Why religious leaders are divided on transgender rights

WINFIELD, KS — On a recent Sunday morning in this small Kansas town, worshippers gathered for service at Grace United Methodist Church. Sunlight filtered in through stained glass windows depicting the life of Christ.

At the pulpit was Pastor Charles McKinzie.

“I use he/him pronouns,” he told congregants, “and I welcome you into this space.”

McKinzie, who calls himself a lifelong Republican, grew up in a Protestant church that taught that homosexuality and gender diversity are counter to Christian teachings. He says that prompted a crisis of faith when he came to believe that all humans, no matter their gender identity, are made in the image of God — a belief that has become personal for him.

“We all bear divine image,” he said in an interview.

“Just as there is a spectrum of light and dark because we have sunrises and sunsets — in the same way, I think that God’s creation is broad enough and beautiful enough and wide enough to include variations of what we have understood as a gender binary.”

Testifying against a state ban

Last month, Kansas became the 26th state to ban or otherwise limit gender-affirming medical care for minors, according to KFF. It’s the latest in a series of state laws restricting the rights of transgender Kansans, including their ability to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses and play on sports teams that match their gender identity.

The laws reflect growing concern among conservatives about transgender issues and have been lauded by some faith leaders, including the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention.

But not McKinzie. Earlier this year, he traveled to Topeka to testify against Senate Bill 63, which bans minors experiencing gender dysphoria from accessing puberty blockers, hormone therapy and other medical treatments.

In a packed legislative committee room, Bible in hand, he rose.

“I just want to take a page and a moment from this book that I hold dear and remind us of the words of the prophet Micah, who wrote in chapter six, verse eight: ‘What does the Lord require of you, Human, but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly?’

“As I read the literature of this bill,” he added, “I see in it something that is terribly unkind.”

In an interview afterwards, McKinzie says his faith compelled him to testify.

“Scripture points us towards the heart of God, and that desire has always been to look towards those who have been marginalized and cast out by normal and polite society,” he said. “Today, LGBTQ folks, poor folks, people of color and, right now, especially trans folks are being targeted in real, tangible and deeply unfair ways.”

Other faith leaders are speaking out, too. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism condemned recent executive orders by the Trump administration limiting the federal recognition of gender to male and female, and banning transgender soldiers from military service. The center also organized a sign-on letter, joined by more than 100 Jewish organizations, urging Congress to reject a law that would have prevented transgender athletes from women and girls’ sports teams.

RAC director Rabbi Jonah Pesner says the Torah emphasizes compassion for people different from you.

“The Torah really focuses on love,” he said. “We were a people that experienced oppression and slavery in Egypt, and the Biblical text repeats 36 different times in 36 different ways, because you were enslaved in Egypt as strangers, you should love the stranger.”

Pesner says that love means allowing people to get the medical care they determine that they need.

“It’s not just the Torah itself, but centuries of rabbinic literature and interpretation of those books that lead us to a place where one’s health and safety is paramount,” he said. “Our tradition teaches that these decisions are to be between the person and the health care provider.”

‘Love doesn’t mean always mean affirmation’

Other religious leaders come to very different conclusions.

The Vatican says gender-affirming care violates human dignity, and the Kansas Catholic Conference lobbied for the state’s ban. Lucretia Nold, the group’s public policy specialist, told state lawmakers that the Catholic Church urges compassion for all people — just as it supports prohibiting minors from receiving gender-affirming care.

“Kids are innocent,” she said during the January hearing. “They’re just trying to figure out the world and who they are in it.”

“It is our responsibility as adults to help show [children] the truth, beauty and goodness that is out there — and who they are and who God created them to be — and not affirm them in a lie,” she said.

She and other supporters of the ban prevailed last month, when Republican lawmakers overrode a veto of the bill by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Many evangelical Christians also oppose the care. In 2023, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a resolution opposing gender transition interventions as “a direct assault on God’s created order.” Last year, its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission filed a Supreme Court amicus brief in support of Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

The commission’s vice president, Miles Mullin, says love does not always mean affirmation.

“True love and compassion has to start with the reality of a situation,” he said in an interview, “and it’s not truly loving or compassionate to help people live out a delusion.”

Mullin says Christians have a duty to advocate against allowing minors to receive medical care that they believe will cause lasting harm.

“It’s appropriate for believers to step in and to say that the state has a role in protecting vulnerable people,” he said. “We see this as the proper role of the state in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2.”

The religious divides on transgender rights are reflected in new polling by the Public Religion Research Institute. A majority of Unitarians, Jewish Americans, Hindus, Buddhists and people with no religious affiliation said they oppose bans on gender-affirming care for minors.

Catholics and mainline Protestants were relatively evenly divided on the issue, while a majority of Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, white evangelical Protestants and Latter-day Saints said they support the bans.

Faith and family

McKinzie’s office at Grace United Methodist Church is decorated with rainbow flags. A banner behind his desk proclaims: “you are loved.”

Like many Americans, his perspective on gender identity is shaped by his personal relationships. In his case, being the dad of a gender-fluid teenager.

“The experience of parenthood should lean us towards empathy,” he said. “My children have, in many ways, made me a much better version of who I am.”

His child, Cambria, is 17 and uses they/them pronouns. They’re grateful for faith leaders like their dad who stick up for the queer community.

“I can look at him and I can know that there is somebody with a voice — somebody who is the epitome of what people will listen to — who is out there, standing for me and for others,” they said.

Cambria says, as political debates over trans rights continue, having an accepting church community makes a world of difference.