Gender Ideology:  The Neo-Pagan Blurring of Biology and Justice

Part 1 of 2

[Christians] are part of a human history that is destined for confrontation and conflict with pagan spirituality¹

Any self-respecting gay should be an atheist.²

These Dicta editions address many aspects of cultural apologetics.  Yet, the Apostle Paul’s thrust always reminds us that in the final analysis, only two religions exist, depending on their object of worship:  either the Creator or the creation.³  Worshipping creation is a pagan focus and it is not static or passive.  Rather, it is aggressively active, even when wearing a smiley face and acting with a pleasant demeanor.  But make no mistake, as Peter Jones soberly warns us:

Whether Christians realize it or not, we are part of a human history that is destined for confrontation and conflict with pagan spirituality and that spirituality is driven, in our time, by a militant homosexual agenda.⁴

Because this LGBTQ agenda is driven by paganism, it necessarily seeks to establish a pagan society, as missiologist Leslie Newbigin notes, quoting British Prime Minister Wiliam Gladsome:

[Gladstone observed,] “Should the Christian faith ever become but one of many coequal pensioners of a government, it will be proof that subjective religion has again lost its God-given hold upon objective reality,” . . .

What Gladstone foretold is essentially what has been happening during the 140 years since he wrote those words.  The result is not, as we once imagined, a secular society.  It is a pagan society, and its paganism, having been born out of the rejection of Christianity, is far more resistant to the gospel than  . . . pre-Christian paganism . . .⁵

Did you catch that?  Neo-paganism casts us back into the 1^st century but on steroids.  Do not be duped by our high tech 21^st century loaded with AI and “first world problems.”  The guise of “science and technology” with its patina of expertise and neutrality is in fact hardly neutral and in fact also drives with digital speed toward a restoration of paganism:

Technological civilization is not in fact religiously and morally neutral, even if it believes it is.  It changes people’s standards and their attitudes and behavior.  It changes the way people interpret the world, from the very bottom up. . . . [T]he Christian faith is shaken off . . ., and in the realm of religion, the pagan religions are restored.⁶

The driving force of this press to paganism exhibits deviant sexuality.  As one activist admitted:

It seems to me that the single biggest   enemy to homosexuality is Christianity. . . .Any self-respecting gay should be an atheist.⁷

Query:  How ought thinking Christians respond?  Should we flinch in fear or flourish in faith?  To ask the question in this way is to answer it.  But how? To address this trend in a strategic and comprehensive way requires addressing and understanding three broad areas:  (1) Humanity and human rights; (2) Neo-pagan spirituality; and (3) today’s wedge issue, the LGBTQ agenda pressing transsexualism, or “gender ideology.”⁸

We must cultivate moral clarity, moral conviction, and moral courage regarding these matters.  The gospel demands no less.  Let’s get to the gist.

As to Humanity and Human Rights

Unless we get “human” right, we cannot get human rights right.  What does it mean, biblically speaking, to be human? 

Humans are Creatures

To be human is to be created.⁹ This means that humans are creatures.  There exists a fundamental, universal, and inviolable Creator/creature distinction.¹⁰ Several things flow from this point.  First, humans are dependent creatures as to their existence or ontology.¹¹  Second, humans are not ethically autonomous, that is, they are not the measure of all things, a law unto themselves.  Rather, humans are subject to a transcendent moral authority, a law that stands above them.¹² Therefore, anytime a human exercises authority, that authority is always both derivative and defined.¹³ Thus, humans cannot be the “master of [their] fate [nor the] captain of [their] soul[s].”¹⁴

Humans are Imago Dei

Humans – and only humans – are created in the image and likeness of God.¹⁵  This establishes human exceptionalism.  Several attributes from this characteristic as well.  First, humans are social, contra libertarianism.¹⁶  Mankind comes from a society – the Holy Trinity – in order to flourish in a society.  This means, among other things, that the family – not the State – is the foundational pre-political institution.  The family pre-exists the State and is not a creature of it.  Moreover, in God’s economy, there is only ‘the family” not an endless Baskin-Robbins assortment of “families” depending on taste and preference.  In other words, there exists one valid family structure as created by God – the heterosexual couple comprised of one man and one woman – and that status is not a creature of law or politics.  Rather, the State recognizes and regulates that which God established at creation.  Any regime that endeavors to “make” or recognize different kinds of “families” exceeds the authority granted to it by God and in doing so will in the end undermine and curtail human flourishing.

Humans are Rational

Contra postmodernity, humans are rational creatures.¹⁷ Truth does exist and humans can pursue it and parse it using the gift of reason.  By design, humans reason, draw distinctions, communicate, reflect, and evaluate.  Why?  Because God is the supreme reasonable entity, and because He created the universe according to His purposes, that universe has meaning, and His creatures can apprehend and understand it because they are made in His image, imbued with rational faculties.

Humans are Moral Actors

Mankind is an inherently moral creature, contra to secular theories claiming that man is morally neutral, and therefore the public square must be “naked,” that is, without any normative ethical content.¹⁸ Rather, in reality, no value free zone exists.  There can be no neutrality.  Ultimately, one is either for Christ or against Him.¹⁹  Every fact and every act ultimately says either God is, or God is not.²⁰

Humans are Inherently Worshippers

Crucially, humans are inherently worshippers.  Worship therefore is an inescapable category of human existence.  The key question thus centers are what is worshipped:  The Creator or the creature.  We will worship the living and liberating God, or some enslaving idol derived from creation?  This means every move at bottom is a religious move.

Humans are Sexual Dimorphs

Moreover, humanity is comprised of two immutable and complementary sexual dimorphs, a fancy way of saying male and female.  What does this entail?  What are the worldview implications?  Let me illustrate:  Every healthy human possesses a respiratory system, a circulatory system, a nervous system, a digestive system and so forth.  However, no human possesses a reproductive system.  Instead, by design each person possesses ONE-HALF of a reproductive system.  A full or total reproductive system comes into being – and only comes into being – when a man and a woman join together, thus reinforcing the social aspect of humanity.  This is again by design; it reflects the “Owner’s Manual.”  This design promotes and protects human flourishing.  Competing artifices do not.

Same-sex relationships, for example, are inherently sterile and thus futureless.  They require “colonizing” the components of other humans to “propagate.”  In other words, same-sex relationships become inherently exploitative because they necessitate others to be treated as objects or commodities.  They demand other humans to be disintegrated, that is, splintered and in effect farmed and/or harvested for their parts: eggs, sperm, wombs, et al.

Humans are Missionally Oriented

Finally, mankind is missionally oriented.  In Christian parlance this refers to both the Cultural Mandate as well as the Great Commission.²¹  Mankind exists to do more than consume oxygen and occupy space.  And mankind exists to do more than simply “live for the weekend.”²²

The plot thickens, however.  Sin enters and the Fall occurs, presenting a detour from – but not a destruction of – the creational designed plan.

Fall Fallout

God’s creation coupled with His word depicts the truth about Him and all reality, including what it means to be human.²³ The Fall distorts.  It impacts how man sees and understands the truth.  Yet the truth remains.  Put differently, while sin impacts the creation and brings spiritual and physical death, it does not obliterate the truth.  TxC relies on Paul to explain how the Fall does these things and their impact.²⁴  Paul informs us that there exists a predicable predicament to life after the Fall:

Truth → suppressed²⁵

Truth → exchanged for the Lie²⁶

Creation – instead of the Creator → worshipped²⁷

This idolatrous theology → unrighteous practices²⁸

Culture → approves and codifies these unrighteous practices²⁹

Today this cycle is largely driven by a neo-pagan agenda which largely promotes the LGBTQ agenda.  Much of this stems from the culture’s imbibing and embracing of “Critical Theory” and its relatives.³⁰ This agenda, as Psalm 2 describes it, works through those who approve matters – political officials – contrary to God’s anointed, that is, His Christ:

      The kings of the earth set themselves,

            and the rulers take counsel together,

            against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,

       “Let us burst their bonds apart

            and cast away their cords from us.”³¹

The basic pattern against the Lord takes two forms:  obliterating distinctions by either (1) separating what God has joined; or (2) joining what God has separated – both contravene created norms.  In doing so, these comprise attacks on God’s design, His creational norms.  They say in essence “no difference exists” and that therefore, X and Y are ethically the same.  Accordingly, no person, no culture, and no State should prefer one over the other – the creational hierarchies have been leveled – claiming that God’s ways are equivalent to Man’s ways.  Let’s consider a few examples.

Marriage, as designed by God, consists of the union of one man and one woman for life.³²  Neo-paganism denies the uniqueness and exclusivity of this institution and instead claims it is only one of many valid sexual contexts.  In other words, sexual relations without marriage and without commitment are the same as “hooking up” or serial sex.  As one radical group explained, society must allow and get “beyond marriage”:

Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others.  While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal – for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationships, households, and families must also be accorded recognition.³³

Relatedly, neo-pagan sexuality attacks the quantitative marital component as well as its qualitative component of marriage.  Consequently, we see in the culture no moral distinction between committed monogamy and polyamory.³⁴ One can have many partners either serially or simultaneously – it makes no difference in a pagan worldview.  “Recreational” serial intimacy is deemed the same as marital intimacy.  As the 1960’s counterculture sloganized, “If it feels good, do it.”  Of course, this is no longer the counterculture’s cute jingle; it’s become the mainstream’s symphonic anthem.

As to the qualitative component, sexual intimacy no longer requires the creational norm of heterosexuality – male and female.  Paganism recognizes “no difference”.³⁵

Sin also distorts the purpose of intimacy.  Concerning one key purpose of sexual intimacy – being fruitful and multiplying – neo-paganism fully supports the opposite:  it embraces the contraceptive mentality and the abortion regime.³⁶

Yet, when children are desired (or demanded) in these “non-traditional” structures, they are treated like commodities to be manufactured and selected. This has become a booming industry that relies on IVF, surrogacy, renting wombs, harvesting eggs, hiring anonymous sperms donors, et al.  This fosters a market for “designer babies”. 

Consider this vignette from something [ironically called] the Abraham Center in San Antonio.³⁷ The egg seller, Cathy Torres, who purports to be a Christian, gushes about her DNA being distributed in this way:

“I know some people disapprove.  I’m a Christian and live in the bible belt of America where everybody is really religious.  Some of my friends think it’s strange that my DNA will be running around out there somewhere and they wouldn’t do it themselves.” ³⁸

The buyer, Tamera Pampile, expresses similar enthusiasm, but notice how her language objectifies the baby by calling her an “it.”:

“I’m not sure how it fits in with my religion though.  I am a Catholic so it might not be allowed on ethical grounds . . .

It doesn’t even matter to me that I won’t be the child’s biological mother – I’ll still love it just as much.”³⁹

Both women, though professing to be followers of Jesus, don’t know how to think Christianly about such things.  This is tragic and shows again the need for “thinking in totals” as Schaeffer noted.⁴⁰ And it shows the crucial need for TxC today. 

Neo-paganism seeks to invert creational norms because at its root it worships the creation rather than the Creator.  The ethical implications express themselves by obliterating distinctions:  joining what God has separated and separating what God has joined.  How so?  Consider these additional examples which predominate the West these days:  two men or two woman may be sexually intimate; the unmarried may be sexually intimate; close relatives may be sexually intimate; adults and minors may be sexually intimate; humans and animals may be “intimate,” etc…⁴¹

On the other hand, paganism also pushes to separate what God has joined:  babies may be ripped from their mothers’ wombs; divorcement for any reason or no reason becomes common place, pulling apart what God has joined; the State increasingly assumes parental prerogatives that supplant the roles of natural fit parents regarding education, medical care, and moral and spiritual formation.  And, the distinction between male and female is blurred; androgyny is preferred, as the musical group, Garbage intoned in 2001:

“Nobody wants to be alone, Everybody wants to love someone . . . Why can’t we all just get along?  Boys in the girl’s room, Girls in the men’s room, You free your mind in your androgyny.”⁴²

It is this impulse that imagines “integrating” the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and permitting mediocre men to compete in women’s sports.  As Paul noted, this paganism pushes for approval⁴³ – or put in legal parlance – codification.  The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg commented about what she deemed “sex bias” in the United State Code, urging that (1) single sex prisons be eliminated, (2) Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts be integrated, (3) bigamy laws be deemed unconstitutional; (4) women be drafted for combat service; and (5) she even questioned whether Mother’s Day and Father’s Day should be separate holidays.⁴⁴  All these moves represent ethical moves, charging society’s moral compass as to where the lines of permissibility should be drawn, and thus what society ought to look like.  This represents a competing view of reality and “the good life”.  And it’s neither real, nor good, and it often opposes life.  Enter Gender Ideology.

Gender ideology pushes the envelope one step further by making, not merely an ethical claim (“where’s the line”), but a metaphysical claim (what IS the line”) – that is, for example, claiming that men can become women and vice versa.  Unwrapped from today’s rhetoric, this marks a return to pagan notions of alchemy – as if costumes, cosmetics, chemicals, and carvings can transmute a person’s sex.  The next Dicta installment will explore this effort and expose the radical LGBTQ agenda driving it.     

1. Peter R. Jones, CAPTURING THE PAGAN MIND, (2003) 236 ↩︎
2. Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 10, 2004, interview with Edmund White [creative writing faculty], 21. ↩︎
3. Romans 1:25 ↩︎
4. Peter R. Jones, CAPTURING THE PAGAN MIND, (2003) 236 ↩︎
5. Lesslie Newbigin, FOOLISHNESS TO THE GREEKS—THE GOSPEL AND WESTERN CULTURE (1986), 20. ↩︎
6. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, TRUTH AND TOLERANCE—CHRISTIAN BELIEF AND THE WORLD RELIGIONS (2003), 76, 77. ↩︎
7. Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 10, 2004, interview with Edmund White [creative writing faculty], 21.
   ↩︎
8. This aspect will be addressed in a subsequent Dicta edition. ↩︎
9. Gen 1 and 2; Matt 19 ↩︎
10. Peter Jones calls this “Twoism.” ↩︎
11. In Christ “we live and move and have our being.”  Acts 17:18 ↩︎
12. This is Jesus’ point to Pilate in John 19:  he would have no authority whatsoever unless it had been granted to him from above, that is, from God Himself. e our being.”  Acts 17:18 ↩︎
13. Paul makes this same point when explicating the State’s authority.  (Roman 13:1-4) ↩︎
14. Invictus, William Ernest Henley ↩︎
15. Gen. 1:27, 28 ↩︎
16. Libertarianism claims that humans are radical individuals only – this is the Ayn Rand view. ↩︎
17. Postmodernists, along with post-structuralists like Foucault claim that “truth” does not exist, but rather is simply a term used as part of a power gambit. ↩︎
18. An example would be the claims of John Rawls and his view of “public reason” that disregards any claim of comprehensive narratives employed publicly, especially those stemming from religious claims.  Rawls rejects all such comprehensive narratives, – except his own comprehensive narrative that claims there are no viable comprehensive narratives. ↩︎
19. Matt. 12:30 ↩︎
20. This point stems from the thinking of Christian apologist Cornelius Van Til. ↩︎
21. Gen. 1:27, 28; Gen. 9:1; Matt. 28:18-20 ↩︎
22. David L. Bahnsen, Full Time – Work and the Meaning of Life (2024) ↩︎
23. See, e.g., Psalms 1 and 8. ↩︎
24. And, Paul’s analysis does not stay stuck in the Fall – Redemption, cosmic redemption, is coming.  (Romans 8:19-25) ↩︎
25. Romans 1:18 ↩︎
26. Romans 1:25 ↩︎
27. Id. ↩︎
28. Romans 1:32 ↩︎
29. Id. ↩︎
30. Carl R. Trueman, To Change All Worlds – Critical Theory from Marx to Marcuse (2024), 145-180. ↩︎
31. Ps. 2:2,3 ↩︎
32. Matt. 19:1-19 ↩︎
33. Beyond Gay Marriage, July 26, 2006—www.beyondmarriage.org ↩︎
34. See, e.g.. the popular culture’s approval and fascinating with polyamory and related perversions.  https://www.discoveringpolyamory.com/polyaPmorous-relationship-models, where we learn – without “judgment” – about Triads, Throuples, VEE, Solo Polyamory, Comet, Relationship Anarchy, Parallel Polyamory,  “Garden Party” Polyamory, Polyfidelity  And one may join the party by downloading this free book, The Basic Guide to Ethical Non-monogamy. ↩︎
35. Peter R. Jones, One or Two:  Seeing a World of Difference, (2006). ↩︎
36. All who hate [God] love death.”  Prov. 8:36b ↩︎
37. In the Know, February 13-19, 2007, 15.16. Cf. “[Y]our name shall be Abraham, for I [God] have ade you the father of a multitude of nations.”  Gen. 17:5 ↩︎
38. Id. ↩︎
39. Id. ↩︎
40. Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (1981), 17 ↩︎
41. The repellent push to normalize pedophilia, euphemistically labeled as being a “minor-attracted person” or bestiality, known as zoophilia, is growing.  See, e.g., Zoophilia is Morally Permissible, Journal of Controversial Ideas, https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/2/255 This Journal’s Editorial Board consists of well-regarded scholars. ↩︎
42. https://genius.com/Garbage-androgyny-lyrics. For a theological and historical analysis of this, see, Peter Jones, Androgyny: The Pagan Sexual Ideal, https://etsjets.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/files_JETS-PDFs_43_43-3_43-3-pp443-469_JETS.pdf ↩︎
43. Romans 1:32 ↩︎
44. Mark W. Smith, DISROBED—THE NEW BATTLE PLAN TO BREAK THE LEFT’S STRANGLEHOLD ON THE COURTS (2006), 106. ↩︎