Earlier this year my family and I were shopping at Target. I needed to visit the restroom, and in an attempt to not leave my wife with our three children alone for long, I was walking very quickly.
I noticed a group of about 10 people—they looked for an extended family with parents, grandparents, and young kids—standing around the restrooms, but I paid them no attention. Then I heard a sweet, gentle voice say, “Sir.”
I kept walking, assuming she was speaking to someone in her group.
Then I heard a more forceful, “Sir!” I turned my head to look at her and she returned to her sweet voice, saying, “That’s the lady’s room.”
I looked up and, to my embarrassment, my hand was next to the sign that said, “Women.” My face must have turned as red as the door. I apologized, the group laughed, and we parted ways.
I’m sure even under Target’s much-publicized bathroom policy, instances like this still occur. But the problem arises because that policy also means if I had intended on going inside that female bathroom, there would be nothing that family could do to stop me.
There are many reasons Target’s policy bothers me, but it also gives me great hope.
I have three children. My oldest is four, then two, then seven months. I make sure they are buckled in when we are on the road because I care about their safety. I make sure we do not watch things on television that will steal their innocence because I care about their minds. I watch how I respond to their mistakes because I care about their hearts.
I care about much more than just someone coming into a bathroom with them, but that is a concern of mine. If I see a man going into the bathroom after my wife and daughter enter I will, like the lady did with me, kindly show him the restroom is for women. But if he decides the women’s room is the one he will enter, then I will stop him. It is not an effort to make him uncomfortable, it is an effort to protect my family.
The reason we chose to stop shopping at Target is that their official policy means I do not have the right to protect my family. I know this may paint the picture of me standing outside the female restroom in a black suit and aviator sunglasses checking ID before someone can enter, but that’s not reality. If a transgendered individual who looks like a female walks in, I would not say a word. The problem comes from the fact that a man who looks like a man has Target’s implicit permission to enter that restroom, and I cannot stop him. If I cannot stop my family from being in a vulnerable position, I will do what I must to prevent the situation from beginning. And the only way to prevent is to not shop in the store.
Engage’s parent organization, American Family Association, has started a movement asking people to pledge to not shop in any Target store until the reexamine their restroom and changing room policy. Currently, over 1,000,000 people have signed it. You can join us here .
But the fact that my family and I have been forced to make this choice has led to deepening my faith in Christ.
Because of my family’s enjoyment of shopping at Target, we wanted to attempt to understand the situation as fully as possible. That led me to study the transgender issue and gender dysphoria.
There is a deeper issue than bathrooms, it is an opportunity for children of God to touch lives with the never-changing gospel. The same God who can bring peace to a tumultuous storm is the same God who can bring peace to those who feel uneasy in their gender identity.
That fact alone should be enough for Christians to study, learn, and make an attempt to understand what is going on in the minds of transgender individuals. We can understand without condoning, love without celebrating, comprehend without compromising.
Trevin Wax said it well in a blog of The Gospel Coalition, “We believe God’s design of male and female to be structurally good, but we also understand gender dysphoria to be another symptom that reminds us we live in a fallen world. For this reason, we must extend love and compassion to anyone who experiences this kind of distress, even as we reject society’s efforts to establish a fluid understanding of personhood.”
Notice his wording, “We believe God’s design.” We can hold to God’s structural, biological design of man and woman, but we can choose to view the transgender issue as an opportunity because it is “another symptom that reminds us we live in a fallen world.”
And that is why I hope. I know we live in a fallen world, but I know the One who died to redeem us. I know there are people who have lost all hope and I desire to be one who shows them hope can be found in Jesus Christ.
