Gender dysphoria is “irrelevant” to claims of transgender youth and the Biden administration that a Tennessee law blocking gender-affirming medical care for minors is unconstitutional, according to the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Fighting transgender medical treatment — which the ERLC claims do not address a real medical issue — is a top agenda of the SBC agency based in Nashville. Its policy positions and legal actions go after transgender identity with almost the same zeal as its fight against abortion.
“The ERLC has been advocating against disastrous gender ideology legislation across multiple fronts in Congress, federal rulemaking and the courts,” the agency says on its website.
ERLC communications routinely place phrases such as “gender transition” in quotation marks to indicate its view that these are so-called ideas and treatments, not real things.
Also on its website, the ERLC explains: “In recent years we have seen alarming increases in the number of individuals, many of whom are minors, undergo physically damaging ‘gender transition’ surgeries and procedures. In addition to going against God’s good design for sex and gender, these surgeries and procedures flaunt sound medical practice and do lasting harm to their victims. Though many states have taken action to ban these procedures, it remains legal and widely available in much of the country. The ERLC is advocating for these procedures on minors to be outlawed and supports the Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act, which provides conscience protections for medical providers and ensures parents and children affected by ‘gender transition’ surgeries and procedures have a private right of action.”
“The Tennessee law prohibits ‘enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.’”
Medical professionals who treat minors with gender dysphoria — a recognized medical diagnosis — report there are very few instances of invasive procedures related to gender performed on minors. However, the ERLC and the Republican Party continue to warn against procedures these doctors say aren’t happening.
What is happening is that minors experiencing gender dysphoria — the understanding that a person is not meant to be the same gender as their outward body parts at birth indicate — often are prescribed hormone blockers to give the patients more time to sort out who they are. Gender-affirming surgeries — most often referred to as “top surgery” or “bottom surgery” — happen after patients have waited sometimes years to adapt to hormonal therapies and undergone counseling and reach an age of full consent. Many transgender people never undergo any kind of surgery.
Now, the ERLC has joined with the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board to file an amicus brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, United States v. Skrmetti.
This challenge stems from a 2023 law passed by the Republican-controlled Tennessee Legislature that prevents health care providers from prescribing medications or performing procedures on minors to aid in their transition to an identity other their biologically declared gender at birth.
The language of the Tennessee law substitutes the word “sex” for “gender,” which transgender advocates say is a more accurate word for gender identity.
The Tennessee law prohibits “enabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” and prohibits “treating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”
Through the law, Tennessee doctors were ordered to cease all current gender care procedures on minors by March 31.
Three transgender individuals, their parents and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit to block the law, alleging it violates the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Biden administration joined the suit.
Those objecting to the law claim it intentionally targets transgender people through sex discrimination and interferes with parents’ ability to make medical decisions for their children.
Ironically, conservatives have cited parental rights to care for and educate their own children as reason to object to laws they don’t like.
Nudged by the ERLC, the SBC in its 2023 annual meeting adopted a resolution “On Opposing ‘Gender Transitions’” that condemned “harmful and often irreversible ‘gender transition’ experiments on vulnerable minors and young adults.” The resolution called on state legislatures “to protect children from exploitation and safeguard parental rights,” the ERLC says.
ERLC officials cite that resolution in their amicus brief defending the Tennessee law.
The amicus brief describes what its signers consider “healthy boys” and “healthy girls,” and transgender children don’t meet that definition.
“An adolescent’s gender dysphoria is irrelevant under this analysis because the law does not hinge on it and neither do any comparisons.”
“Tennessee law already prevents healthy boys from seeking testosterone to conform them to their sex. Healthy girls do not seek estrogen for that purpose, and neither boys nor girls use puberty blockers for that,” the brief says. “So Tennessee does not treat similarly situated adolescents differently. An adolescent’s gender dysphoria is irrelevant under this analysis because the law does not hinge on it and neither do any comparisons. And the federal government cannot point to the interventions being used for other endocrine disorders as a rationale to allow physically healthy adolescents to make themselves ill.”
While claiming parental rights to determine what’s in school libraries and to prevent their own children from learning facts about race, gender and sexuality, Southern Baptists declare in the brief: “Parents do not have the right to prevent their children from maturing into physically healthy adults by treating gender dysphoria with the medical interventions at issue here.”
Brent Leatherwood
ERLC President Brent Leatherwood said the amicus brief supporting the Tennessee law could play a key role in what he called a “monumental” case.
“The Supreme Court’s decision will have a monumental impact on the safety and security of children vulnerable to a harmful gender ideology, not just in the state of Tennessee, but across the nation. Harmful procedures like hormone therapy, puberty blockers and surgery impose lifelong, devastating consequences on their well-being. An amicus brief allows the ERLC to put these convictions and arguments in front of our justices and in many cases, can sway the outcome of the case.”
The Supreme Court has not yet announced a date for oral arguments in the case.
In 2020, the high court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that the definition of “sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Tennessee case also could influence pending litigation against Republican-led laws in 25 states that restrict medical care for transgender minors.
New national polling from Public Religion Research Institute shows Americans at large have conflicting views on transgender identity and medical care. For example, 57% of Americans support laws that require driver’s licenses or government IDs to display a person’s sex as it was registered at birth. Transgender adults say not being able to change their government-issued IDs to match their presenting gender creates problems in everything from cashing checks to getting through airport security.
On laws like the one in Tennessee that prevent parents from allowing their children to receive medical care for gender transition, Americans are almost equally divided, with 47% favoring such laws and 49% opposing such laws. PRRI reports Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats to favor such laws (68% vs. 26%).
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