June is Pride Month, and every year it crashes into our culture like a tsunami, flooding us with an aggressive amount of pro-LGBTQ+ messaging. Transgenderism has become a leading force to normalize gender confusions and sexually deviant behaviors.
Unfortunately, the church — and most commentary offering a traditional or biblical perspective on gender identity — is often labeled as bigoted or largely goes unheard.
But not this year. This year, Riley Gaines was heard.
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Gaines’ story
Gaines, a former 12-time All-American collegiate swimmer for the University of Kentucky, made a public comment about a Minnesota high school girls’ softball team that won the 2025 state championship with a transgender female (biological male) pitching every inning of every game of the tournament, giving up a single run. Gaines’ comment elicited a scathing response on social media from Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, who called Gaines “truly sick” for being “anti-trans” and labeled her a “sore loser” for her hard stance on prohibiting biological males from competing in women’s sports. Notably, Biles has never competed against transgender women.
Gaines has.
She and every other female swimmer competing in the women’s 500-meter freestyle at the 2022 NCAA women’s national championship lost to William “Lia” Thomas, a biological male competing as a woman. As a reference, Thomas posted the 65th fastest time in the nation among men in his final season competing as a man for the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team.
The issue of transgender athletes centers almost exclusively around men transitioning to participate in women’s sports, and not the other way around. It seems common sense would expose the obvious problem.
Thomas enjoyed a competitive advantage against women. There is no advantage for women to participate as men.
For example, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s gold-medal, world-record time of 50.37 seconds in the women’s 400-meter hurdles at last year’s Paris Olympics would only tie her for the 199th fastest men’s time in 2024.
Fortunately, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 5, 2025, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” It gives federal agencies the ability to ensure entities receiving federal funding abide by Title IX, a 1972 civil rights law ensuring equal opportunities for women in education, particularly in athletics. The order forced the NCAA to immediately change its policy to exclude transgender females from competing in women’s sports, as it should have been all along.
Unfortunately, an executive order does not remedy the crescendo of transgenderism across the remainder of our culture.
According to a Gallup Research survey, nearly 10% of Americans identify as LGBTQ+, up from 3.5% in 2012. A 2022 Pew Research survey found that 5.1% of young adults (under 30) say their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth.
Facilitating children to question their gender identities is on the rise, with organizations like the Society for Personality and Social Psychology advocating for “gender expansiveness,” or the freedom for children to explore “any expression of gender that falls outside of society’s current gender binary standards.”
A National Library of Medicine study reports that children may begin to feel discomfort with their assigned gender before age 7.
Conversely, there are currently 400 state laws across the United States aimed at restricting discussions about gender identity in classrooms. That’s helpful, but it’s a tenuous band-aid that could be ripped away with changing legal winds.
It is natural for children to explore their gender identity by age 7 as part of understanding who they are.
It is the responsibility of parents to affirm who God created them to be, and it is also the church’s responsibility to support parents, children, and youth in this journey.
Sadly, conversations about human sexuality and gender identity are mostly lacking in families and church settings. Most parents, pastors and ministers are ill-equipped to lead practical, biblically centered instruction on the topic.
Our best solutions have often been to condemn LGBTQ+ practices while ignoring the reality that we have people sitting on our pews — and especially in our youth groups — fighting the monumental struggle of understanding who God created them to be.
Do we even understand that this battle, as old as the Garden of Eden, is a question of who has ultimate authority: God or man claiming self-autonomy?
Preaching the gospel and seeing people come to saving faith is preeminently important, but it is not enough. Let’s be honest: People continue struggling with embedded sin and desperately need help to experience the freedom they’ve gained in Christ. How will you and your church respond?
June is Pride Month, and it is almost over. However, the momentum to normalize gender confusion and deviant sexual behavior will press relentlessly forward. Christians have the choice to acquiesce as the cultural tsunami sweeps our children farther downstream, or we can fight for our children like their lives depend on us.
Because they do.
Resources
Listed below are resources that Christian leaders and parents can use to provide Biblical answers to questions that children and youth might ask about gender:
1. Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say — a book by Preston Sprinkle
2. General ideology: What do Christians need to know? — a book by Sharon and James Null
3. Explaining LGBTQ+ Identity to Your Child: Biblical Guidance and Wisdom — a book by Tim Geiger
4. Transgender — a talking points book by Vaughn Roberts
5. Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships?: Examining 10 Claims about Scripture and Sexuality — a book by Rebecca McLaughlin
6. identityproject.tv. — a free video platform that helps Christians discover, live, and lead others to their God-given identity.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Chris Turner and originally published by the Baptist and Reflector.
