition inapplicable to children.
Regarding athletics, the bishops state that in “single-sex competitive competition where students are over the age of 12 years, it may be lawful to exclude a student from a team where the strength, stamina or physique of competitors is relevant.”
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