Gender Ideology

Gender Ideology

The Minnesota Catholic Conference opposes the advancement of gender theory, especially in places where young people are affected. In recent years, this has included efforts against the MSHSL’s transgender student-athlete policy and the Minnesota Department of Education’s transgender toolkit. Currently, MCC is focused on protecting the conscience rights and religious liberties of those persons and organizations who refuse to embrace harmful gender ideologies.

Instead of harmful, unscientific approaches to gender and sexuality, we advocate for practices that help people struggling with gender identity disorders find healing and integration.

God created us male or female. Our biological sex is not an accident. It is a gift from God and shapes how we participate in His self-giving love.

But gender theory, or transgender ideology, that ignores the gifted reality of male and female continues to spread in our society: in our media and our schools, our laws, and our healthcare standard. The results are disturbing and include psychological distress and self-harm for those indoctrinated into believing that their body and self are at odds with each other.

Most importantly, confusion about how we are made, and our true nature, inhibits our ability to properly relate to one another and, indeed, the whole of creation. As Pope Francis states in his encyclical, Laudato Si’:

(No. 155) “Human ecology also implies another profound reality: the relationship between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation of a more dignified environment. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of an ‘ecology of man’, based on the fact that ‘man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will’. It is enough to recognize that our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings. The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it, and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way, we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.”