While it may be easy to view the issue of transgenderism as mere political ideology, we must understand that this issue goes much deeper. People who identify opposite their biological sex are experiencing a deeply rooted crisis with their identity that often involves their spiritual health, mental health, and physical health. So how do Christians approach this community in a loving and constructive manner?
This week on Family Policy Matters, NC Family President John Rustin welcomes Walt Heyer and Dr. Jennifer Bauwens to discuss their new book Embracing God’s Design: Addressing the Spiritual and Psychological Crisis Behind Transgender Identity and how Christians can approach transgenderism.
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Family Policy Matters
A Christian Approach to Transgenderism (with Walt Heyer and Dr. Jennifer Bauwens)
JOHN RUSTIN: Well, thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. It’s John Rustin in this week for our regular host, Traci DeVette Griggs. The tide in America finally appears to be turning back toward reality and truth when it comes to the issue of gender identity and gender confusion. Many of us have long wondered how our society became so consumed by an accepting of gender confusion, transgender ideology, and so-called gender affirming care. Well today on Family Policy Matters, we welcome two incredibly accomplished people who have teamed up to provide a very helpful resource that explores the real issues that drive an individual to adopt a transgender ideology and then what can be done to help them recognize and return to their true God-given identity. We’re joined today by Dr Jennifer Bauwens and Mr. Walt Heyer to discuss their new book, Embracing God’s Design: Addressing the Spiritual and Psychological Crisis Behind Transgender Identity. Dr Bauwens is a clinical social worker, trauma therapist, researcher, and professor who now focuses on researching and advocating for policies that best serve the mental health and well-being of families and communities. Walt Heyer is one of the earliest and most outspoken critics of transgender ideology and treatments, having had the personal experience of living as a woman for a number of years. Walt is currently in his 80s, has been married to his wife for 28 years, and has witnessed firsthand the dramatic change in our culture in this area over the last several decades. Dr. Jennifer Bauwens and Walt Heyer, welcome to Family Policy Matters.
WALT HEYER: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
JENNIFER BAUWENS: Thank you.
JOHN RUSTIN: Well, it’s great to have you with us. Walt, I’d like to start with you, because this is such a personal matter for you. How have you seen this entire conversation shift in our nation since your journey began decades ago?
WALT HEYER: Yeah, the journey that started 80 years ago. And, you know, I was identifying as Crystal West in my teens, in the 1950s before anybody was using any language. You know, they didn’t know what it was. It was called transvestites back then. And so, it was never a homosexual issue for me. It was just an identity issue because my grandmother cross dressed me when I was four years old and affirmed me, and that early childhood abuse of cross dressing caused me to have the confusion about my identity, which led me to undergo the quote, reassignment surgery at age 42 and then found my way back to the Lord and my proper identity at 50.
JOHN RUSTIN: Wow. Dr. Bauwens, is it fair to refer to transgender ideology and gender affirming care as true science or more of a myth?
JENNIFER BAUWENS: There’s not a lot of science behind this ideology. It’s really pseudoscience that’s been used to scaffold around an ideology and to make room for an ideology. When you look at the science, you know, we wouldn’t perform surgery on a baby toe based on the science that’s used to perform radical procedures, especially on minors. I mean, I think that’s what’s brought this to a lot of attention in our current day, is that we’re doing these radical procedures on people who have no ability to consent, certainly by their neurological development, but also, I would argue that adults don’t have the ability to properly consent, because most of the adults that are going through these procedures have significant other mental health issues that would prohibit them from fully understanding and giving consent, because they’re given a false hope that if you appear as somebody else, then this is going to give you relief, and that there’s nothing in the science that would show us that this is the case. The science is more on the side that this is harming people.
JOHN RUSTIN: Yeah. So, what research and insights do we have into the factors that contribute to a person being drawn into confusion about their biological sex and their gender identity? There seem to be just a lot of factors in our culture, in the environment today, that are impacting people from kind of a lot of different directions.
WALT HEYER: Yeah, and my story kind of represents what happens, you know, I was cross dressed by my grandmother and affirmed. That’s one of the things that also contributes to this confusion about your identity. When she did this in secret for two years, and then, following that, my dad, who was shocked when he found out that I was cross dressing in a purple dress my grandma made, began to discipline me, which really was physical abuse. And then his adopted brother, when he heard I was wearing a purple dress, decided that I was fair game to be sexually molested. So, what you have here is grandma psychologically and emotionally abusing me by cross dressing me, and then being disciplined by my father, and then being sexually abused by my uncle. So those are the things that caused me to not like who I was. This was like 1948, there was really no information out there, and so, you know, I fell prey to this and started identifying just a few years later as Crystal West.
JENNIFER BAUWENS: I think Walt’s story does very well depict some of the main reasons why people are drawn into this false identity. But there are a number of ways that this happens. Certainly, nowadays we have social contagion, where people are learning about it in their schools, they’re hearing about it and their peers in the media. It’s been very normalized, and there are a whole host of other mental health conditions that we do talk about in the book that can contribute to someone wanting to identify in this way. But I think the most important thing is that when you take away the idea of gender, you take away the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, suddenly you’re left with, and I love this question that Walt asks, and it is basically, what’s making you not like this aspect of yourself? What’s making you want to present as somebody else? And that’s a very important question that the clinical community needs to learn to embrace again. And then also, I would say, as somebody who might be walking alongside a person struggling with their identity, these are important questions to ask, and if we reframe this whole issue as identity distress rather than gender distress, then we have a whole other set of questions that we’re going to ask to help bring someone along to God’s original intent for their lives.
JOHN RUSTIN: Yeah, well, it seems like there are obviously psychological issues that are very apparent here, but there’s a real spiritual aspect to this as well. What is our true identity and who is our true identity in can you speak to that a little bit, both the psychological crisis that we’re facing with this social contagion, but also the spiritual crisis that is very closely related to that?
WALT HEYER: I was raised in the church, but I took myself with Jesus, and once I went back and began to have a relationship with Christ, and in prayer, the Lord came to me and redeemed and restored my life in 1990 so I think it’s important that anybody who’s listening realize that you have to deny the existence of the Lord Jesus Christ, to adopt a trans identity. You know that the sperm and the egg, at time of conception, did not make you, that, you know, you’re made some other way. You’re playing God with your own body. And the devastating results is I’ve worked with about 4000 people who’ve reached out to me at my website, SexChangeRegret.com and WaltHeyer.com asking for help because of regrettable outcomes. And I think that’s really why Jennifer and I wrote the book, because the outcomes are not good. People are suffering. Suicide rates go up dramatically after going through hormones and surgery.
JENNIFER BAUWENS: Yeah, and if I may add, our identity is formed through connection to our family first, and that connection is supposed to lead us onto connection with God. Family is the first place that we learn about God, and we learn that we’re protected, we learn that we’re loved, that we’re going to be provided for, etc. And when that image of family is erased, then the very image of God as three in one is marred. And what we’re doing with this movement, this gender ideology, is where there may be people present, but the image of that connection is marred. And so a child grows up not really having a good, strong sense of what family is, but that means they don’t have a good sense of self, and so their identity is even further marred. And not only do we get our identity from that connection with our family, but we get spiritual identity as we connect with love and truth, and when we’re interacting with a lie, we’re decaying spiritually. So, this is a really important topic, because our whole country, our whole world, has been dealing with this in some way, and so we all need to know how to equip ourselves to fight this battle.
JOHN RUSTIN: Wow. So, this really is a spiritual battle. Walt, I know we were talking earlier, that you are ministering across the globe, that this is not an issue that we’re just dealing with in the United States, but in countries all across the world, this social contagion has kind of overtaken a lot of the culture, and so it’s so important for us to know the truth and to speak the truth.
WALT HEYER: Yeah, and I think what’s important there’s three basic things that always occur when you start taking on an identity that’s false. Is one, you say you’re transgender, and by saying so, you devalue who God made you to be, and then you take hormones and you start to dehumanize who God designed you to be, and then you have surgery, and you actually destroy your function as God designed you to be. So, dehumanize and destroy is really what the end result is from hormones and surgery.
JOHN RUSTIN: Well, and speaking of dehumanizing and destroying, you know we are to speak God’s truth in love and compassion to our neighbors. Practically speaking, how can we best interact with individuals who are facing or dealing with gender confusion, transgender identity issues in a way that expresses love to them, but really points them to God’s truth without completely turning them off or away from that.
WALT HEYER: Jennifer mentioned it earlier. The first question I asked him is, what caused you to not like who you are, and that causes them to have deep self-reflection, and in doing so, sometimes they’re puzzled, because they’re looking to be affirmed. I’m not saying anything bad when I say, what caused you to not like who you are, but they start thinking, and I keep probing them, did something happen? And so as we explore this with them, then they’re able to identify something that did happen that traumatized them or led them to be on the computer, or led them to be part of the social contagion, identifying that, then you realize they weren’t suffering from gender dysphoria, and that’s where the whole thing changes when they realize it, like Jennifer said, this is an identity issue caused by something that happened to them. Our job to help them in a loving way, is to help them discover what happened that caused them to not like who they are.
JENNIFER BAUWENS: I think the most important thing that we can do, if we’re helping someone, is have relationship with them. You know, don’t go in armed for an argument, but go in as a curious person who wants to understand someone’s experiences. Then that gives you the platform to ask the questions that Walt is saying. Because you know, when you come at this issue, knowing that there’s something that happened in a person’s life, there’s some reason that has nothing to do with gender ideology, then that’s where we can come into agreement with the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit knows every person, and so we can be like that person in Proverbs, that a wise man knows how to scale a wall and get behind trusted defenses. And we want to be those people who can get behind people’s defenses to bring hope, life, and change, but that’s where the partnership comes in, and that’s a process rather than a jackhammer.
JOHN RUSTIN: Yeah, that’s a great word. We speak often in the world of public policy and politics, that people who disagree with us, or with whom we may disagree are not the enemy. Satan is the enemy, and is seeking to move people away from God’s truth. And so, as you say, Jennifer, building relationships is the starting point to having the opportunity to engage and as people who are seeking to honor and serve the Lord, that’s exactly where all of that begins is by reaching out in love and seeking to build relationships that then provide the opportunity to engage in those conversations.
WALT HEYER: Yeah, the book, Embracing God’s Design, really does a fantastic job of helping people approach this.
JOHN RUSTIN: Well, Walt, speaking of that, certainly want to encourage our listeners to take advantage of this incredible resource, the book, Embracing God’s Design: Addressing the Spiritual and Psychological Crisis Behind Transgender Identity. This book is available on Amazon, but there may be some other preferred locations where you would like to direct people to not only purchase the book, but also to access some other helpful resources.
JENNIFER BAUWENS: Fidelis is our publisher. So, you could go directly to the publisher site, but Amazon is also a great source.
JOHN RUSTIN: Very good. So just as we conclude our conversation, looking to the future, what signs of hope do you see?
WALT HEYER: Well, you know, I see a lot more people realizing that the regret level continues to increase. Many of the doctors who once pushed this ideology are now stepping back and saying, No, it’s harmful.
JENNIFER BAUWENS: And I just would like to add that all of this is good at the policy level, but what it’s going to lead to are people who have done everything they can to their body and it hasn’t produced results. So that’s why this book is important, because we need to be there as the church, ready to fully embrace these people and show them who God created them to be. So, it’s a wonderful opportunity that we have as the church to be the light and hope and healing of Jesus.
JOHN RUSTIN: Amen. That is a great word to end our conversation on. Dr. Jennifer Bauwens and Walt Heyer, I want to thank you so much for what you’re doing for this new book, Embracing God’s Design: Addressing the Spiritual and Psychological Crisis Behind Transgender Identity. Folks go out and get this book. Jennifer, Walt, thank you so much for your time. God bless you.
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