What Does God Say About Transgenderism?

God made us male and female, and the sex He gave is not ours to unmake. "And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them" (Genesis i. 27, Douay-Rheims). The body, man's or woman's, is the gift of the Creator and reveals His design; to reject it, or to attempt to alter one's God-given sex, is contrary to the truth of creation. We answer the question without hedging, as the Church has always answered it — firm on the doctrine, and tender toward every soul who carries this suffering.

What does the Bible say about transgenderism?

Scripture does not use the modern word, but it speaks to the matter at its root, which is the order of creation itself. From the first page the Word of God makes the distinction of the sexes the deliberate work of the Creator, not an accident to be revised.

And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. — Genesis i. 27 (Douay-Rheims)

He created them male and female; and blessed them: and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. — Genesis v. 2

This is the gender the Bible knows: two, made by God, written into the body. Our Lord Himself appeals to this very text: "Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, made them male and female?" (St Matthew xix. 4). He grounds the moral order of man and woman not in custom, not in feeling, but in the act of creation.

And when the Lord looked upon what He had made, the verdict was not doubt but delight: "And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good" (Genesis i. 31). The body He fashioned, male or female, is among those "very good" things. It is not a cage, not a mistake, not raw material to be corrected. It is a gift, and the receiving of a gift in the spirit of the Giver is gratitude, not refusal. This question belongs to a wider series on what God says about the hard moral matters.

There is also the plain word of the Law, which forbids even the blurring of the sexes in dress:

A woman shall not be clothed with man's apparel, neither shall a man use woman's apparel: for he that doth these things is abominable before God. — Deuteronomy xxii. 5

We do not bind Christians by the ceremonial precepts that God gave to ancient Israel, as we explain when reading what God says about tattoos. But this precept reaches deeper than a rule of cloth: it guards the visible witness of the order God established, that man should be seen as man and woman as woman. The deeper order is the thing; the prohibition expresses it. For more of the Word on the moral law, see our gathering of Catholic Bible verses.

The order of creation: the body is God's gift

The catechism teaches that "man is a reasonable creature composed of a soul and a body" (Catechism of St Pius X, Part I, on the Creator), made "to the image and likeness of God." The body is no afterthought bolted onto the soul; it is part of what man is. To create, the same catechism teaches, "means to make out of nothing" — and what God made out of nothing, He made as He willed it, male or female, not by error and not by indifference.

The soul does not float above the sex of the body, free to contradict it. The Psalmist confesses the whole self, body included, as the work of God's hands: "wonderful are thy works, and my soul knoweth right well" (Psalm cxxxviii. 14). The sex a person is born with is therefore a word God has spoken about that person. To say "I am not what God made me" is, however much pain lies behind it, to contradict the Creator about His own creation.

St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the natural law is the rational creature's participation in the eternal law of God — the order God has written into our nature, which reason can read (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 91, a. 2). Among its first precepts is that we follow the inclinations nature has given us according to their proper end, including the order of the sexes by which mankind is continued (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, a. 2). The distinction of male and female is not a social construction laid over a neutral body; it belongs to the nature God authored. To act against it is to act against the natural law, and so against its Author. This is the same order we defend when we write of what God says about the family, and of Catholic marriage, which God established between one man and one woman.

Is being transgender a sin?

Here we must be exact, as the Church is always exact, and distinguish the suffering from the sin. To feel a deep distress at one's own body, to be tempted to believe oneself other than God made one — this affliction, suffered and not chosen, is not in itself a sin. Sin lives in the will, in consent, never in the cross one did not ask to carry. A soul may bear this anguish and not have offended God at all; it may even merit by bearing it faithfully. We make the same distinction in every grave matter — see our article on mortal and venial sin — and we make it here without flinching: the person who suffers is not condemned for suffering.

What is gravely wrong is the deliberate rejection of one's God-given sex and the attempt to remake the body against its nature. To mutilate the healthy body God gave, to war against its created design, is to claim a mastery over one's own flesh that God has never granted to man. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, teaching the Fifth Commandment, lays down that "none has power enough over his own life" to dispose of it at will, "for the Law does not say: thou shalt not kill others, but simply: thou shalt not kill" (Roman Catechism, on the Fifth Commandment). The reverence the Fifth Commandment demands for the body is precisely this: that the body is held in trust, not owned outright. A man may no more deface the sex of his body than take its life, nor poison and enslave it, as we show in what God says about marijuana, for in none of these is he the master.

St Paul says it plainly to those who would treat the body as their own possession: "Or know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God: and you are not your own?... Glorify and bear God in your body" (1 Corinthians vi. 19–20). The body is to be glorified as God made it, not refashioned against Him.

So to the question, is being transgender a sin: the experience of distress is not. The deliberate denial of one's created sex, and the acts that war against the body to enact it, are gravely contrary to the truth of creation and the reverence owed to the body. We will not soften this. But neither will we forget that behind the doctrine stands a soul whom God loves and wills to save.

Charity that does not lie

The world calls it love to affirm a soul in the rejection of its own body. It is not love; it is a flattery that confirms a person in a wound. Real charity wills the true good of the other, and the true good can never be built on a denial of what God has made. We have written on what God says about love: love rejoices in the truth and never in the lie. To tell a suffering person the truth gently is mercy; to tell him a comforting falsehood is cruelty wearing mercy's face. The Church refuses both contempt and flattery.

To anyone carrying this cross we say what the Church says to every tempted soul: you are not your affliction, you are not beyond the reach of grace, and you are loved by the God who made you exactly as He made you. The truth of the body cannot be unmade — not by surgery, not by law, not by the agreement of the whole world — because it was spoken by God in the act that made you. Peace does not lie in remaking the gift, but in receiving it from the hand of the Giver. This is hard, and we do not pretend it is not; the Christian life is a spiritual combat, and grace is given for exactly such combats.

We belong to God in body and soul. "Male and female he created them" — and what He created, He saw, and it was very good.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does God say about transgenderism?

God says that He made us male and female and that the sex He gave is not ours to unmake: "male and female he created them" (Genesis i. 27). The body is His gift and reveals His design, so to reject one's God-given sex or attempt to alter it is contrary to the truth of creation. The Church answers firmly on the doctrine while remaining tender toward every soul who carries this suffering.

What does the Bible say about transgenderism?

Scripture does not use the modern word, but it speaks to the matter at its root, which is the order of creation. From the first page the distinction of the sexes is the deliberate work of the Creator (Genesis i. 27; v. 2), and Our Lord appeals to this very text: "he who made man from the beginning, made them male and female" (St Matthew xix. 4). The Law also forbids the blurring of the sexes in dress (Deuteronomy xxii. 5), guarding the visible witness of the order God established.

What does the Bible say about gender?

The Bible knows two sexes, made by God and written into the body, not a spectrum invented by man. "He created them male and female" (Genesis v. 2), and this distinction is part of what man is, body and soul, made "to the image and likeness of God" (Catechism of St Pius X). It is not a social construction laid over a neutral body but belongs to the nature God authored.

Is being transgender a sin?

We must distinguish the suffering from the sin. To feel deep distress at one's own body, suffered and not chosen, is not in itself a sin, for sin lives in the will and in consent. What is gravely wrong is the deliberate rejection of one's God-given sex and the attempt to remake the body against its nature, which wars against the truth of creation and the reverence owed to the body as "the temple of the Holy Ghost" (1 Corinthians vi. 19).

Can a Catholic support gender transition?

No. Real charity wills the true good of the other, and that good can never be built on a denial of what God has made. To affirm a soul in the rejection of its own body is not love but a flattery that confirms a person in a wound; the Church refuses both contempt and false comfort. We are called to tell the truth gently, never to confirm a denial of the Creator's design.

Does the body belong to us to change as we wish?

No. St Paul teaches that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost and that "you are not your own" (1 Corinthians vi. 19–20). The Catechism of the Council of Trent, teaching the Fifth Commandment, lays down that "none has power enough over his own life" to dispose of it at will; the body is held in trust, not owned outright. A man may no more deface the sex of his body than take its life, for in neither is he the master.

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Sources. Sacred Scripture, Douay-Rheims (Genesis i. 27, i. 31, v. 2; Deuteronomy xxii. 5; Psalm cxxxviii. 14; St Matthew xix. 4; 1 Corinthians vi. 19–20). St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 91, a. 2 and q. 94, a. 2 (the natural law). Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism), on the Fifth Commandment. Catechism of St Pius X, Part I, on God the Creator and the creation of man.