By Joshua Arnold

“All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced Wednesday. “It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.”

The announcement came in response to controversy over a bill introduced Monday by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to bar biological males from women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill. Mace said her bill was in response to the election of Rep. Sara McBride (D-Del.), a biological male and the first member of Congress to identify as transgender.

“I’m a rape survivor. I have PTSD from the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of a man, and I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces, so I am absolutely, 100% gonna stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms,” insisted Mace. “If being a feminist makes me an extremist, I’m totally here for it.”

Before issuing a formal announcement, Johnson answered a reporter’s attempted “gotcha” question, “Let me be unequivocally clear: a man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and a man cannot become a woman. But I also believe that we treat everybody with dignity. We can believe all those things at the same time.”

This is so obvious that it provokes the question, why is this decision even controversial in the first place?

A Christian’s answer to this question must begin with creation when “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). This establishes each person’s male or female identity in the order of God’s creation. It also invests people — both men and women — with equal dignity because they bear God’s image. And because each person bears God’s image, any attempt to deface, erase, or change a person’s identity as male or female is an offense against God.

People have tried to undermine the force of this argument by variously claiming that the creation account is an allegorical myth, that Christians need not worry about the Old Testament, or (more reasonably) that not everything in the Law of Moses applies with equal force to believers under the new covenant. The point of such arguments is to escape the ethical implications of inconvenient statements.

This is not the place to respond to these arguments in detail; for now, I will simply note that they do not align with the way Jesus interpreted the creation narrative. In Matthew 19, Jesus was asked about the morality of no-fault divorce. Instead of appealing to the “law of the land” or popular opinion, Jesus appealed back to the creation narrative in Genesis 1-2, shocking both his opponents and his own disciples. He responded, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’” (Matthew 19:4-5). From these citations, Jesus concluded, “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6).

Divorce is not the same issue as transgender identity, but it offers a helpful parallel for how Jesus interprets Scripture and why.

When confronted with an ethical question, the only sinless human being (Hebrews 4:15) turned to the revealed Word of God in Scripture for divine wisdom. Jesus did not seek a prooftext for his own opinion but insight into the will of God. “My judgment is just,” he said, “because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:30). In particular, he turned to the creation narrative for an account of human relations before sin entered the world, when God declared everything that he created to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Jesus argued that the creation order reflects God’s will and should still apply, although human relationships have been grievously marred by sin.

Jesus obviously did not pull out his pocket scroll of Moses mid-conversation. But he had clearly meditated on these texts beforehand and knew them well enough to handle them accurately. As to whether Jesus had to learn the Scriptures as a man or had prior knowledge of creation as the eternal Son of God is a question probing too deeply into the mystery of the incarnation for me to answer. However, as he did everything, Jesus presented his argument as a model of human perfection for his followers to emulate.

Those who claim to follow Jesus should also follow him in how they interpret the Scriptures, as the New Testament authors did. This means that, when answering the ethical questions of our own day, we should use Jesus’s interpretation of the Scriptures as a model for our own. The application is not always direct or obvious, such as Paul’s connection between muzzling oxen and paying pastors (Deuteronomy 25:4, 1 Corinthians 9:9, 1 Timothy 5:18). But, fortunately, there is a Scripture that directly relates to transgender identity, and it is the very same one Jesus quoted regarding sexual issues, Genesis 1:27.

God created everyone as male or female. It doesn’t get any more obvious than that. We all know it to be true and act on that knowledge every day.

But if this is so obvious, and if everyone knows it, then why do some people deny it?

To answer this question, we must turn to Romans 1, where Paul describes how men “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). Because they refused to honor God, “they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). As judgment upon this rebellion, “God gave them up” progressively to their lusts, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind, leading to sexual immorality, then homosexual immorality, and finally every form of wickedness (Romans 1:24-31). Thus, men progressed — regressed, rather — from desiring wickedness to rejecting God’s truth to being enslaved and destroyed by their own wickedness.

Transgender identity, it is true, is not specifically named, but that has more to do with technological distinctions than moral ones. The physical changes required to “pass” for a member of the opposite sex were impossible before modern advancements in endocrinology (the study of hormones) and plastic surgery. Paul’s concern in the chapter is to indict all humanity for all sins, which he does by listing at least 20 different kinds, along with a catch-all item, “all manner of unrighteousness” (Romans 1:29). If it violates God’s revealed will — and transgenderism surely does — then it counts as sin.

This investigation into Romans 1 prepares us to answer the question. Why do some people deny that God created everyone as male and female? Paul’s answer would be that they rebelled against God’s truth out of love for their own evil desires, so God gave them over to be enslaved by their own desires.

Extrapolating from this answer yields an answer to the earlier question. Why is it controversial for the Speaker of the House to defend single-sex spaces in our nation’s Capitol? Because our entire nation, both individually and collectively, has rejected God’s truth in favor of our own evil desires. When our society makes judgments based upon each person’s own desires and feelings instead of biblical truth, there is hardly a firm foundation for making decisive judgments about sexuality and gender. When a House speaker stands on biblical truth, a substantial portion of the country is ready to object.

Sadly, even Mace herself — despite her passion on this issue — lacks a firm foundation from which to object to transgender identity. She declared her opposition was based on feminism, even though radical feminist thought helped uncouple America’s ideas about sexuality and gender from biblical teaching in the first place.

Only two years ago, Mace voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that codified same-sex marriage — another aberration from God’s design for human relationships — into U.S. federal law and placed religious freedom in jeopardy. But, if a person can marry someone of whichever sex he or she chooses, on what basis can that person be prevented from be becoming whichever sex he or she chooses?

Hopefully, Mace’s passion for defending women’s restrooms will cause her to reflect on the chain of decisions that led to this controversy. Hopefully, Mace will come to know God’s truth, repent and believe in Jesus Christ, and submit her life to him, as Paul exhorts us to pray for all government leaders (1 Timothy 2:1-4). Hopefully, God will grant repentance to America at large and return our society to a place where it is no longer controversial to say that, in our nation’s Capitol, women’s bathrooms are for women only.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.