KY: Expanding Beyond the Biblical

via Tom Strode for Baptist Press, an evangelical news service for the Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention has a public policy arm. That arm is the ERLC, or the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The ELRC has objected strenuously to a proposed rule offered by the Biden administration to protect transgender people from discrimination in medical settings. (Two Catholic cardinals have also objected to the Biden proposal, egregiously misrepresenting it in doing so. See our coverage for a more in depth discussion of the arguments.)

The story for Baptist Press (which can also be found on two other Southern Baptist affiliated websites, KentuckyToday and Church Leaders), includes some absolutely classic examples of evangelical doublespeak.

It took a minute to parse Leatherwood’s quoted remarks, but it seems he’s saying that it “undermines human dignity” (a misuse of phrasing more often used by LGBTQ adocates’) for trans people to be allowed to “expand beyond the biblical truth of binary sexes and biological realities.” This seems to imply that, in their view, binary sex is a biblical truth. Good news! This leaves room for scientific truth to back up the real world observation of gender dysphoria as a medical condition, and of transition as the only evidence-based treatment that exists for it.