Today, at the annual meeting of my former church denomination (Southern Baptist Convention) in Baltimore, the SBC has overwhelmingly passed an
anti-transgender resolution proposed by Albert Mohler acolyte Denny Burk that
condemns transgender individuals, adding to the long line of anti-LGBTQ bigotry of the denomination.
Earlier in the day, the messengers at the convention elected Ronnie Floyd as its new President, and he has the same homophobic baggage as the rest of the SBC leadership and its members.
Kathryn Elizabeth's Tumblr:
The Southern Baptist Convention managed to double down on their awfulness. The anti-trans resolution they passed today is in direct contradiction with scripture.
[...]
While I will acknowledge that the gay thing is open to theological debate, the trans issue is quite clear when you have a basic knowledge of the historical context. The SBC has put their own bigotry ahead of the very words of Christ himself.
I weep for our trans brothers and sisters who have been rejected today.
Adelle M. Banks at Religion News Service:
BALTIMORE (RNS) Pushing back against a cultural tide of growing acceptance of transgender people, Southern Baptists adopted a statement affirming the creation of “two distinct and complementary sexes.”
The resolution was passed overwhelmingly Tuesday (June 10) as some 5,000 people attended the annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and elected as president the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, pastor of a northwest Arkansas megachurch.
The delegates, known as “messengers,” affirmed “God’s good design that gender identity is determined by biological sex and not by one’s self-perception.”
They added that they had compassion for people with gender conflicts, called them “image-bearers of Almighty God” and condemned “acts of abuse or bullying committed against them.”
But they went on the record to to oppose gender assignment surgery and cross-sex hormone therapies. They expressed their hope that transgender people would “experience renewal” through a faith in Jesus.
HRC blog:
Today, during the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, members approved a resolution which essentially denies the lived experience of transgender individuals everywhere.
The delegates affirmed that "God's design was the creation of two distinct and complementary sexes, male and female." and that "gender identity is determined by biological sex, not by one's self-perception.”
Their reactionary stances (esp. on LGBTQ issues and reproductive choice/abortion issues) are all the more reason I made the correct decision to leave the ultraconservative SBC for the much more liberal/progressive UCC in November 2013, shortly after the Illinois House passed marriage equality into law. Even during my SBC tenure, especially in the final years of being in that church, I held liberal/progressive views.