Recently in Genderblog, Courtney Tarter commented on how homeless women were being trampled in the push for transgender rights.  She cited New York City as an example, where homeless men can now choose their residence based on whether they feel like a man or woman.  Her quote from Joel Hilliker, columnist for The Trumpet is worth reprinting:

To protect the right of a man who says he feels more comfortable as a woman, the law is preparing to trample on the right of women who feel more comfortable in public bathrooms devoid of perverted men.

Hilliker places this specific example in the broader context of an attempt to re-engineer society into a golden age of tolerance where sex is meaningless.  While some lawmakers, judges, lawyers and educators see this as a utopian dream, he sees it as a nightmare:

It is a world where the line between male and female doesn't exist. Where not only is it just as common to be homosexual or bisexual as heterosexual, but every person has the choice-with society's full, unflinching support-to act, dress or even biologically exist as either male or female, or anything in between. Where a school teacher, police officer, priest or president can be a man who likes wearing dresses and high heels, and anyone who expresses discomfort over the idea can be silenced with the full force of the law.

Hilliker's assessment of the current situation is as accurate as it is chilling:

Such is the state of our society after decades of determined chipping away at the foundation of traditional family. Views that once inhabited the shadowy fringes are stomping their way into courtrooms and legislative chambers. Bit by bit, activist leaders are codifying their twisted vision into reality, aggressively introducing new laws and filling the judicial record with new precedent, giving them the legal power to stamp out dissent.

One example of his accuracy is the laws passed in California that criminalize any behavior that includes any gender-based bias.  "Gender" in these laws has come to be defined to include, "a person's gender identity and gender-related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person's assigned sex at birth."

Joel Hilliker also sees a spiritual dimension behind these societal changes driven by the religious zeal of the transgender proponents:

The push for transgender rights is a religious mission, aimed at converting the hearts of men. Its missionaries want the nation to repent of its archaic attachment to the traditional family, and to become devotees to the cross-dressing, bisexual and homosexual cause. The only victory is complete victory. Until transgender crusaders achieve this utterly impossible goal-every individual a true believer-they will continue their battle, using every tool of coercion they can summon.

All would be lost if this were simply a political or societal struggle.  The California Legislature asserts that sex is "assigned" at birth and the officials in New York City believe that sex is an individual choice or preference.  But the truth is that God has intentionally designed men and women, and has created them in his image.  The Creator has the final word on gender, and he has the final word on the course of human history.

This is our hope: the church has been entrusted with the gospel and precious truths about God and His creation of manhood and womanhood.  By His grace alone will we be able to defend and live out these truths before a watching and increasingly hostile world.

Tim,

Thank you for joining us on Genderblog to answer a critical discernment question.  It is not an uncommon experience reported by female pastors today that they believe they have received an actual call from God to become a pastor.  Here are two recent examples from the newspaper:

• Jacci is not a rebel. She didn't want to break new ground for those "crazy feminists." She only wanted to follow God's leading. After much study and soul-searching, Jacci's thoughts became clear during a college trip to the Holy Land. "It was a call," she stated. "It was quite amazing. I turned to a friend and said - I think God is calling me to be a minister. I was waiting for God to strike me dead. It was a huge shift in my thinking. That was not in the realm of possibility for my life the way I had grown up and had been taught."
• There was no writing in the sky, no voice from heaven.  "I would have loved that," said the Reverend Keri, "but that doesn't happen.  At least, it didn't happen to me."  Nevertheless a bolt of some sort caused Pastor Keri to suddenly quit her job and go to seminary.  She is now the new shepherdess of a 266 member church..

How would you help a woman discern whether or not  she is receiving an actual "call from God" to become a church pastor?

As you indicate, this is a timely question and one I was faced with even during the process of completing the book when I was contacted by female pastors who were interested in the subject matter. And just recently there was a very popular book on the New York Times list of bestsellers which was the memoir of a woman who, following her husband's death, decided to fulfill his dream and become a pastor. There are many women today who feel they are being called by God into vocational, pastoral ministry.

Time would fail me to really examine the concept of "calling" and how God calls a person to the ministry. In brief, though, I think it is important that we understand what a call truly is. A call to ministry has to be more than an internal restlessness or desire or pull to be a minister. We are accustomed to understanding a call to ministry as being a call from God, that He somehow communicates to a person that it is His will for that person to be a pastor. And certainly God can burden a person for ministry. But I think we do better if we see a call to ministry as being a call from the local church and a call to service.

In The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment I say that the local church is the best and most natural context for the exercise of discernment. The local church serves as the body which will confirm or refute a person's call to ministry. Hence it is the local church which is responsible to search the Scriptures and then to examine a person's life and credentials to see if that person truly is suited for ministry. I am convicted from a plain reading of Scripture that women are not permitted to serve as pastors. Therefore the local church would exercise discernment by telling her that she may not be a pastor. The church would not extend or confirm that call to ministry. Without the local church there is no call to pastoral ministry.

There will often be times that we feel we are to do certain things. And many people believe that discernment itself is really a feeling, that it is something to do more with the heart than with the head. Unless we firmly root discernment in the realm of reason and the realm of skill, it will be easy to permit all kinds of things that do not accord with Scripture. But when we understand that discernment refers to our ability to understand and to obey Scripture, we will see that it is a skill and it is something that requires hard work and sometimes difficult decisions. Our task as men and women of discernment is to search the Scriptures to understand what God says so that we might do what God demands (and avoid doing what God forbids). A faithful reading of the Bible will show that women are not to serve as pastors. There is a whole world of ministry available to them, but the position of spiritual authority and leadership has, since the time of creation, been given only to men.

So my advice to a woman who felt a call to pastor a church would be to encourage her to speak to the leaders of a gospel-centered, church. Within that context she would have the joy of pursuing ministry, but ministry within the context of the local church, within the gifting and passions God has given her, and within the boundaries God has decreed.

A recent commentary on "transgender rights" briefly drew attention to a new development in homeless shelters in New York City. Homeless men can now choose their residence based on whether they feel like a man or woman. While I do not agree with the spirit in which The Trumpet speaks against this development, they do make an important point. Laws attempting to be "gender neutral" or define "transgender rights" have staggering implications in many places throughout our culture. We are now seeing these implications manifested towards the most helpless members of our society. Perhaps the most profound sentence of the entire commentary states:

To protect the right of a man who says he feels more comfortable as a woman, the law is preparing to trample on the right of women who feel more comfortable in public bathrooms devoid of perverted men.

This is an attempt to eradicate God-given male-female distinctions and causes grave concerns. In reality, women and children with few alternatives may be forced to sleep in dormitories with predatory men simply because these men report that they "feel" like a woman. As Christians we are called to take care of orphans and widows (James 1:27), and many women in our homeless shelters are modern-day widows. If we allow men to sleep in the bunk right next to their young children, what message does this send to a woman who may have already already been abandoned or mistreated by a man?

As our culture increasingly moves away from God and his Word, we will continue to see these developments. All the more reason for us, as the Church, to take care of the poorest of the poor in the name of Jesus. Only through the gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, will these women be truly protected. Only Scriptural truth will enable these confused men to understand that their manhood is intrinsic to who they are as created in the image of God. Legislation and transgender rights are not the primary issue. The gospel is. We must stand up against the further distortion of our genders, but most importantly we must proclaim the gospel to the very people who are confused about their gender.

Our churches, my church, and even my own home, must be a safe place for the battered mother of four even when the homeless shelter down the street decides to integrate the living quarters for the sake of "equality" and "rights." It is troubling that homeless shelters, which are supposed to protect, have now become an unsafe place for women. But this does not leave us without hope. It is a reminder to me that if I want to see the effects of sin reversed in my community, I must be a part of my community. If I want men and women to worship God and see the glory of Christ in our genders, then I must speak to the very issue of transgender homeless shelters — and not only to my Christian friends, but also to the homeless person herself.

Cynthia Crossen records in the Wall Street Journal a significant restriction that was placed on women at the turn of the last century: any woman who smoked in public was considered vulgar, and even risked a warning from the police.  Crossan writes

Mrs. William P. Orr was riding in a car on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1904 when she lit up a cigarette. A policeman on a bicycle ordered her to put it out. "You can't do that on Fifth Avenue while I'm patrolling here," he told her.

This was not the work of a rogue officer, but reflected the sentiment of the city government.  New York alderman, Peter McGuinness, proposed a city ordinance in 1922 that would prohibit women from smoking in hotels, restaurants or other public places.  He seemed to have good intentions, although his stated rationale and methodology were misguided:

"Young fellows go into our restaurants to find women folks sucking cigarettes," the alderman argued. "What happens? The young fellows lose all respect for the women, and the next thing you know the young fellows, vampired by these smoking women, desert their homes, their wives and children, rob their employers and even commit murder so that they can get money to lavish on these smoking women."

Even private citizens were not shy about restricting women and voicing disapproval of smoking:

"To smoke in public is always bad taste in a woman," Alexandre Duval, a Parisian restaurateur, said in 1921: "In private she may be pardoned if she does it with sufficient elegance."

Others felt that women should not smoke because it was morally wrong, in addition to other reasons:

The manager of a Manhattan hotel told a New York Times reporter, "I hate to see women smoking. Apart from the moral reason, they really don't know how to smoke. One woman smoking one cigarette at a dinner table will stir up more smoke than a whole tableful of men smoking cigars. They don't seem to know what to do with the smoke. Neither do they know how to hold their cigarettes properly. They make a mess of the whole performance."

My focus is not to encourage women to smoke, but rather to urge men not to place restrictions on women in ways that go beyond what is required in the Bible.  Such practice is akin to the legalism practiced by the Pharisees and excoriated by Jesus.  Also, I would encourage you to reread the quotes above to taking note of the attitude expressed toward women.  I do not believe that this heart attitude is pleasing to the God who lovingly made women in his image (Genesis 1:27).

Woman was made from man (1 Corinthians 11:8), but that does not make man the creator of woman.  God alone is the creator, God alone knows the intent of his good design of women, and God alone has the authority to place fundamental restrictions on women.  Smoking is not explicitly one of them, although I commend it to the conscience of every believer to consider whether smoking is good stewardship of one's body (1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20).

On the other hand, it is equally wrong not to gently but courageously lead according to explicit restrictions that are in the Bible.  For example, it is wrong to convert Paul's admonition in 1 Timothy 2:12 from "I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man," into "I do permit a woman to teach and exercise authority over a man" (italics added).  By God's grace, the church can lead that culture in releasing women to live up to all that God has designed them to be and to guide every believer solely by the authority of Scripture alone.

Denny Burk serves as the editor for The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and he posts regularly at Denny Burk.

The Washington Post has a disturbing article about the legal challenges facing same-sex couples who were married in Massachusetts but are now seeking divorces in other states. The basic quandary is this. Whereas states have laws providing for the division of assets, custody of children, payment of alimony, etc., states that do not recognize same-sex unions have no legal provisions for the dissolution of same-sex "marriages." A case in point appears in the first paragraph.

When her three-year-old marriage broke up, the 44-year-old doctor assumed she and her ex would split their property and jointly parent their two children. Her stay-at-home spouse wanted sole custody and the right to move the children out of Massachusetts.

In pretrial motions, both parents made the same argument to a judge: The children should be with me; I'm their mother.

For years, family court judges leaned toward a maternal preference when it came to custody disputes. But what to do when both parents are women, or neither is? Judges in Massachusetts have been grappling with that question since gay and lesbian couples began filing for divorce in 2004, seven months after the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.

The remainder of the article turns out not to be an objective news piece (which it purports to be), but an implicit argument aimed at pointing out the inequities of states that do not recognize same-sex "marriages" and thus divorces of the same.

Those who choose to end their marriages soon discover that the trauma of divorce is compounded by legal and financial difficulties that heterosexual couples generally are spared.

"One of the benefits of marriage is divorce," said Joyce Kauffman, a Boston divorce lawyer who has handled a dozen same-sex divorce cases. "But for a lot of couples, that benefit is very complicated and very costly in ways that heterosexual couples would never have to experience."

I don't know of anyone else besides a divorce lawyer who could say with a straight face that divorce is a benefit of marriage. Yet this is precisely how low the cultural expectations have sunk when it comes to marriage. Unfortunately, this Post article seems to have embraced those expectations.

A law professor at Northwestern University is quoted at the end of the article saying this:

You have to have a way for people to get out of these things — otherwise, you have multiple claims on the same property and no protections for people entering into new marriages. I think states that try to adopt these rules refusing to recognize the marriages just haven't thought it through.

This professor could not be any more wrong. Opponents of same-sex "marriages" have thought this through, and we are of the opinion that the union of one male and one female is the only kind of union that should be privileged in law. All other unions are perversions that should not receive any kind of legal sanction from the state.

The irony of this whole situation is that now pressure will mount on states to recognize same-sex "marriages" from Massachusetts by putting pressure on them to make legal provisions for their divorces. This is but an incremental step toward the normalization of the "marriages" themselves in law. And make no mistake, this is precisely what the activists aimed to do when they fought for and won recognition in Massachusetts.

We'll be watching this development very closely.