The Best Policies Yet on Sex/Gender
If you had a biblically informed government policy on gender and sexuality on your Christmas wish list or made it a New Year’s resolution to get the government to reject gender ideology, then you’re in luck! Unfortunately for us, that government is nowhere in Canada (aside from perhaps Alberta). It’s in the United States.
New American Gender Policies
Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th American president on January 20, 2025. Within hours of his inauguration, his new administration issued an executive order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.
The executive order may be short, but its impact is massive.
It states that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality… ‘Sex’ shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”
This statement grounds human identity as male and female, man and woman, based on created biology. Of course, Christians recognize that all aspects of creation are tainted by sin, including our biological make-up. A very small percentage of people are born with some disorder of sexual development (DSD), such as an extra or missing chromosome, abnormally high or low levels of sex hormones, or physical deformities in their genitalia. But these disorders, rather than demonstrating that there are more than two sexes, are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Equally important, the White House rejects gender ideology which, in the executive order’s definition, “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”
All too often, government policy advances incremental change without stating first principles. Important truths and principles often get watered down or compromised over time. For example, human rights legislation in Canada originally prohibited discrimination based on sex, not gender or gender identity. Yet human rights tribunals concluded, starting in the 1990s, that “the term ‘sex’ could be liberally interpreted to include ‘gender identity’ as a protected category of discrimination.” The understanding of these terms slowly evolved to mean different things.This executive order is very clear about its first principles in its definitive anchoring of sex to our biology and its recognition of gender ideology as “ever shifting” and “internally inconsistent”.
This order will radically change the American federal government’s policy approach to sex and gender. For example, the policy clearly says that “‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’” So, wherever American courts or federal departments have read in the concept of gender identity where a statute says gender or sex (like the Canadian example above), they will have to revert to understanding sex/gender as rooted in biology rather than assigned by a doctor or based on an individual’s self-perception.
Further, all federal policies and documents will now use the term “sex” rather than “gender.” All federal government-issued identity documents, such as passports, will list a person’s sex rather than their gender. Entry into single-sex spaces such as bathrooms or change facilities will be determined by sex rather than gender. All federal agencies will be banned from promoting gender ideology and the federal government will not be used to promote gender ideology.
Ending medical transitions for minors
All of this set the stage for a second executive order a week later. Entitled Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, this executive order made it the policy of the United States federal government that “it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures” for anyone under the age of 19 years of age. This is a total ban on medical transitioning for minors. It covers puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical transitions.
The executive order on protecting children does not mince words. It refers to medical transitioning as “chemical and surgical mutilation” twelve separate times, calls out the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as pedaling “junk science,” and calls the attempt to medically transition “losing a war with their own bodies.”
The new policy explicitly rejects WPATH’s recommendations for “gender-affirming care” in their Standards of Care Version 8, requires a review of the literature on best practices for treating gender dysphoria, defunds medical transitioning and any institutions that provide medical transitions, and excludes medical transitioning as a covered procedure under federal health insurance plans.
Positive Developments across the English-speaking World
Reformed Christians on both sides of the border have long waited for a government to take a definitive stand on some of the biggest issues of our day. On issues of life, we’ve been waiting for a government to recognize in policy or law that life begins at conception or that euthanasia is murder. While we haven’t yet seen those pro-life statements, this executive order is the equivalent when it comes to sex and gender.
The United States joins the broader English-speaking world in slowly moving in the right direction on the issue of gender ideology. The Cass Review in the United Kingdom has recommended against medical transitioning for minors and is now beginning to investigate medical transition for adults as well. Australian states are beginning to limit medical transitioning for minors. The government of New Zealand has also recognized that there is a lack of good quality evidence to support puberty blockers for minors.
Canada seems to be moving in the right direction as well. Alberta recently passed three bills removing gender ideology from children’s education, health care, and sport. A recent Canadian study also found little evidence to support medical transitioning. And Pierre Poilievre, the frontrunner for Prime Minister in the next election, said that he is only aware of two genders.
With growing momentum in western countries to recognize the creational norm of only two sexes, let us continue to pray for and work towards a society that recognizes a biblical view of sex and gender.
Visit LetKidsBe.ca to get involved in your province.
