L stands for lesbians – women whose primary emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attractions are to other women.
G stands for gay men – men whose primary emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attractions are to other men.
B stands for bisexuals – men or women whose primary emotional, romantic, sexual, or affectional attractions are to both women and men.
T stands for transgendered – a broad term that includes cross-dressers, transsexuals, transvestites, and people who live substantial portions of their lives as other than their birth gender. A transgendered person is someone whose gender identity and/or expression differ from conventional expectations for their physical birth sex. Gender identity refers to the internal sense of being male or female, while gender expression refers to how someone presents his or her gender to the world through style of dress, mannerisms, and so on. A transitioning transgender person is one who is modifying her or his physical characteristics and manner of expression in an attempt to satisfy the standards for membership in another gender. Transgender people can be straight, gay, lesbian or bisexual.
Q stands for questioning – someone who is questioning their sexual and/or gender orientation. Sometimes, the Q stands for “queer,” a term reclaimed by some LGBTs for political reasons.
What people in these groups all have in common is that they challenge the heterosexual norms of mainstream society and are stigmatized as a result; otherwise, the LGBTQ community is very diverse with respect to ethnic and cultural backgrounds, physical ability, personality traits, socioeconomic class, and many other attributes.
According to a popular LGBTQ viewpoint as expressed in the words of John D. Sutter from CNN, “this isn’t a binary gender world. People don’t fit neatly into the ‘M’ and ‘F’ boxes. It’s time our public restrooms reflected that. The fairest way to do so is to desegregate restrooms by sex, and that means eliminating the men’s and women’s rooms in favor of ‘all gender’ restrooms.”
Of course, allegations of this sort fly in the face of millennia of human understanding that human beings do come in “binary” male and female configurations. Our Western world has been steeped in a Judeo-Christian perspective where facts of life which seem obvious to most people are further underscored by the accounts in Genesis 1.17 “So God created human beings in his own image – in the image of God he created them – male and female he created them” and Genesis 5.3 “He created them male and female and blessed them, and he named them ‘Mankind’ when they were created,” revelations that are further confirmed in these words from the Gospel of Mark 10.6 “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”
It is true that many people in today’s modern Western world defy traditional beliefs and mores in their appearance and behavior. What is a faithful approach to those whose views about life and personal self-expression may differ from yours or mine?
At His Branches Health Services, we attempt to honor all who come to us as human beings created in God’s own image and fallen from grace in many ways, just as we are. Some things we can change and others we can’t. Our calling is to love each and every person as best we can, sharing the truth in love with them honestly and openly, and offering whatever care and assistance we can. Will we always agree? Probably not with everybody about everything. Or, in Abraham Lincoln’s famous paraphrase, “You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” Please pray for us, the people and community we serve, and our entire nation during this challenging time in history.
In fulfilling our call as a faith-based Christian medical ministry, we agree with and are committed to following the understandings, principles, and practices outlined in the Christian Medical and Dental Society (CMDA) Ethics Statements on Transgender Identification and Homosexuality that were unanimously approved by the CMDA Board of Trustees and the House of Representatives at the CMDA National Convention on April 21, 2016.
