A Christian Response to Transgenderism (with Frank Turek)

My friend, author, and Christian apologist, Frank Turek, sat down with me for a wide-ranging discussion on my podcast, The Greg Laurie Show. We talked about Charlie Kirk, the top objections to Christianity, socialism, and much more.

But I want to share with you what we covered on the topic of transgenderism. Frank brought us great insight into a range of related topics:

• Why Are So Many People Identifying as Transgender Now?
• How Affirming Transgenderism Leads to Irreversible Decisions and Regret
• Why Transgenderism Doesn’t Make Sense Logically or Biblically
• How to Lovingly Respond If Your Child Says They’re Transgender
• Statistically, Most Young People No Longer Identify as Transgender Later in Life
• How Mental Health Ties Into the Transgenderism Discussion
• How the Medical Landscape Is Beginning to Change

Why Are So Many People Identifying as Transgender Now?

[00:18:19] Greg Laurie: …Speaking of lifestyles, the whole trans movement has gained such momentum.

Some have described it, and I think accurately so, as a social contagion-

[00:18:34] Frank Turek: Yes …

[00:18:35] Greg Laurie: uh, where, you know, platforms like TikTok, others, you know, this message is being promoted, and suddenly some young person says, you know, “I’m a man trapped in a woman’s body,” or, “A woman trapped in a man’s body,” and then they find people in the medical community.

Now, these people are supposed to be trustworthy, but they’re literally encouraging these kids to get these life-altering surgeries. And then I think what’s even worse, or at least equally as bad, we have parents in a form of virtue signaling, I think, encouraging their kids. 

I mean, you see these Hollywood celebrities. I saw one the other day. She said, “Oh, two of my kids are trans.” Give me a break. What is going on in these homes? Why is this kind of thinking spreading so rapidly?

[00:19:27] Frank Turek: Well, as we document in the book, there’s been like a 4 to 6,000% increase-

[00:19:32] Greg Laurie: Wow!

[00:19:33] Frank Turek: in young girls claiming to be boys-

[00:19:36] Greg Laurie: Wow!

[00:19:36] Frank Turek: over the past decade or so, Greg.

And as Abigail Shrier pointed out in her landmark book in 2020 called Irreversible Damage: How the Transgender Craze is Seducing Our Daughters, she pointed out this is almost completely driven by social media. It’s a social contagion. There’s nothing new in the water. There’s nothing new biology-wise.

It’s a social contagion, and as you said, some of it is virtue signaling. And when you continue to affirm people that this is a good thing to do, many of them decide to go do it. 

How Affirming Transgenderism Leads to Irreversible Decisions and Regret

Frank Turek: And now you’ve got people who are de-transitioners, like our mutual friend, Chloe Cole, who’s saying, “I was lied to when I was 15.” “My breasts were cut off when I was 15.”

And now she’s, you know, 20, and she’s suing her doctors because she couldn’t give informed consent when she was 15. It’s madness. 

Why Transgenderism Doesn’t Make Sense Logically or Biblically

Frank Turek: And by the way, in the book, in The War on Reality book, we point out how illogical this is. ‘Cause on one hand you’ll hear people who are going down this road, Greg, or behind this ideology, they will say things like, “There’s an infinite number of genders, and gender is fluid.”

[00:20:45] To which we respond, transgenderism wouldn’t even be conceptual, conceptually possible unless the genders were fixed. Why? Because if I’m a man and I think I’m a woman, I have to have some idea what a man is and some idea what a woman is to know that I have a mismatch between my biology and my psychology.

If men didn’t exist and women didn’t exist, there’d be no way to know I had gender dysphoria. Secondly, if I try and take the impossible step of trying to change my gender, which is impossible to do, but if I try it anyway, again, I’d have to have some idea what a man is and some idea what a woman is to try and make the transition.

So it’s completely self-contradictory, and it goes against, from the Garden of Eden, where God says, “I made male and female.”

[00:21:33] Greg Laurie: Yes.

[00:21:34] Frank Turek: And it’s good, right? 

Yet people are trying to say that they can actually change that biological reality. It’s impossible. You can’t change your biology. You can change your mind-

[00:21:44] Greg Laurie: Yes

[00:21:44] Frank Turek: but you can’t change your biology. So if there’s a mismatch between your biology and your mind, your mind needs to change, not your biology.

How to Lovingly Respond If Your Child Says They’re Transgender

[00:21:51] Greg Laurie: Very good. So let’s just say there’s a young woman or a young man who thinks, “Oh wow, I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body,” vice versa. What would you say to them right now?

[00:22:03] Frank Turek: Well, we have a whole list of questions in the book, The War on Reality, to help people. It’s very practical. So say your teenager comes to you and says, “Mom, Dad, I’m trans.” You don’t want to freak out. You don’t want to say, “What are you, crazy!?” No, no, no. 

…First thing you want to say to them is, “Thank you for telling me, honey. Can I just ask you a few questions? When you say you’re trans, what do you mean by that?”

See if they can explain it. “And what happened that made you feel this way?”

‘Cause Walt Heyer, who was a man who tried to live as a woman for eight years and then got saved and came back to biological reality, he runs a ministry, and he has interviewed hundreds if not thousands of people, and he says this: “Whenever I ask that question, ‘What happened that made you feel this way?,’ 100% of the time these young people point to an event.” Often it’s sexual abuse. Or something they saw on the internet that made them go, “Oh, wow.” 

Also a question like this: “When did you start feeling this way?” And “Should you always follow your feelings?”

And “Do feelings ever change?”—because, you know, honey, last month you were not trans, now you’re saying you are. Do you think your feelings may change again?

Statistically, Most Young People No Longer Identify as Transgender Later in Life

Frank Turek: And if you look at the data, they do change. 96% of people that have this, by the time they’re 26 they’ve grown out of it completely.

About 80%, by the time they’re 18, they’ve grown out of it completely. And what we say to people is it’s normal to feel odd when you’re going through puberty. Because you are making a transition from child to an adult.

[00:23:45] Greg Laurie: Very true.

[00:23:46] Frank Turek: So it’s normal to feel odd. So we have to tell young people, “Hey, this is normal. If you’re feeling discontent, this is completely normal.” 

The solution is not surgery. In fact, those that get the surgery, they have an initial honeymoon period where they feel better, but the longest study ever done, a 10-year longitudinal study where they tracked the same people for 10 years, 10 years after the surgery there’s an absolute explosion in suicide for these people.

How Mental Health Ties Into the Transgenderism Discussion

[00:24:14] Greg Laurie: See, that’s the opposite of what they say. They’ll say, “No, you need to let them get the surgery otherwise they’ll commit suicide.”-

[00:24:20] Frank Turek: Yeah, no. 

[00:24:21] Greg Laurie: And you’re saying the opposite is the case.

[00:24:22] Frank Turek: By the way, think about this too. If somebody is threatening suicide because they can’t get so-called transitionary care of some kind, they call it gender affirming care, which is a euphemism obviously, they have other issues. Right? 

They have a mental health issue. Anyone who is contemplating suicide, they have a mental health issue. They have a spiritual issue. They need counseling. They don’t need a scalpel.

You don’t fix a mental health problem in most cases with surgery.

You fix it with prayer, counseling, sometimes medication. But you don’t fix it with surgery. 

How the Medical Landscape Is Beginning to Change

Frank Turek: And the people that especially do this to children… In fact, the clinics over in the UK have closed, Greg.

You know why they’ve closed? Because the lawsuits are coming out now, and these people know they’re not gonna be able to pay the fines from the lawsuits. And so they’re closing down. They’re saying, “No, this isn’t the right thing to do, and it’s financially gonna be draining.” 

Although here in the US there are still some people trying to do this. They’re making a lot of money on it, but once the lawsuits begin it may close ’em, close it down completely. Thankfully, especially for children.

Get the full interview here.