Happy Mother’s Day first of all. Mother’s Day is a celebration honoring the love, sacrifices, and strength of mothers everywhere. It’s a special day to pause and recognize the endless ways moms guide, nurture, support us—often without asking for anything in return. More than cards and flowers, it’s a moment to express deep gratitude for their unconditional love (for those fortunate enough to experience this) and the profound role they play in shaping our lives.
For today’s essay, which seems appropriate for a Sunday in America, I want to explain why the concept of transphobia is unreasonable by comparing it to the concept of Christophobia.
I am not a Christian, nor have I ever been one. I was never baptized. Although I grew up around Christians, I have never discriminated against them. My strongest criticism of Christianity arises when Christians try to impose their beliefs on me, but that critique is not discrimination—or even prejudice. In a free society, people can believe and practice as they wish, and I am equally free to disbelieve and abstain from those practices. I should not be subject to someone else’s doctrines. Because we live in a free society, I am also free to criticize doctrine.
Now, substitute “gender identity ideology” and “transgender” for “Christianity” and “Christian,” and the same reasoning applies to the transgender question. Accusing me of “Christophobia” or labeling me a “Christophobe” for my reasonable stance regarding that faith would be absurd. The same applies to gender identity ideology. Criticizing or disbelieving in gender identity does not make me a bigot, any more than my stance on Christianity does. Even in the strict sense of bigotry—dogmatic adherence to one’s opinion while dismissing others—I am not intolerant of differing views. I am only intolerant of the imposition of those views, whether by harassment, intimidation, violence, or institutional rules.
Some might argue that gender identity differs from Christianity because one is inherent to a person’s being, while the other is a belief. However, for many Christians, their faith is their core identity—it’s who they are. They cannot imagine being otherwise. They always knew they were Christian. Neither gender identity nor Christianity is like race, sex, or homosexuality, which are innate. Belief in gender identity and Christianity are subjective.
Believe what you want, but don’t force me to believe it or participate in its rituals. If we redefine freedom as bigotry and the government and other powerful institutions endorse that definition, we’re in serious trouble. As a wise saying goes: don’t make a rod for your own back.
I want to return to my note on Mother’s Day at top and relate it to the substance of this essay. This is my first Mother’s Day without my mom. I lost her to cancer last month. While woke zealots are free to redescribe mothers as “inseminated persons” it’s a rather cold way to put the matter of motherhood. We are our bodies to be sure, but we’re not mere vessels for delivering and receiving sperm (or for housing souls, for that matter).
Referring to mothers in such a clinical way erases the profound emotional, physical, and relational depth of motherhood. Being a mother is not just a biological event—it’s an ongoing act of care, love, and sacrifice that shapes lives and communities. Mothers nurture not only with their bodies but with their hearts, minds, and time, offering guidance, protection, and unconditional support. Reducing them to a clinical term denies the dignity, complexity, and humanity of the maternal role, which deserves deep respect and recognition. Because I am an unbeliever, I cannot say that mother is looking down on me with all motherly virtues in mind. But I know she did when she was alive.
Gender identity ideology is contemptible for this reason: it denies the objective existence of women as such and thus denies the essence of motherhood. Women are adult female humans. Men cannot be that. It is a paradox to deny the reality of gender while at the same time reducing women to their reproductive function. The absurd attempt to convey the opposite—that gender is not natural and immutable—with sterile language that negates the attempt dehumanizes women. Again, a person is free to express the opinion that a man can be a mother. But the truth is that he cannot be. He can only be a father. Father’s Day falls on June 15 this year.
freedom and reason 