Orland Evangelical Free Church | New York Times Readers and Transgender Toddlers

Patricia Leigh Brown's article, "Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear," is guaranteed to make us evangelicals sick with anxiety. It touched a nerve with Times readers, remaining on the most e-mailed list from Saturday through Tuesday.

Evangelicals have lived in a cultural bubble for decades, trying both to communicate with the outside and make the inside safer. We have created an alternative universe of popular culture, schools, and activities. We have heard prophecies of the collapse of morals outside. And in response we've patched the bubble rather than master the countercultural arts - a nonconformist way of life in the midst of the larger culture.

So now the headlines seem to validate the story we've been telling ourselves. The medical and educational establishments are increasingly supportive of children who want to be the opposite gender. Woe to us that we lived to see this. How can we reinforce the bubble?

Here are the details that we've trained ourselves to seize from a story like Brown's.

Reynaldo Almeida, director of progressive private school in Oakland, is happy about the new openness. "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies. Now it's kids who come to school who aren't gender typical."

New York City allows people "to alter the sex listed on their birth certificates".

"Massachusetts, Minnesota, California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes."

An Oakland day school trains teachers to use "a gender-neutral vocabulary", urging them to line students up "by sneaker color rather than by gender." The school's director doesn't want students to feel "boxed in". Students are allowed to "move back and forth until something feels right."

"The Los Angeles Unified School District . . . requires that students be addressed with ‘a name and pronoun that corresponds to the gender identity.' It also asks schools to provide a locker room or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender."

This is the story of encroaching totalitarianism - and that's as far as we want to take it.

But the story is far worse. A government that tried to ramrod the brave new world could be resisted. But we actually face an entire culture inviting the government to construct the brave new world.

The parents profiled in Brown's piece have a well-developed philosophy for rearing children - a philosophy they inherited.

A child, for instance, cannot be expected to control his or her desires.

One mother's son progressively dressed more in feminine clothing. He became agitated when asked to dress as a boy. "It just clicked in me. I said, ‘You really want to wear a dress, don't you?" She "accepted the way her son defined himself after she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his newfound comfort with his choice."

The boy is 5.

Trying to change children's desires, to take another example, threatens their self-image.

The father of "a gender-variant third-grader" notes that transgender adults all share the characteristic of not being "accepted and understood as a child." He draws the moral. "You read it and think, O.K., best to avoid that."

Moderating a child's desires through medication, still another example, is an option - though in this case a hot one. "One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of ‘blockers,' hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets a period)."

These parents are in agony trying to make their inherited ethics work. Says one, "As a parent you're in this complete terra incognita." Another says that as much as they "choreograph" their child's life "there's still this stomach-clenching fear for your kid."

For most of today's parents, the Judeo-Christian ethic doesn't exist. Their models displayed none of it, and many were taught to disregard it. These are not conspirators in the end of Western civilization; they are the victims.

How will evangelicals relate to them? This is an immediate problem. The future problem is still more wrenching. In fifteen years, how will we relate to an adult population lost in confusion about what it means to be male and female?

Relating to them is not optional. And it cannot be done from within a bubble.