Under the permission structure created by Donald Trump, Christian Nationalists in the United States have, through organizations like Moms For Liberty, engaged in nationwide attacks against the acceptance of people of all genders. They accuse secular society of teaching children “weird gender ideology” simply for acknowledging that LGBTQ people exist, and are deserving of legal equality, just like everybody else.
Christian Nationalists aren’t just complaining, either. They are attempting to pass draconian legislation that would restrict adult access to gender affirming care and create state government surveillance of gender conformity. H.F. 2389 in Iowa is an example of this push to use legislate Christian gender ideology for all Americans, even the 40% who are not Christians.
Assistant Pastor Christian Schrock of the Ottumwa Baptist Temple, who is a fervent supporter of Donald Trump and has used his church position to join Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition, made a public comment that the state government of Iowa must “keep our children safe by sticking to identities the way God created them to be!” (The exclamation point is Schrock’s.) It is, of course, not the legal role of any government in the United States to force citizens of any age to comply with harsh Christian behavioral restrictions.
What few seem to have stopped to consider is the theological foundation from which Christian Nationalists like Schrock accuse LGBTQ Americans of having strange gender ideology. Christian gender ideology itself begins in the Book of Genesis, which declares that women were created when a spirit put a man to sleep and then, without his consent, conducted abdominal surgery on him to remove one of his ribs. According to the biblical tall tale, the spirit then performed a magical spell on the bone to transform its biological sex from male to female. Further surgical interventions then transformed the rib into the shape of a woman. The spirit then woke the man and instructed him to have sex with his own transformed rib.
In Sunday Schools across America, Christian churches teach children that this radical gender transitioning surgery is literally where women came from.
After exposing children to balderdash like that, Christian Nationalists have no solid ground to complain about other people of teaching children weird gender ideology. Nothing is more bizarre than Christianity’s mythology of gender.