Dear Elder Oaks,
You seem to be operating under the misapprehension that you think that you believe that “The…meaning of ‘gender…’ as used in church statements and publications…is biological sex at birth.”
Let me help you with that, brother. LDS theology does not require anything like the notion gender is determined by biological sex at birth.
Elder Oaks, you are a substance dualist. You believe that your body and your mind are distinct and separable. You believe that, at death, your body will cease functioning, and your spirit will continue on. You therefore believe that your mind is a property of your spirit, not your biological body.
When you die, Brother Oaks, will you still be a male? “Of course I will,” I hear you say, “because ‘gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity.’”
“Premortal and eternal?” That means that you believe that you were a male prior to receiving your biological sex birth, and you will continue to be so following your (temporary) loss of biological sex at death. Your gender, it follows, is not a property of your body, of your biology, but is a property of your spirit.
Elder Oaks, to be clear, you believe that your gender is independent of, and separable from your biological sex at birth.
I have a follow up question.
Since your gender is a property of your spirit and not your body, why is it not possible for a male spirit to be born into a female body, or a female spirit into a male body?
I suspect that you would consider such a misalignment to be an error of some sort. However, the God that you ascribe to does not have a good track record of ensuring that such apparent birthing errors do not occur. Do you believe that when a child is congenitally blind, that her eternal spirit is likewise blind? If that child hoped that in the resurrection, she would be able to see, would you call that belief morally objectionable? Do you believe that a child who inherits sickle cell anemia had the disease prior to her physical birth, and will continue to have it after death? Do you believe that a person with Down Syndrome has an extra copy of her 21st chromosome in her eternal spirit DNA?
Elder Oaks, you believe that biological traits do not have to correspond with spirit traits. This is not controversial in LDS theology.
If the congenitally blind person were to seek treatment to obtain sight, would you object to such treatment on the grounds that she would not have been born blind if her spirit was not blind as well? Would you argue that an individual with a predisposition for depression ought not have access to treatment because it is her spirit that is depressed?
To hold to such positions
would be ridiculous, and I would not insult your intellect by attributing such positions
to you. However, it is precisely this position to which you cling so tenaciously when it comes to our transgender brothers and sisters.
If God allows perfectly healthy spirits to be born blind, with anemia, or with Down Syndrome (etc., etc.), how is it not presumptuous to assert that He would never allow a spirit of one gender to be birthed into a body of the opposite biological sex? The God that you believe in clearly does allow such alleged "errors" to happen.
[edited for clarity: I am not positing that being trans is a birth defect. I am trying to show, by analogy, that there ought to be no compelling theological reason that necessitates a 1-1 correspondence between biological traits and properties of the mind/soul].
Because you are a substance dualist, in your mind there ought to be a certain equivalence between the congenitally blind and the transgender.
If, Elder Oaks, you would judge it morally impermissible to object to the treatment of the congenitally blind, you ought to find it equally morally impermissible to object to the treatment of your transgender brothers and sisters.
In sum, because you are a substance dualist, and because you believe that gender is eternal, you ought not be morally opposed to transgenderism.
I hope this helps.
SRB
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