The challenges of conforming sports to include transgender persons, as well as the sport of wrestling pairing men against women, were addressed by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Seminary, in his March 4 edition of The Briefing.
Mohler opened his Briefing explaining how transgender ideology has now affected parental rights in Canada. He wrote a follow-up article titled, “The End of Parental Rights? A Chilling Case From Canada.”
High School Wrestling in Colorado made Mohler’s topics, as high school senior wrestler Brendan Johnston forfeited his chance at a state title last month because he chose not to wrestle a girl. In fact, Johnston had to forfeit twice in order to not wrestle a girl, which means two high school girl wrestlers were on the award blocks since Johnston bowed out.
Johnston’s decision not to wrestle girls caused quite a stir, as national reports broke from USA Today and the Washington Post, Mohler reported.
Johnston said he found wrestling girls “problematic” because of his faith and how he was raised to treat women.
USA Today’s Christine Brennan offered a different point of view, stating she thinks athletes like Johnston are afraid to lose to a girl. She questioned these athletes, asking “What would they think about competing against a boy who is gay, which they might already have done, or a transgender athlete?”
Mohler used Brennan’s viewpoint to point out the “logic of the moral revolution.”
“It’s all the same; transgender, gay, girl, it really doesn’t matter,” Mohler said, explaining the moral revolution view. “Gender is simply a social construct, and liberation is the only issue, personal autonomy is the maxim, so deal with it.”
Mohler then offered his take on how Christians should view this issue of how men and women, boys and girls should respect certain distinctions on the basis of how males and females were created.
“Christians looking at this kind of concern have to realize that the Scripture tells us that creation includes a certain order, including a distinction, a fundamental distinction between male and female, men and women, boys and girls,” Mohler said. “Furthermore, the respect for that distinction is part of the theological argument of the orders of creation. The very order revealed in creation also comes with moral knowledge and a moral insight. It comes with an understanding of the rightness or the wrongness of certain acts, of certain relationships. We come to understand that that rightness and that wrongness offers us a way of extending a biblical logic to understand that some things are simply imprudent. Some things are morally risky, some things are categorically wrong.”
In his final topic on March 4 The Briefing, Mohler pointed out the complexities of transgender athletes participating in sports. He stated well-known tennis champion Martina Navratilova, an openly-gay athlete, is not following the LGBTQ “script” and has been outspoken on her view that “transgender women should not be able to compete against biological women in order to win championships.”
The issues have become even more difficult. Mohler reported an individual who was born a girl but is making the transition to be a boy will be required to compete against girls in a Texas state wrestling championship, even though the would-be boy would have an unfair hormonal advantage.
“All of this is supposed to make sense, but it doesn’t make sense,” Mohler said. “We’re told that this kind of development is exactly what we should be celebrating. And anyone who argues that it isn’t going to work or that it isn’t right, they simply have to get out of the way. They’re dismissed as transphobic.
“But I really do have to register the fact that I don’t believe that even the people making many of these arguments and especially those signaling their virtue by trying to write articles about it, I don’t think they really mean what they’re saying. I don’t think that they have even figured out how this is supposed to work. Just consider the confusion and controversy right now at the International Olympics Committee. The reality is this won’t work. It can’t work. It is a rebellion against the very order of creation.”
