JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Last month, Kansas became the 26th state to ban or otherwise limit gender-affirming medical care for teens, According to KFF, those bans are supported by some of the biggest religious groups in the U.S., including the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention. But as Rose Conlon of member station KMUW reports, not all faith leaders agree.
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ROSE CONLON, BYLINE: In the small Kansas town of Winfield, worshippers gather for Sunday service at Grace United Methodist Church. Pastor Charles McKinzie begins his sermon by introducing himself and his pronouns, he/him.
CHARLES MCKINZIE: Gracious God, may the words that are coming out of my mouth and the meditations that are shared by all of our hearts gathered here...
CONLON: McKinzie is a lifelong Republican and was raised in a church that taught homosexuality and gender diversity are counter to Christian teachings. But McKinzie says he came to believe that all humans are made in the image of God, a belief that has become personal for him.
CHARLES MCKINZIE: 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.
CONLON: He recently traveled to Topeka to testify against legislation that bans gender-affirming medical care for trans teenagers. In a packed legislative committee room, Bible in hand, he rose and read from the Book of Micah.
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CHARLES MCKINZIE: (Reading) What does the Lord require you, human, but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly?
And as I read the literature of this bill, I see in it something that is terribly unkind.
CONLON: 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's director, Rabbi Jonah Pesner, says the Torah emphasizes compassion for people different from you.
JONAH PESNER: The biblical text repeats 36 different times in 36 different ways, because you were enslaved in Egypt as strangers, you should love the stranger.
CONLON: Pesner says that love means allowing people to get the medical care they determine that they need, but 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. The Southern Baptist Convention also opposes the care. Miles Mullin is vice president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He says love does not always mean affirmation.
MILES MULLIN: True love and compassion has to start with the reality of a situation. And it's not truly loving or compassionate to help people live out a delusion.
CONLON: Mullin says Christians have a duty to advocate against allowing minors to receive medical care that they believe will cause lasting harm.
MULLIN: It's appropriate for believers to say that the state has a role to play in protecting vulnerable people. We see this as the proper role of the state in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2.
CONLON: The religious divides on transgender rights are reflected in new polling by the Public Religion Research Institute. The group found that a majority of unitarians, Jewish Americans, Hindus, Buddhists and the religiously unaffiliated oppose bans on gender-affirming care for minors. Catholics and mainline Protestants across races are relatively evenly divided on the issue, while a majority of Muslims, white evangelical Protestants and Latter-day Saints support the bans.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) As He...
CONLON: Back at Grace United Methodist Church, McKinzie's office is decorated with rainbow flags. Like many Americans, his perspective on gender identity is shaped by his personal relationships, and in his case, being the dad of a gender-fluid teenager.
CHARLES MCKINZIE: The experience of parenthood should lean us towards empathy. My children have, in many ways, made me a much better version of who I am than I would've been without them.
CONLON: His child, Cambria, is 17 and uses they/them pronouns. They are grateful for faith leaders like their dad who stick up for the queer community.
CAMBRIA MCKINZIE: 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.
CONLON: Cambria says, as political debates over trans rights continue, having an accepting church community makes a world of difference.
For NPR News, I'm Rose Conlon in Winfield, Kansas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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