Who would have thought that a retail giant and a bathroom policy would ignite a national debate?
But that’s exactly what has happened, as nearly a million concerned citizens have signed an American Family Association #BoycottTarget pledge after the corporation announced that it was restating its bathroom policy. According to Target, transgender team members and guests can use the restroom and fitting rooms of the gender with which they identify.
Author and religion and culture expert Dr. Alex McFarland is weighing in, as the policy has sparked strong feelings from both sides—that the transgender community deserves respect and rights, but also that policies like these open the doors to those with evil intentions who are not part of the transgender community.
McFarland says that gender issues are certainly tied to biblical truth, and the blurring of these gender lines is the ultimate form of moral relativism.
“The fight against gender is a fight against natural law, and a fight against natural law is a fight against God,” McFarland said. “What could be more rebellious than to speak against God by declaring to Him, ‘You have no say over my gender! The Creator doesn’t decide my identity, I do!’ We are designed by God, and part of that design is, inherently, our gender. It’s one thing to disobey God in our behavior, but to deny God in how He created us is another thing altogether.
“Essentially, the transgender community is saying that God has no claim over them, not even their gender,” McFarland continued. “The blurring of these lines has gone so far that truth has been pushed aside—even the biological truth of the gender with which we were born.”
McFarland also pointed out that a large number of Americans, as witnessed by the boycott numbers, are being affected by policies they may disagree with—policies put in place for an extremely small percentage of people.
“We are in the process of throwing away 6,000 years of human history, moral boundaries and the basis for Western civilization,” McFarland said, “because for 40 years, coalitions of activists have been dictating how things should be.”
