With the transgender “bathroom” issue in the news so much lately, I thought it would be good to share these 20 helpful quotes from Albert Mohler’s excellent 2015 book We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage & and the Very Meaning of Right & Wrong.

1. The ability to “transform” gender and have “gender reassignment surgery” is so new that it was not even considered a prominent part of the gay rights movement when it emerged in the 1960s.
2. Arguing that we should draw a clear distinction between who an individual wants to go to bed with and who an individual wants to go to bed as requires the dismantling of an entire thought structure and worldview. This is why the transgender revolution, even more than the movement for gay liberation, undermines the most basic structures of society.
3. The transgender revolution, however, undermines any understanding of human identity based in the Christian tradition, the trajectory of Western civilization, and the worldview that has shaped today’s world.
4. The transgender revolution represents one of the most difficult pastoral challenges this generation of Christians will face.
5. A biblical response to the transgender revolution will require the church to develop new skills of compassion and understanding as we encounter persons, both inside and outside our congregations, who are struggling.
6. The movement makes a sharp distinction between gender with regards to an individual’s self-understanding and an individual’s sex, which refers to the biological sex determined at birth.
7. As with the gay liberation movement, the transgender movement looked to liberal theologians who helped further their cause.
8. Transforming the way children think of gender is actually central to the transgender movement. Oprah Winfrey, whose television show was viewed by millions of Americans, became a major advocate for transgender issues, particularly among children.
9. If the gay liberation movement gained its greatest traction when it succeeded in convincing many Americans that its aims were nonthreatening, the opposite may be the case for the transgender revolutionaries.
10. The transgender revolution presents a vexing dimension to the challenge Christian churches, families, and institutions will face regarding religious liberty.
11. The reality is that there is no end to the transgender revolution; endurance is one of its central dynamics.
12. The Christian response to the transgender movement must begin with Scripture.
13. What differentiates the transgender movement is the intention to change one’s gender identity from one’s biological sex.
14. We unflinchingly hold, therefore, that to be born male is to be male and that to be born female is to be female.
15. We affirm that biological sex is a gift of God to every individual and to the human community to which that individual belongs.
16. We must understand that the argument that says the brain is wired differently than the body does not justify reason for sex reassignment surgery or the transgender option. Rather, it testifies to the brokenness of creation and the effects of human sin. It is an opportunity for the Christian to respond with the message of the gospel and with the recognition that every Christian is a broken individual seeking wholeness in the only place it can be found—in obedience to Scripture under the lordship of Christ.
17. If nothing else, the transgender revolution shows Christians that the gospel confronts ideologies, patterns of deception, and spiritual opposition in every generation.
18. The church must also respond to the transgender movement by rejecting both the reality and the morality of gender reassignment surgery.
19. Scripture itself attests to the fact that our bodies are not accidents that happen to us, but part of God’s intention for us.
20. The gospel provides the only true remedy for sexual brokenness. The theological and pastoral challenges we face in the transgender revolution are indeed enormous, but they are not beyond the sufficiency of Christ’s cross and resurrection.