The White House issued a proclamation for National Child Abuse Prevention Month in April that has been called breathtaking in its cruelty. Rather than addressing well-documented realities of child abuse—neglect, physical abuse, hunger, exploitation, trafficking…the white house statement centers its outrage on a small and already vulnerable group: transgender children. The statement calls gender education and care “insanity” and “evil” and suggests it is a “prevalent form of abuse.”
It reduces the reality of transgender, gender expansive, and nonbinary people to “ideology” which, the White House, opposes. Lutheran pastor Clint Schnekloth responds to the inaccurate, and biased White House statement: “This is not protection. This is propaganda. It is scapegoating dressed up as sanctimony. It is one of the most powerful figures in the world punching down—targeting families who are already living under the weight of constant fear and judgment.
And for those of us who know these families personally—who serve them in our churches, who pastor their children and share in their joys and struggles—this proclamation is not just wrong. It is an outright act of harm.” Schnekloth says, “Transgender and nonbinary children are exactly who God made them to be. Many of them know this truth better than most adults.” Schnekloth writes, “Much of the president’s rhetoric echoes the worst chapters of the church’s past: Scripture used to justify slavery, deny women’s agency or enforce conversion therapy.
But the Christian tradition also includes prophets. Reformers. Those who stood with the outcast and said, ‘Not in God’s name.’ Right now, I know families whose deepest pain comes not from their child’s identity, but from a government that seems determined to deny that child’s existence.” Pastor Schnekloth challenges us to recognize the real danger to American children: Poverty. Incarceration. Underfunded schools. Racist policing. Corporate greed. Legislative cruelty. NOT expansive understandings of gender.
