Compassion — for the transgendered.
Integrity — for health care professionals.
CMDA calls healthcare professionals to provide “culturally competent medical care” of transgender persons. “Such care requires our compassion, an open and trusting dialogue, a genuine effort to understand and respond to the patient’s psychological distress, and acceptance of the person.”
At the same time, the integrity of healthcare professionals should be respected, in three ways:
1. They should be permitted to question transgender dogma without being stigmatized or discriminated against.
2. They should not be coerced into providing gender-altering treatment they believe to be harmful, not medically indicated, or morally wrong.
3. They must not be prevented from providing counseling and support to patients who are experiencing confusion in regard to gender orientation and who request assistance with accepting and maintaining their biologic sex and gender identity.
The Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA), with a membership of 17,000, recently issued a membership-approved “Transgender Identification Ethics Statement.” The statement affirms “the historic and enduring Christian understanding of humankind as having been created male and female.”
What about the transgender desire to transition?
The CMDA opposes medical assistance with gender transition on biblical, biological, social, medical, and ethical grounds. These grounds (26 of them) are listed in their Ethics Statement. They include:
… (biblical) We live in a fallen world (Genesis 3), and we are all fallen creatures with a sinful nature (Romans 3:9-12). The fall is expressed in nature and in humanity in many ways, including sexuality. Confusion of gender identity is but one example of the fall, as are also marital breakdown and sexual immorality (Romans 1:24-32; Ephesians 5:3).
… (biological) Sex is an objective biological fact that is determined genetically at conception by the allocation of X and Y chromosomes to one’s genome, immutable throughout one’s lifetime, and not a social construct arbitrarily assigned at birth or changed at will.
… (social) The prevailing view that removing traditional definitions and boundaries is a requirement for self-actualization is contrary to a Christian worldview.
… (social) Authentic personal identity consists in social gender expression that is congruent with one’s natural biological sex.
… (medical) Cross-sex hormone therapy during adolescence is associated with increased health risks.
… (ethical) Dissatisfaction with natural anatomical and genetic makeup is not a condition that can be successfully remedied medically or surgically.
… (ethical) Interventions to alter normal sexual anatomy to conform to transgender desires are disruptive to health.
