Listen to Elizabeth Woning and Jacob Barr talk about the need to respond to the new wave of LGBTQIA+ and how it connects with abortion & abortion clinics and how this connects with PHCs.
Summary
This is Jacob Barr from the Pro-Life Team Podcast. In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Woning, Co-founder of Changed Movement and Executive Director of Advocacy for them. We delved into the sensitive and crucial topics of transgender experiences and how pregnancy care centers can support individuals seeking to detransition and move away from gender identity politics towards health and wholeness.
Elizabeth, with her background as a pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California, shared her advocacy work in the public policy realm, focusing on legislation and policies related to LGBT issues. She highlighted the significant lack of medically accepted standards of care for individuals wishing to detransition, emphasizing the unique role that pregnancy care centers could play in providing support due to their like-minded counselors and medical practitioners.
We discussed the recent increase in abortion clinics offering transgender surgeries and how this trend aligns with a broader cultural shift. Elizabeth provided insights into the challenges faced by individuals seeking de-transition support, particularly in the context of ideological bias and legal constraints like conversion therapy bans.
One of the key points we explored was the profound impact of early childhood experiences on gender identity and sexual orientation. Elizabeth shared powerful personal stories, including her own journey from identifying as a lesbian to embracing her femininity and wholeness through a transformative encounter with Jesus Christ.
We also touched on broader societal trends, such as the sexual revolution and its impact on family dynamics and personal identity. The conversation highlighted the urgent need for a holistic approach to care, integrating psychological, medical, and spiritual support for those navigating complex gender and sexual identity issues.
In closing, Elizabeth led us in a heartfelt prayer, seeking God’s guidance and wisdom for pregnancy care center directors, staff, and individuals affected by gender identity struggles. This podcast episode not only sheds light on a critical and evolving issue but also reinforces the importance of compassionate, comprehensive care rooted in Christian values and understanding.
#Hashtags: #ProLifeTeamPodcast, #ChangedMovement, #TransgenderExperience, #DetransitionSupport, #PregnancyCareCenters, #GenderIdentityPolitics, #HealthAndWholeness, #AdvocacyInPublicPolicy, #LGBTIssues, #CulturalShifts, #ChildhoodExperiences, #GenderIdentity, #SexualOrientation, #SocietalTrends, #SexualRevolution, #HolisticApproach, #ChristianValues, #CompassionateCare, #TransformativeEncounters, #SpiritualGuidance, #PersonalIdentity, #RestorationAndHealing.
Transcript
The transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
Elizabeth Woning :
Welcome to the pro-life Team Podcast i’m Elizabeth Woning i’m Co founder of Changed Movement and Executive Director of Advocacy for them. And we’re going to be talking about some of the ideas, the fundamental underlying ideas behind transgender experience and how pregnancy care centers can come alongside people who are wanting to detransition, to move away from gender identity politics to receive health and wholeness.
Jacob Barr :
So Elizabeth, I’m excited to have you on the pro-life Team Podcast. Would you introduce yourselves as if you were talking to, let’s say, some executive directors from pregnancy clinics, which is probably not a group you often talk to, but that’s one of the audiences that I try and speak to you in this podcast.
Elizabeth Woning :
That’s awesome it’s a privilege to be able to do that. So I am Co founder with Ken Williams we’re both pastors at Bethel Church in Redding, california. We are Co founders of the organization called Changed Movement and Changed essentially is an advocacy and ministry, an organization that serves people who are questioning their sexuality or who have questioned their sexuality and are navigating away from LGBT rather than toward it. We hear a lot about the Cue, the queer space, the LGBTQ space, and everyone presumes that if you’re in that queue space, then you’re leaning towards identifying as LGBT. But we represent all the people who are questioning their sexuality and who might find themselves in that space but really don’t want to head in that direction either ideologically they don’t want to go in that direction or per their conscience, or they’ve had some past life experience that informs their sense of sexuality, like abuse or molestation. So I mean, most of what I do is I advocate in the public policy realm so Ken focuses more on pastoral ministry and pastoral care. I’m executive director of Advocacy and Government Affairs, and so I tend to focus in the spaces where state legislation is being debated or whether public policies on the LGBT realm is being debated.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah and this is, I would say in the past the racing clinics have not taken on this lane or this topic when it comes to trying to provide care. But I mean, I’d like to give you a little back story as to why I wanted to do this podcast and really this year where I think things are going at least from my perspectives. So about four weeks ago I visited every abortion clinic website that I could as part of a keyword research project that I’m still working on today and as part of visiting about 188 abortion clinic websites. And then considering what I saw on those sites, I would say that about 70 % seem to have transgender surgeries listed on their list of services. And this is including single county, one office abortion clinics that offer, many of them offer three services like abortion services, the transgender surgeries and then something that may actually be healthcare, a third service. And so all that to say is thinking about, you know, why were there so many you know, I knew that Planned Parenthood had been offering transgender surgery services for, well, I’m not sure how long, but let’s just call it a long time. But I did not know that these smaller offices, these smaller abortion clinics, were also doing it. And so many times, these pricey clinics are strategically located next door to an abortion clinic. And if these abortion clinics are now offering transgender surgeries, you know, in order for us to provide care for or alternatives a better, healthy, healthier alternative, the people walking in to an abortion clinic, Yeah, the thought is what would that look like for us to be able to answer that need as well. And so, you know, being able to offer it either by offering a referral to a mental health counseling or psychology, you know, psychologist or mental health counseling service that would be faith-based or biblical, biblically grounded. And so that’s really why I reached out to your group was to ask, well, one question was is there a national network where we could refer people to who need mental health counseling and psychologists. And eventually I think the referrals were probably will start anywhere from months from now to 1 and a half years and. Then I think some clinics, some Tracy clinics will start to offer in house counseling and psychology services for some of those audience, you know some of the people walking towards an abortion clinic as a way to answer that need. So let’s start there is there what kind of network might there be to refer people to or find?
Elizabeth Woning :
Someone, it’s interesting. So I was excited to connect with you and get this introduction because a few years ago. So I’m, as I said, I’m in California now. You can’t go any more affirming really in the United States. I know that Vermont and Massachusetts would argue, but i really think we would top any state in the US in terms of advocacy for the LGBT community. And so a few years ago we were addressing some legislation that it had been proposed it ultimately passed. It was focusing on creating a subsidy for transgender care so it was called the at that point the Transgender Wellness Care Act and it was proposing to create a fund that would support transgender LED organizations that provided psychological care, medical care and spiritual care to the trans community. Well, I mean, our organization is comprised of many people who have de transitioned. And so as I was meeting with legislators about this bill, I ended up pondering and thinking would we qualify for that subsidy. And when I began pitching that to some of the progressive legislators, it caused kind of a disruption in the force. You know, like how would we deny a DE transitioned individual, someone who once identified as transgender, maybe even had surgeries? How would we deny them a right to this care Like who really is transgender really was behind that. And so as I began thinking about that in that same season, so that was probably 2020 you know, the trans topic was taking off in an amazing way. And I was connecting with so many endocrinologists and scientists, researchers, medical doctors who are also in the advocacy space with me and trying to put together this legislation that would kind of slow down the train on transitioning children. And in that season, I met with a friend who had been at ADF and now is in your world now. And his pregnancy care center was meeting needs from the LGBT community who had sexually transmitted diseases. So I was offering maybe some culture, cultural insight, cultural education to him and his team. And I began thinking so it and that season there were no and there are no currently medically accepted standards of care so no consensus on standards of care for people who want to de transition. And that is the same today so while you might have heard of like organizations like W Path who have so-called standards of care that are supposedly medical oriented and offer best practices for physical care, actually mostly W Path is an ideological organization comprised of many disciplines. And so in and even in the US, the US Endocrine Society, their standard of care doesn’t acknowledge current current science on the transgender topic and so I was trying to build consensus in a network of scientists and practitioners, medical practitioners, can we put together standards of care? And that’s when I had this idea of well, who would be able to provide this care. And the easiest and most obvious answer was pregnancy care centers because of what you’re talking about. That since Planned Parenthood is entered into that space, the most obvious place for people to find the kind of care they might need to back out of their progression towards trans transition is a pregnancy care center you have like minded counselors, probably you have like minded medical practitioners and so the safety is right now one of the issues if you’re trying to de transition and you want psychological care, it’s actually very difficult to find a licensed counselor who will provide that for a couple of reasons. One of course is ideological. The other is because of conversion therapy bands. So exist most states with conversion therapy bands would restrict any kind of care to a minor and that also any kind of D transition counseling care to a minor, if you can picture that. And so that also puts a chilling effect on the counseling world for adults, even though, you know, so if you’re 18 and you’re in that, are you a minor are you not space the time when really you’d be going after those transition drugs? Many counselors are reticent to offer care, and so pregnancy care centers are the perfect milieu or environment to start cultivating this nationwide network of de transition care. It’s a long I wasn’t.
Jacob Barr :
Expecting it to come.
Elizabeth Woning :
Back to get to you in that there the short answer is there are not yet very many national organizations that are offering counseling care, mainly because, well, because of those two reasons, ideological reasons, but then also because of the conversion therapy ban space.
Jacob Barr :
Wow so I was really hoping that there was going to be a network that we would we could have just like looked up a local physician or counselor or psychologist and provided someone with a referral and then eventually some clinics would then join that network. So that’s interesting that’s really, it’s really interesting that your response is very intriguing it might take me a while to consider just what the ramifications of what that really yeah, that’s an interesting response.
Elizabeth Woning :
Yeah, I mean so interest, so another factor, so another interesting factor is that most of the storm of transgender, you want to call it medical care.
Jacob Barr :
It’s.
Elizabeth Woning :
Like a what? So there’s most of the storm of the transgender wave of ideology that’s hitting right now is so new there really isn’t much medical science supporting it. So there aren’t you don’t go to a university and learn how to transition someone, and you don’t go to alert university to learn how to detransition someone. And in the counseling space, you certainly don’t go to university to learn how to detransition someone, not if you’re a licensed counselor through the APA, for example. And so we’re in this place right now where just new information is being pursued would be the best word.
Jacob Barr :
So in my mind, it it’s sort so back in 1973 with Roe versus Wade, there was this big wave when it came to abortion becoming legal in every state, whereas it was legal in some States and illegal and some before that. And it feels like this transgender this, you know, this new wave. Maybe it started a decade ago maybe it started well, part of it started with Mary, you know, the Supreme Court decision when it comes to gay marriage. But it also seems like the Dobbs decision of making an abortion essentially signaling that abortion was going to become less accessible and less profitable was probably the biggest spike that my gut seems to identify when it comes to the LGBTQIA plus wave increasing. Because it feels like the, you know, this group of doctors who are willing to take on this, you know, the procedure of abortion are also willing to take on the procedure of LGBTQIA transitions. And I feel like they’re the same moral classification. And then I also think that the, you know, the series of surgeries that it takes for someone to transition seems to be, you know, and I don’t know the details, but it looks like it would have several more dollar signs than an abortion because of the lifetime of care and because of the having seven surgeries compared to having one procedure and then having the lifetime of care seems to also just indicate greater opportunity to, you know, receive insurance coverage and having just a large amount of money pour in from each client.
Elizabeth Woning :
Yeah i mean I think that you could look even beyond that even further back to see that demand for abortion has been on the decline and so I think that two things have kind of happened at once and whether they were, whether it was an intentional conspiracy or not, who could know, maybe it’s the spirits of darkness but so as Roe V Wade, as I would say the social conservative push against abortion has been successful in educating the younger generation about the impacts of abortion but generally, even for women, the impacts of contraception and hormone therapies in that whole realm, Planned Parenthood has strategically seen the upcoming the forefront of the kinds of medicines that are going to be required in this space. It’s interesting. I think, you know, I mean ideologically we could probably have an interesting conversation about what is happening, about the what is happening with the identity of women just generally and I think that would be a very interesting and provocative conversation to have when Planned Parenthood is looking at trying to Planned Parenthood, which. So a little background on me. I came out as lesbian in my early twenties and lived in the gay community for several years. I went to seminary openly gay. So I was part of the gay affirming church movement. And when I finished my master’s degree in theology and moved into parish ministry, i had an unexplainable experience with Jesus that caused me to begin questioning what I believe to be true about God. And that journey, that kind of existential crisis that I had at that point, led me to do an entire deconstruction, if you will, of my faith at that point. And the outcome of that it was a few years journey really. The outcome of that was I questioned my sexuality, i questioned whether I had been born a lesbian and I ended up repenting of that identity and leaving that subculture and then moving towards embracing femininity and wholeness and today, years later, I’m I don’t experience same sex attraction and I’m far away from that world. But when I was in the culture, I was a very staunch feminist. And so Planned Parenthood and their ministry if you will, to women in America was a major, a major pillar. And the fact that they have moved from really supporting women and women’s rights to supporting men as women and their biological rights and just the confusion over what is a woman is very interesting just that’s another conversation but very interesting. And so yes, we could make the argument where is the money? And I think that there’s a lot more money than we can even begin to imagine in transgender care. It because unlike any other, any other procedure, it creates a patient for life and you know you might we’re not talking typically about just a few surgeries it’s usually quite a few surgeries and then beyond that it is medical care for the body to maintain that transition for the rest of that individual’s life. And so the financial gain, the financial profit that’s possible, is much greater than a single procedure like an abortion. You know, and we could also bring into the conversation if we wanted to transhumanism and where we’re going with that. But the fact that right now i would say in the pregnancy care center space, the biggest issue is in the medicines that the hormones that are being offered. It’s not likely that a care center or a, you know, an abortion care center could provide surgeries, but they certainly would be able to maintain hormone therapies and follow up procedures for transition.
Jacob Barr :
Well first of all I say thank you for sharing your story and yeah that’s just thank you for being open and continuing to be open on the and be identically sharing a hard story and I feel like there yeah that’s something I wish I would knew more about was the hormone blocks and the hormone ads and when it comes to the long term effects that has what one thing that is clear is that it looks to me like the enemy is like this lion looking to devour the least powerful or the most vulnerable person in the pack. Yeah the one that’s by themselves and least likely to fight back and that’s been the unborn for a long time it’s also children And so I think that’s I feel like the LGBTQIA plus group has targeted born children who are. Yeah with partially developed brains who are not 25 yet, they are probably closer to seven years old it seems like that. I’m not quite sure what the age range is, but it just seems like very young all the way up through pre puberty and through puberty, maybe post puberty that kind of range and age. It also seems like it’s almost like there’s a merging of these groups so you know, the LSBTQ plus IA group and the abortion advocate or you know, those who would promote abortion group or accessibility to abortion and possibly others. But it feels like there’s almost like this merging of groups or overlap of groups that may not have been seen or noticed years before but I feel like right now we’re experiencing this merging.
Elizabeth Woning :
Yeah, I mean I think that that’s one of the most alarming things that we’re watching happening, honestly so organizations like Human Rights Campaign so for a couple of decades at least if not longer, Human Rights Campaign has been an advocate for the LGBT space. And what we’ve been watching in the last five years at least is they’re Co opting racial, racial groups, ethnic groups and then also abortion advocacies so if you go to human rights campaigns website, they will say that they are protecting women’s rights, that they are advocating for women’s rights particularly in the abortion space. And so you know, honestly, if you think about the impacts of, I like to say that the sexual revolution is an offshoot of the tech revolution that we’re experiencing right now. And you know the tech revolution just like other industrial like the industrial revolution before it caused very great or is causing very great social upheaval so if you go back to the Industrial revolution when we were transitioning from agrarian society into more of a metropolitan focused state, families were upended. Men, you know, worked off out of the home women began working out of the home like the industrial revolution caused a very great change in our culture. But then the same thing is happening, happening with the tech revolution. And like abortion, for example, wouldn’t be possible without the tech revolution, the advancements in medical care and science and prescription drugs are all possible as a result of technology. Well, then, you know with contraception being available then the sexual revolution really became possible and you were able, we were able to basically subvert the impacts of our sexual desires through medicine or through medical procedures. So that we kind of disconnected from, I would say even disconnect began disconnecting from our bodies as a result. I think it’s interesting that one of the outcomes or the fruits of the sexual revolution is actually this very great disconnect that we’re experiencing, dissociation we’re experiencing in our culture right now where people don’t even know are they man or woman are, you know, how who should they mate with or other concerns like that so this dissociation is very, you know, it’s breaking down our culture in many ways. So with that, this conversation over trans care etcetera needs to be part of a of a restoration project in my opinion just on a regular, in my opinion a Christian anthropology just restoring personhood in America in a sense. Do you have any thoughts about?
Jacob Barr :
Just think more about restoring. Yeah so it’s interesting. So when you say personhood, I think your perspective was in regards to a man versus woman. Can you talk to me more about your person, the back story with that word personhood? Because it has a lot of weight in the pro-life and abortion side of things. But I’m curious, before going there, I’d like to hear your thoughts on how you were connecting it to the LGBTQ Third World and the man versus woman confusion.
Elizabeth Woning :
Well, you know, for a long time pro-life advocates have been saying an embryo is a person, right an unborn child is a person. And one of the disconnects that we have right now is how much of our bodies are part of our personhood. And so I mean we by virtue of cultural change right now this we’ve kind of virtualized ourselves in a sense and so we don’t see our bodies as part of ourselves. We tend to think that our mind, will, and emotions are the primary aspect of our identity, which is the kind of underlying foundation for transgenderism. Like I can, will to be irregardless of what my body says, I can will to be something else. And this ideology is really completely different than the LGB ideology. It’s in complete opposition to the LGB ideology. Lgb ideology says I’m a victim of my body. Trans ideology says I am disconnected i am. I can Vanquish and overcome my body. My body is just an extension of my inner self and so personhood in my opinion involves this integration where we recognize that our bodies are an integral part of our whole being and that this aligns with a biblical anthropology that God breathed into our bodies and we became a living soul. The Incarnation speaks to our whole personhood as a requirement, our whole bodies as a requirement for person personhood before Jesus like if we all me had a soul and that was the most important thing, Jesus wouldn’t have come in a body. He wouldn’t have had to die on the cross. And so we are just this whole integrated being and a miracle in that. And our bodies, down to the cellular level, tell us a lot about who we are as men and women and who our heritage is we get to speak genetically of generations before us. Our whole character, our whole personality is informed by our bodies before it’s informed by culture. And so we we’re in this time where embracing personhood, in my opinion, is about our whole being, the integration of our body, soul and spirit.
Jacob Barr :
That seems to resonate with messages that I’ve heard at my church when it comes to the importance of the body being increased or elevated back to where it should be. And yeah, how we’re not just made-up of mind and spirit but yet, yeah, the body is integral when it comes to it’s part of who we are and who God created. And yeah, a God created us as whole creature is reflecting him and so it’s important to include the body and not to discard it as something that’s yeah, not valuable or you know.
Elizabeth Woning :
Less valuable or something that we should be able to destroy or create apart from the will of God.
Jacob Barr :
So I guess one of the things I like to do with this podcast, there’s a couple of different pillars one is I’d like to share things that are helpful to pracing clinic directors i think we’ve, I think we have we probably are simply echoing something that they’ve already been considering because I felt like we’ve been this is a message but maybe this is probably more direct that some of the echoes that have been going on this need of you know talking about providing mental health counseling or psychological counseling for well for patients that are essentially going to an abortion clinic which or women’s clinic or whatever the whatever the name might be. Another pillar is to share something new and I think we’ve definitely achieved that by sharing by talking about a new topic and again echoing and things that they’ve probably been seeing and experiencing which would terrify that this is a good thing to talk about. And then the one of the pillars is highlighting God’s fingerprints on a different topic. So I’d like to go there and even though I think we probably, we probably touched on that, but can you can you share a story, whether it’s your own story or a different story where you have seen, yeah, you have seen God’s fingerprints work in this space and yeah, it just simply has a way of highlighting God’s fingerprints in his work.
Elizabeth Woning :
Yeah, let me let me share a story of a good friend of mine, Kathy Grace Duncan so Kathy Grace is our Director of Gender Advocacy and she travels with me quite a lot just addressing public policy matters, sharing her testimony so that people have a greater understanding of what’s involved with trans, with the trans experience. So Kathy Grace is a little bit older than me she’s around 50 I believe. And she so when she was born, her family, her parents had a disconnect and her father was abusive towards her mother and growing up she watched them fighting and her father’s abuse and she made a subconscious and I say subconscious because she didn’t really recognize it until she was an adult. So she made a subconscious vow in that season as a child that she would be a protector of women and that became I’ll be a better man than my father and so you know as a 7-8-9 year old she was acting out as a boy, wanting to be a boy playing like she was a boy and then in school, she was able to orchestrate kind of a double personality where she had friend groups that knew her as a boy and friend groups who knew her as a girl. And this was kind of a hidden life of hers. Well, then when she graduated from high school, she left home and she came out as trans and began transitioning and she fully surgically transitioned and began living as a man. And so if you if you looked at Trent, at Kathy Grace when she was about 20, you would have seen her mustache. She was beginning male pattern baldness like you wouldn’t have by just looking at her, known that she was biologically a woman. And so she was dating women. And at one point went to a church and with her girlfriend and there was an altar call at the church and she went forward to be saved. And she expected, like, OK, suddenly everything’s going to change. I’m going to, you know, lightning from heaven something dramatic is going to happen. And that didn’t happen and she went forward a couple of times, actually, and ended up speaking to the pastor and then confessing that she believed she was a man trapped in a woman’s body and that. And when that pastor heard, he asked her to leave and stop attending church there. And so several years later, then another opportunity to start attending church happened. She went, she had been dating another woman went through kind of a bad breakup. And that bad breakup kind of led her to, I think I’m going to try to go back to church. So she started attending a new church. She became really active in that church she became a youth leader in that church and was working with junior high age boys now still, no one knew that she was biologically a woman and she was super popular because she’s really fun and gregarious and doing great in ministry and she had a mentor and she started feeling from the Lord this prompting to accept the truth that she was a biological woman and she didn’t know what to do, you know, because she had a track record of, well, I guess my life in church is over and confessed that to her mentor and her mentor said, well, let’s see, let’s talk to the pastor. And so she met with the pastors of the church and confessed. But this time when she confessed, she said I’m a woman living as a man. So it was a different confession that she had. And when she declared that confession, she’ll say she just felt the power of the Holy Spirit just hit her and fill the room. And the pastor said to her, essentially, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help you, but we’re going to stand with you in this season. And so she agreed to immediately start backing out of the ministry leadership responsibilities she had she became open about her identity. And then ultimately she was connected to a ministry in portland Fellowship, who offered to take her in while she DD transitioned. So Portland Fellowship is a ministry part of the network called Restored Hope Network, which some of your leaders could connect to they have a really great network of counselors that you could tap into. But so this ministry took her in it’s a live in program and she was there for a couple of years as she de transitioned it took a while for her to de transition completely, but then on top of that, it took a while for her to learn even what it who she was as a woman, if you can imagine like what did it if she had so fully rejected womanhood, reintegrating yourself or reintroducing yourself to that idea. I don’t know if she maybe had ever felt like a woman or as a girl in her life and so it was a novel idea for her and so she had many women surrounding her, mentoring her she went through a disciple, a really intentional discipleship process. I don’t think she would say she went through clinical counseling she went through discipleship with the Lord. And so through prayer and through learning to hear the Lord, she de transitioned. Today she has been leading women’s ministry for several years in Portland fellowship and you know she no longer experiences same sex attraction and she no longer experiences in any discordance with her gender. So the experience I could say of young children having an experience where they ’cause they are caused to question their identity in their sexuality or in their gender is super common guy i know of a young woman who when she was. Probably three ish three or four now once again, this is something that she has realized and unpacked as an adult. She’s in her late twenties, now as an adult, looking back on her childhood so when she was about three or four, her dad was giving her a bath and as she was he was helping her get out of the bathtub. She slipped and fell and she cut the area around her vagina and it was bleeding and probably her father to protect her was. He said stay right here and went to get her mom so that she would have her mom looking instead of him. But she perceived that as there’s something wrong with me he won’t look at me. And so she felt ashamed then from then on that she was a girl and not her boy because it caused a disconnect. She perceived it was just a self perceived disconnect between her and her father that lasted all the way until she was in her twenties. There wasn’t a broken relationship with her father was you know, because she deeply desired connection with him and her family life was not. It wasn’t fraught with abuse like Kathy Grace’s but that one moment of fear and doubt was enough to set her on the trajectory of self rejection. And with no one to know how to respond or to help her navigate, how do you get back to understanding what’s underneath this sense of complete disconnect from your gender identity? It really took for her once again this place of prayer and connection with the Lord to understand what happened, what was I believing and what then do I do? And so we’re in an interesting time when children really are being attacked, families are being attacked. And I would say the number one place of risk is in the relationship between parents and children.
Jacob Barr :
Thank you for sharing those stories. One thing that I’m reflecting on is when it comes to Kathy’s story and it sounds like she had a really hard experience the first time that she tried to share. But at least for the second time. What one of the verses that we often reflect on when it comes to you know women seeking healing from abortion or well, seeking healing from really anything it comes to spiritual healing and other types of healing I suppose as well. Which would be James five sixteen which says confess your sins one to another so that you may be healed in the prayers of a righteous person availeth much. And so by sharing with someone who is trusted and who is willing to pray and a good person to ask to pray, I think is a really good recipe for finding healing and taking that step of saying it out loud to that person really I think removes A foothold or it removes the power that sin holds over someone until that confession is made or it’s a very incredible.
Elizabeth Woning :
Way i feel like it’s so important like you’re saying I’m my the other ministry leader here it changed can he says this line that I think is absolutely pertinent. You really can’t be loved unconditionally until people know your condition. And so you know a lot of the time for us who are in the LGBT community, we keep silent. We’re out of fear. We keep silent about what we’re experiencing and believing out of fear of rejection mainly. But what happens then is that silence. He actually seems to confirm the rejection that we’re perceiving. So we perceive the fact that our parents or our friends or who whomever are not addressing our deep emotional pain we perceive that as rejection, even though we actually haven’t confessed to having that pain. And so there’s so much. The Lord’s wisdom in confession is so important.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, I agree and then the other thing that you said when you were mentioning the such experience for Kathy, which when you said that pastor said we will stand with you. So last night I went to church and Pastor Susan Seepin at ARC my church. She talked about the book of Ephesians and we’re going to a series where we’re over. Yeah, every summer we go over one book per Sunday. Man this is a series been doing for about 5 years you know it’s not going straight through spreading it out and so Susan really wanted to preach on Ephesians because in the past she actually memorized the entire book of Ephesians because she likes it so much. And so if anyone was ready to preach on Ephesians, it was Susan and her servant was really incredible because she knew it at just an incredible depth and she’s one of the way in which she summarized Ephesians was the three parts. The first several chapters were about sitting and then the next portion was about walking and then the third portion was about standing and sitting represented preparing or in my mind I was thinking of resting but I think it’s preparing and then walking is a matter of changing like if you’re walking towards the right direction and it also standing is when you have to take a stand for someone And sitting, walking and standing are also can be done in an evil way according to Psalms one. Because the sit you know, don’t sit with the scornful or you know, it was a sitting walking and standing in Psalms 1 represents how it can be done in an evil way. But Ephesian talks about how sitting, walking and standing can be done in a righteous for God way. And it just it just struck me that you used to you know that word stand just brought in a lot of meaning. When you said that, he said we’ll stand with you because that’s really what we’re preparing to do, is to stand for people who need, you know, standing in that spot with the armor of God. That standing portion of Ephesians talks about equipping with the hour of God to be able to.
Elizabeth Woning :
Stand yeah so good yeah, that’s absolutely perfect and in this season we so need mature spiritual leaders to take that stand. And you know from my vantage point I have so many people who have been in the pro-life space and from my vantage point you have a well worn pathway of strategies but then also maturity in the movement that can make that stand and if anybody ever needed it is children who are faced with identity politics today.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah and it feels like, yeah and it feels like the children are, you know, when it comes to school systems, when it comes to culture, when it comes to so it just seems like yeah and maybe we’re in the season of sitting and walking and get it you know so that we can stand and but probably in the year we need to do all three we need we need to do what’s right at the for the moment and yeah and essentially you know being equipped to stand for children who are vulnerable and then those years of like between the ages of 7 to 9 seem like the most impactful years that will direct someone’s you know where they go as an adult those years are critical and if the enemy is attacking those years the enemy is going to see fruit in the labor years of life. And so we really need to identify and you know, you know not give room to the enemy to provided that bad direction during those 7 to 9 year old.
Elizabeth Woning :
Years and so much sexual abuse happens in that time as well and any if there’s any sexual abuse and or molestation so because we are in just sex culture, children as young as seven are being introduced to sex so once you start to sexualize children at that age, then you set a pattern, a trajectory for them for the rest of their lives. And if they are believing i personally think it’s unethical for anyone to affirm LGB or T identity in a child who hasn’t gone through puberty. Because who can know if you know LGBT is sexual and prepubescent children are not geared and they’re not mature enough to be having those feelings. So that 79 year old period is a highly sexually charged period right now in the United States that’s when most kids are being introduced to porn. Many kids are being transitioned into and I don’t mean from a transgender posture but transitioned into more mature levels of sex Ed curriculums in their school And so it is a pivotal time but I but I would say all of the years because many transgender identifying people would tell you that they started doubting their or questioning their gender as early as they can remember. And I you know when I’ve talked to counselors and psychological professionals about that they tend to believe it’s because their attachment issues so early childhood attachment issues. So we’re a an infant has not received the kind of attention from both parents that infant really needed in order to develop in a healthy way emotionally. And so the our mandate really is to restore family so that women can feel confident in you know, being women all the way to being mothers and cherishing that role and everything that it requires. You know, so that they don’t have the demand of just rushing away from having a child that can really nurture it early in their lives because so many of us, we have issues in our sexual identity because of those early childhood years. I think I wanted to say because you opened with where’s the network that we can find so I want to speak to that for a minute because i maybe brushed you off or you might have sensed that I brushed you off with that by saying there isn’t one or there isn’t there aren’t many there are developing networks that are helping people detransition but right at the moment, one of the dramas in that is the space for counselors who are willing to walk with individuals who are questioning their site, Their sexuality has been under attack for decades. You know, starting with the seventies when the LGBT movement, the Stonewall movement, began attacking the American Psychological Association, research on emotional care for people who experience same sex feelings or gender incongruence has really been twisted by LGBT activism. So you know there isn’t much professional care offered to someone who does not want the feelings and most of the counselors who would be willing to be in that space are Christian and but that space as I said is heavily attacked because of legislation and public policy in the anti discrimination space. And so you almost you have to look at for organizations that have strong Christian biblical sexual ethics for counselors, but they are certainly that network that awareness of the relationship particularly of trauma to transgender identity trauma and other comorbidities like autism to the transgender reality is meaning that more and more and more counselors are engaging that space. And so I expect to see in the next five years a really a really obvious response to de transitioning. Meanwhile, I think it’s up to Christians to find their networks of Christian counselors like the American Association of Christian Counselors who do hold spaces for people with who are wanting to align with a biblical sexual ethic on these topics to help them D transition. But it isn’t just psychological care that AD transitioner needs. Ad Transitioner is going to need a multidisciplinary approach because they’ve affected their bodies as well. And so you’ll, you’ll have to be able to coordinate with local endocrinologists who would be willing to facilitate kind of the medical practices around hormone therapies as well as general practitioners just to address the overall impacts of those drugs on people. And of course the more dramatic or more invasive their transition, the greater the measure of care is going to be needed. So some procedures like a phalloplasty for example are going to require very specialized care. So I think we’re going to have to be eyes wide open looking for organizations a good one to follow is the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, and I’ll send you a few links so that you can include those with this podcast Segam, Genspecht. But also organizations that have been around for a long time like Living Waters or Restored Hope Network asset Changed movement ministries that are addressing this so that everyone receives all the care, all the kinds of care from a holistic approach that they need to be restored wow.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah thank you so much for just sharing all these this insight and this wisdom. Would you, would you help us close the podcast by praying and just with the expectation that those who are listening will be able to pray as they’re commuting and listening to this podcast?
Elizabeth Woning :
Yeah, I’d love to i appreciate that thank you, Father we come today to you through the through the beauty and wisdom of your Son and the sacrifice of Jesus and Lord, I pray that in this season you are raising up spiritual leaders and practical leaders who can navigate this movement. The impacts of the transgender movement on our culture are so great. But, Father, we know that you have a greater plan. And so, Lord, because you’re able to make beauty out of ashes. I just thank you Father, that you are releasing over pregnancy care directors and over the center staff vision and strategy and unusual pioneering ideas that will address this need and become a safety net. A safety net and a place of security for people who are wanting to backpedal on beliefs that they’ve had in the past so that they can receive wonderful care, nurture and complete restoration in Jesus name amen.
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