New National Network to support gender-critical lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians
LONDON – A new network has been set up to support gender-critical lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians who are concerned about the impact that transgender ideology is having on the well-being of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.
Several scandals hitting “gender-affirming clinics” around the world – including the Tavistock Clinic in London – have revealed that a concerning number of people (youth in particular) are being persuaded they are transgender, or misdiagnosed as having gender dysphoria, when they are simply gay or lesbian, or bisexual.
People of a religious background face additional pressures which campaigners refer to as “pray away the gay” in which sex-change treatments involving hormones, medication and surgery have taken the place of the more familiar psychological “conversion therapy”. Whereas this form of conversion therapy has been widely discredited, the new, but equally discredited, “gender-affirming care” has taken its place, now with institutional support and progressive political endorsement.
In a robust contribution to LGB Christians’s new website, Revd Lorenzo Fernandez-Smal, the Vicar of St Luke’s Church, Battersea, agreed with this assessment. He wrote:
“Gender ideology moved from the fringes of American academia to social media, then – predictably – into schools. I have ministered in parishes working with schools for the whole of my ordained life. As an openly gay priest, I have talked to many gay and lesbian pupils through the years, but I am no longer able to do so. This is not because schools have suddenly become more conservative and hostile – they have never been more liberal – but because same-sex attracted students now seek shelter in new-fangled ‘identities’ oblivious to gender theory’s inherent homophobia.”
Revd Fernandez-Smal added:
“There’s hardly a lesbian or gay kid in sight! Many trans and non-binary teens, demiboys and demigirls, or genderqueer or genderfluid folks, are reluctant to acknowledge their own sex, never mind their sexual orientation. I have seen gender non-conforming boys and girls being socially transitioned in primary school. This is a new closet! It is worse than the old closet because gender ideology has no coherence, and therefore proves far more damaging than conventional bullying.
“Gender ideology not only requires faith from its believers, but mute obedience from everyone else.
“The church should protect feminine boys and masculine girls, not collude in teaching them that they are essentially at odds with their bodies. Christianity is about the reality of incarnation, the body, or it is nothing at all,” he said.
In a statement announcing its formation, the network says:
“We are LGB Christians, a welcoming network of lesbian, gay and bi sexual Christians and our friends. LGB Christians will defend the rights of same-sex attracted people, in the face of increasing backlash, confusion, and risks caused by ideas which replace the biological reality of the two sexes with self defined, gender identities.
“We are ecumenical, non-party political, and not affiliated with any organisation. We are part of a new and wider lgb and human rights movement created in response to these serious global challenges.
“LGB Christians has come into existence because of numerous conversations, personal experience, much listening and extensive research. As Christians we accept and reaffirm the existence of biological reality as part of God’s creation; we are born men or women, not ‘assigned’.
“Same-sex attracted Christians are caught in the middle between the competing views of the conservative religious establishment that views us as sinners, and the new progressive one that views us as bigots for not wishing to embrace an ideological view of gender which erases us.”
Read Revd Lorenzo Fernandez-Smal’s full article
LGB Christians will be officially launched at the LGB Alliance conference on Friday 27 October 2023 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Central London.
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