Several years ago I heard a Discover radio commercial offering customers a chance to win $1 million. The narrator said that every credit card purchase, whether large or small, improved one’s chances of winning the money. Then an effeminate male voice asked: “My morning coffee?” Yes. “My midday coffee?” Yes. “My late-night coffee?” Yes. “I like coffee.”
There was a time (and it hasn’t been very long) when effeminate men were given no voice in the world of advertising. Men wanted to sound like men – strong and confident. But ads like that Discover commercial are now commonplace. The change is the result of the LGBT agenda, an agenda supported by university gender studies.
These studies make an artificial distinction between sex and gender. My “sex” is biological and genetic, but my “gender” is whatever I think myself to be. This distinction isn’t recognized in the hard sciences—biology, anatomy, physiology, zoology. That’s because it isn’t real.
Glenn Stanton, director of Global Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, is the author of “Secure Daughters, Confident Sons.” He says that the very construction of male and female bodies suggests some key differences between the sexes. Anatomically, the male presents outward and penetrates. Men like to explore and test limits. Anatomically, the female is receptive. Women are nurturing. If an adult is throwing a baby in the air, it’s probably a man. A woman holds a baby close.
The Bible says that God created our first parents “male and female” (Gen. 1:27). Glenn Stanton correctly argues that children need the distinctive contributions of both sexes. With fatherly supervision only, children would be in the ER on a regular basis. With motherly supervision only, children would be over-protected and perhaps unable to reach their full potential.
Sometimes life circumstances force mom or dad to raise children without the benefit of the other parent. These single-parent families need support and encouragement. But it’s a sad mistake for church or society to suggest that single parenting is an ideal alternative to the nuclear family or, worse, that same-sex couples make a healthy home for kids.