Ken Ham Says Gender Must Be Taught, But Is Not a Social Construct

Oh, Ken Ham. Today we’ll look at a recent article of his titled “Boy, Girl, or ‘Purple Penguin’?” In it he addresses gender and trans issues and is very insistent that gender must be taught—but that it is not a social construct.

According to news reports (including on Fox News yesterday), a school district in Lincoln, Nebraska has recently given its teachers a handout to promote gender inclusiveness in their classrooms. This handout encourages teachers to stop referring to students as “girls and boys” but instead to describe students as a group, with phrases like “calling all readers” or “hey campers.” Instead of separating the children into groups of boys and girls, teachers are being urged to divide the students by things such as whether they prefer milk or juice or perhaps skateboards or bikes, to create classroom names, and then “ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet at the rug.”

Oh, I so support this! But I’m guessing Ham doesn’t.

The goal of this name changing is to help students “recognize and celebrate the gender diversity of all students” and to “challenge students to think more expansively about their notions of gender.” Really, what this handout is encouraging teachers to do is to destroy any distinction between male and female. This is a natural outcome of a culture that has rejected the Bible as its foundation for thinking in every area. As our culture continues to reject Jesus Christ and move further away from basing its thinking on the solid foundation of the Word of God, we continue to see more of everyone “doing what is right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6). And our culture seems determined to make sure the next generation follows suit.

Ham says the handout urges teachers to “destroy any distinction between male and female.” In other words, he wants the gender binary reinforced rather than set aside. But what does that mean, exactly? On the simplest level, Ham appears to want teachers to tell little boys “you’re a boy” and little girls “you’re a girl.” But it’s important to remember that these statements actually communicate a whole lot.

If “you’re a boy” and “you’re a girl” meant only genitalia (we’re in Ham’s world, remember), constantly distinguishing between the two wouldn’t be so important. No, for Ham (and for many others) “you’re a boy” actually means something more like “you’re a child who should like sports and heavy machinery and competition and should grow up to have a career or job and support a family.” Similarly, “you’re a girl” actually means something like “you’re a child who should like baby dolls and princesses and makeup and should grow up to raise children and care for a home.”

In other words, when Ham speaks of maintaining a “distinction between male and female” he actually means pushing children into specific culturally created gender roles. And of course, he isn’t just speaking of policing the boundaries of “girl” and “boy” to maintain the distinction but also of forcing all children into a binary—they must be male or female. This leaves no room for people who do not fit this binary, and no room for transgender individual. In Ham’s world, you are the genitals you are born with.

This type of thinking has serious consequences. If man is the ultimate authority, then why not just discard gender? And, for that matter, why not just make marriage whatever you want it to be?

Well, yes.

God has clearly revealed to us in His Word that gender is not something we can choose to discard. When God created mankind, He made them male and female (Genesis 1:27). It’s only concerning our spiritual state in Christ where there is no male or female distinction, as both are equally made in God’s image and equally valuable in His sight (Galatians 3:28).

Well now. This is the justification evangelicals like Ham use for stating that men and women are equal—but that wives are to submit to their husband and women shouldn’t have positions in church leadership. Because equal means equal before God, it seems, not equal in this world. 

Males are neither inherently superior nor inferior to females, but males and females are different. And that distinction becomes particularly important when marriage is in view.

You see what I mean? Not superior or inferior. Just different. Which of course means wives are to submit to their husband and women shouldn’t have positions in church leadership. Lovely.

Secularists are desperately trying to teach our children that gender is an arbitrary choice rather than a part of who they are designed to be.

If anyone thinks people make the “arbitrary choice” to be trans, they really need to read some stats on the discrimination and violence trans people face.

Yet according to our Creator, each person is designed to be either male or female. And that same Creator stipulated that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. By erasing in children’s minds their identity as male and female, then when they grow up, the ideas of gay marriage and homosexual behavior and any other aberration will seem to be valid and acceptable choices on their menu for life.

The horror! I had no idea that teachers saying “those who prefer cats over here, and those who prefer dogs over here” rather than “boys over here, and girls over there” was so powerful.

But man is not the ultimate authority—God is!  The Son of God who came into this world to die for the sins of men and women and boys and girls affirmed that from the beginning that being “male” or “female” has been a part of each person’s created identity.

This is the “because, God” defense, which will work for Ham’s followers but not anyone else. Oh, and does Ham know there are trans and trans affirming Christians?

We, as followers of Christ, need to stand firmly on the Word of God and teach our children the truth about gender and marriage. Gender is not a social construct—it is part of who we are because it is a creation of God’s that has been present from the beginning.

Someone needs to tell Ham what we mean when we talk about gender as a “social construct.” The point is that gender is something we are socialized into. And that is exactly what Ham is affirming here—if children are not socialized into gender, he says, the distinctions will be erased. If Ham really didn’t think gender was a social construct, he wouldn’t say calling children “readers” rather than “boys and girls” would erase gender differences—because he would see gender as something wired into each of us, something that can’t be erased with egalitarian language.

Neither is marriage whatever you want it to be. God created marriage at the beginning so only God has the right to define marriage. As Jesus said, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’ so He also then said ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4–5). Marriage is between one man and one woman. Period.

Except for when it’s between a man and a woman and a woman and a woman, of course. You know, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon. And if we’re really getting into the Old Testament—including things God condoned or ordered in his law—we also have concubines and forced marriages. And it’s not like the New Testament condemns polygamy. None of this is a problem for progressive Christians, but it ought to present a serious problem for conservatives like Ham, who refuse to see the Bible as anything but the literal and factually accurate Word of God.

We also need to teach our children that sin has affected the human race—not only our spiritual state but physically also. Certainly, there are those (an extremely small minority) for which sin may have affected their physical development in some way relating to their sexuality. (See “Feedback: Hermaphroditism.”) Such people need our understanding, love, and care. Also because of the sin that affects us all, some people might be tempted more easily than others in regard to blurring the gender distinction or suffer some confusion or dissatisfaction with the gender God clearly created them to have. But then we all to need to believe God’s Word that:

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.  (1 Corinthians 10:13)

In Ham’s mind, being trans is a temptation that must be resisted—much like being gay. Ham doesn’t like a messy or diverse world. He would fit everyone into the categories heterosexual male and heterosexual female—and if you don’t fit, pray hard and fake it till you make it.

Our children desperately need to be taught the true history of the universe. And every child needs to be taught that he or she has been specially and wonderfully designed, even before they were born (see Psalm 139:14–16), as male or female in the image of God.

Shorter Ham: Gender is not a social construct, but it must be taught, and if you don’t teach it confusion will reign. Say what?

I encourage you to bring your children to the Creation Museum to help them develop a biblical foundation—remember kids are free in 2014 with a paying adult!

Lovely.