Most Americans see nothing morally wrong with gender change, a study released July 14 shows.
Six in 10 Americans don’t think it’s wrong for people to identify with a gender different from their birth sex, according to a recent LifeWay Research survey.
And more than half don’t think it’s wrong to switch genders by taking hormones or having surgery.
The findings indicate most Americans don’t see moral significance in being born male or female, said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research.
“A majority of Americans reject the view of a Creator giving them a gender that shouldn’t be changed,” he said.
Questions of morality have surfaced as politicians debate restroom access, employment protection, insurance coverage and military service for transgender people.
Is it morally permissible for a doctor to remove healthy organs? Is it acceptable to give puberty-delaying drugs to children who feel gender conflict? Many Americans say gender simply isn’t a moral issue.
LifeWay Research asked 1,000 Americans whether they agree or disagree that changing one’s gender or identifying with a different gender is morally wrong. Respondents also had the option to select “it’s not a moral issue.”
About one-third of Americans (35 percent) say it’s wrong for people to identify with a gender different from their birth sex, while 45 percent disagree. As for changing gender, 42 percent say it’s morally wrong and 43 percent disagree.
An additional 14 percent of Americans say identifying with a different gender isn’t a matter of morality, and nearly as many (11 percent) say it isn’t a moral issue to alter one’s gender through hormones or surgery.
“A growing percentage of Americans don’t believe in right and wrong,” McConnell said. “They don’t believe there’s absolute truth — and if there’s no absolute truth, then they’re reluctant to talk about morality.”
Evangelical believers are dramatically more likely than other Americans to voice moral concerns about gender change, the survey shows.
Evangelical issue
More than half of people with evangelical beliefs (54 percent) say it’s wrong to identify with a different gender. Only about one-quarter of Catholics (26 percent), one-third of those in non-Christian faiths such as Judaism or Islam (35 percent) and one-fifth of the nonreligious (20 percent) share that view.
Americans are slightly more concerned about altering gender through surgery or hormones, but it remains mostly an evangelical issue.
Evangelical believers are almost twice as likely (61 percent) as non-evangelical Americans (32 percent) to say using surgery or hormones to change birth gender is morally wrong.
Among the 71 percent of Americans who say they have no transgender acquaintances, 48 percent say it is wrong to change genders using surgery or hormones, and 39 percent say it is wrong to identify with another gender.
Those numbers drop by more than one-third among the 27 percent of Americans who say they know a transgendered person. Twenty-eight percent say changing gender by medical means is wrong, and 25 percent say identifying with a different gender is wrong.
Young adults, 18–24 years old, are most likely to report knowing a transgender person and less likely than others to consider gender change immoral. In that age group, 41 percent have a transgender acquaintance, and 31 percent say it’s wrong to alter gender through surgery or hormones. (Baptist Press)
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