“An Indian runner who won a silver medal in the women’s 800-meter run at the Asian Games earlier this month has failed a gender test and is likely to be stripped of her medal, news reports said Monday.” According to many news reports, Santhi Soudarajan, a 25 year-old runner, was made to take a gender test after completing her event and placing second. A panel typically composed of a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, and an internal medicine specialist discovered that she “does not possess the sexual characteristics of a woman.” You can read a report at FoxNews or most other media outlets.

A couple of years ago I wrote about how this strange society we live in no longer regards gender as something that is absolute, assigned by Creator or nature, but something that depends on the individual. A person with what has traditionally been considered male anatomy may still consider himself [herself?] female and, according to the politically correct rules of our society, we have no right to question this. When I wrote on this topic in the past I did so after reading a tragic article of a young man who hated who he was. At some point in his early teenage years he became convinced that he was actually a girl trapped in a boy’s body. He began to live like a girl; dressing in girl’s clothing and taking estrogen to try to combat his male hormones. As he grew older he began to become promiscuous, engaging in sexual behavior with boys, yet never revealing that he was actually male. Eventually some of the men with whom he had engaged in sexual acts became suspicious and began to think they had figured out his secret. They resolved to find out once and for all, so in a fit of rage tore off his clothes and learned that their behavior had been not only promiscuous, but homosexual. Enraged, they beat him to death and buried him in a shallow grave. One of them later confessed to the crime and they are now (justly) awaiting trial on charges of murder.

I said at the time that this is a perfect but shocking example of evidence that our society no longer believes in absolutes, for now even gender has become relative. The story I read in the newspaper was about a person who was born male - he had male anatomy, male chromosomes and grew up as a little boy - but at some point he allowed his mind to convince himself that he was female. Now common sense tells us that a human being who has male anatomy and male chromosomes in every cell of his body is male! But our confused, politically correct society seems to disagree. Just because every cell in his body cries out that he is male, we should not assume that he is, for his mind may tell him otherwise. And if a boy decides he is actually a girl, we certainly are not to judge her for that decision. We should assume that she is correct and give her full support.”

I mentioned the story of the Indian athlete to my wife today and said that this is undoubtedly only the first of many similar stories we will hear in the coming years. As it becomes increasingly incorrect for us to judge another person’s gender based solely or even primarily on anatomy, there will be increasing confusion about all kinds of issues. For example, should a person with male anatomy who has decided to adopt the identity of a woman use the men’s or women’s bathrooms at a restaurant or the men’s or women’s change room at a swimming pool? Should a male athlete who believes he is female compete against men or women? And really, as time progresses, how are events like the Olympics to differentiate between men and women any longer?

It occurred to me that one organization has already attempted to deal with some of these questions. The Gay Games are the rough equivalent of the Olympics but geared entirely towards people who are gay, transgendered, and so on. Admittedly they are not quite as serious as the Olympics for they are based on the values of “Participation, Inclusion, and Personal Best, and promote a supportive environment, free from bigotry, where participants achieve success by their own measure.” The fact is, though, that they have events where participants compete against people of their own gender. And so the Gay Games have adopted a Gender Policy. This policy states that participants will generally be required to compete in the grouping assigned on their birth certificate or passport. However, if this is not the group in which they can compete in the other group providing that they meet two conditions: “1. A letter from a medical practitioner is provided stating that the participant has been actively involved in hormone treatment for a minimum of two full years. 2. Proof of the participant living as the self-identified gender for a minimum of two years.” Persons who satisfy these criteria will be accredited by the Gay Games host organization in accordance with their chosen or self-identified gender in their chosen events.

This sounds ridiculous, does it not? Of course when the standard of success is personal best and success by one’s own measure, the importance of winning and losing is somewhat diminished. But when it comes to the Olympics we are dealing with athletes who have spent their whole lives training and preparing for one thing: to win. These people are driven to do their absolute best, but even better, to beat others.

A few years ago the International Olympic Committee enacted a policy similar to that of the Gay Games allowing transgender athletes to compete in the Olympics provided they met certain criteria such as completing genital reconstructive surgery and at least two years of hormonal therapy. They believe this will remove any advantage a formerly male athlete may have over his female competitors. Others are not so convinced and regard this decision as a complete travesty.

As far as I know, this issue has yet to rear its ugly head in actual Olympic events, even though the policy was in place during the 2004 Olympics. I am not aware of a case of a formerly male athlete (which is to say, of course, an athlete who is still male but is trying to remove all evidence thereof) competing against females in an Olympic event. But it will come. And our society, politically correct as it is, will have no easy answer to a male athlete who uses his superior strength to beat the competition even though he claims to be a woman. And in the same way our society has no answer to a man who wants to change with women at the pool or who wants to exercise in a women’s health club simply because he has decided to be a woman.

As Christians we must not minimize the differences between the genders, but learn to love and celebrate them. God made us in His image, both male and female. This is not a difference we should apologize for or choose to overlook. As Ligon Duncan taught at least year’s Shepherd’s Conference, it is glorious to celebrate the differences between men and women. When we say that the roles of men and women are interchangeable, (or when we say that the identify of men and women are interchangeable) we suppress a truth that God has built into this world. The differences between men and women are a critical aspect of what makes us image bearers of God. We bring Him honor and glory when we imitate Him, and when we seek to honor the image of God as it exists in us, and even when it exists in us differently as men and women.

Biography: An account of a person’s life written, composed, or produced by another. Hagiography: A worshipful or idealizing biography. I suppose it is not always easy to determine where biography ends and hagiography begins. But in the case of The Rise of Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen, I am quite certain Richard Young has crossed the line.

King for a Week is an honor I bestow on blogs that I feel are making a valuable contribution to my faith and the faith of other believers. Every week (in theory) I select a blog, link to it from my site, and add that site’s most recent headlines to my left sidebar. While this is really not much, I do feel that it allows me to encourage and support other bloggers while making my readers aware of other good sites.

This week’s recipient of the award is the GospelDrivenLife, the blog of Mark Lauterbach (no, I don’t know how to pronounce that last name either). Mark is pastor of Grace Church in San Diego, a church that is associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries. He is also author of a book, The Transforming Community: The Practice of the Gospel in Church Discipline. Mark’s blog features commentary on a variety of interesting subjects and is marked by both passion and humility. His recent series on Censorious Thoughts (based on the works of Jonathan Edwards) is typical of the quality of article he writes. His site also features an interesting statement requesting accountability and oversight. “All opinions given by GospelDrivenLife are my own. I desire the oversight of my fellow-pastors. Therefore, I reserve the right to recant when they show me I was out of line. PLEASE make comments! Know that I review all comments before they are posted and will get back to you about changes. I want this BLOG to be free from rants and uncharitable judgments. Questioning motives, integrity, or intelligence are not acceptable here. Gospel humility and grace will be the controlling rule.” Humility and grace are evident in what he writes.

In the coming days you will be able to see the most recent headlines from Mark’s blog in the sidebar of my site. I hope you will make your way over the site and look around.

I continue to accept nominations for King of the Week. If you have a site you would like to nominate, feel free to do so. Thanks to those of you who nominated this week’s honoree.

William Wilberforce

In February of 2007 a film titled Amazing Grace will hit theatres, though only in limited release (and I’d be surprised if it makes it to Canada at all). The movie deals with the life of “the world’s greatest reformer,” William Wilberforce.

Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, who, as a Member of Parliament, navigated the world of 18th Century backroom politics to end the slave trade in the British Empire. Albert Finney plays John Newton, a confidante of Wilberforce who inspires him to pursue a life of service to humanity. Benedict Cumberbatch is William Pitt the Younger, England’s youngest ever Prime Minister at the age of 24, who encourages his friend Wilberforce to take up the fight to outlaw slavery and supports him in his struggles in Parliament.

Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 21, and on his way to a successful political career, Wilberforce, over the course of two decades, took on the English establishment and persuaded those in power to end the inhumane trade of slavery.

Not limiting himself to just abolitionist work, he dedicated his life to what he called his “two great objects:” abolishing slavery in the British Empire and what he called “the reformation of manners [society].” To this end, he advocated for child labor laws, campaigned for education of the blind and deaf, and founded organizations as diverse as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and the National Gallery (of Art). “Good causes,” it has been said, “stuck to him like pins to a magnet.”

It is not often that we see the life of a great Christian man potrayed in film. Because of the film Wilberforce will be the subject of several upcoming biographies. John Piper’s short Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce will be available in January. I assume this is the same text that was published as a chapter in The Roots of Endurance. This was, in turn, based on Piper’s biographical address at the 2002 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors. You can read or listen to the speech here. In February Zondervan will be publishing Kevin Belmonte’s William Wilberforce: A Hero For Humanity. Also in February, Harper San Francisco is releasing Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas. Regal Books will bring us Real Christianity: A Nation Was Blind Until One Man Made Them See, Bob Beltz’s modern paraphrase of Wilberforce’s original book about the authentic expression of the Christian faith.

You can visit the official site for the film at amazinggracemovie.com. While a trailer is not yet available, there are a couple of move clips on the site along with plenty of other interesting information.

Marriage

For some reason, an article Al Mohler wrote a month ago came through my RSS reader this morning. In this article Mohler asked if marriage is going out of style. He quoted David Popenoe, a professor of sociology at Rutger’s University and co-director of the National Marriage Project who said something that is entirely true, but entirely politically incorrect: “The bottom line is that a heavily married society is a whole lot better off than one that’s not.” He went on to show something we already know: fewer people are getting married and those who do are getting married later. “The median age at first marriage went from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to about 26 and 27, respectively, in 2005, the Marriage Project says.”

I find it interesting that the decline in marriage coincides with increasing demands to allow homosexuals to “marry,” something that is impossible according to the definition of marriage given to us by the one who created marriage. Here in Canada our Conservative government just made a very half-hearted attempt at preserving the real definition of marriage. They failed. At this point Canada has accepted homosexual marriage and it will never change. I wonder if the acceptance of gay marriage is a cause or an effect of the overall decline in marriage. Do people somehow realize that the whole concept of marriage is being cheapened by allowing homosexuals access to it, thus making the decline in marriage an effect of homosexual unions? Or are people so apathetic about marriage today that they no longer care who marries and how the definition of marriage is changed? Maybe we see both cause and effect at the same time.

Lesson Learned

There is a lesson I learned from the homeschooling topics I posted recently. And no, I don’t intend to bring up the topic again anytime soon! When I write something that ends up being controversial, I something have a large number of people visit the site who are unfamiliar with me. In this case, and if the site statistics are to be believed, several thousand people came by my site in the past few days who had likely never heard of me before. They know nothing of me and, for all they know, I could be anything from pinko liberal commie to a Bible-quoting Mormon. This made me realize how valuable it is to first establish credibility with people who read blogs. Of course establishing credibility can be a long process. It is done only with time. Thus I think there was a different reaction to these articles (and others I’ve posted recently that turned out to stir controversy) from people who have read my site for a year or two as compared to people who have read nothing except for those controversial articles. This is something I’ve filed away in my head to think about later.

Concert

Switchfoot is coming to Toronto in February and I just bought my tickets. This is why I don’t got to concerts very often. $26.50 doesn’t sound like a bad price for a concert ticket. But then Ticketmaster gets involved:

General Admission Tickets $26.50 x 2
Total Building Facility Charge $1.25 x 2
Total Convenience Charge $8.50 x 2
Order Processing Charge $3.50

Total Charges $76.00

Now I just need to find someone to go with. Buying concert tickets is like booking a plane ticket. For my next trip to California the charges look like this:

Flight - Returning airfare 339.99
Navcan and Surcharges 14.98
Canada Airport Improvement Fee 15.00
U.S.A Transportation Tax 33.20
Canada Security Charge 7.94
U.S Passenger Facility Charge 5.15
Canada Goods and Services Tax 36.59
September 11 Security Fee 2.86
U.S.A. Immigration User Fee 8.01

Total Airfare 695.71

Gotta love it…