To many trans activists, compassion and respect requires something those bound by either scientific or Judeo-Christian beliefs cannot give.

On Thursday, Canada’s Senate passed Bill C-16, which adds “gender expression” and “gender identity” to Canada’s Human Rights Code and its criminal code’s hate crime section. The Left is already celebrating this bill as a nod to equality.

But in truth this legislation and similar gender-identity laws in the United States and elsewhere seek not to prevent discrimination but to redefine reality. This does violence to both science and foundational Judeo-Christian beliefs.

We Are All Transgendered Now

To the uninitiated, adding “gender identity” to non-discrimination laws simply signals society’s acceptance of, and compassion for, transgendered people. But in actuality, the trans movement assaults every person’s biological identity by framing sex as something “assigned at birth” then distinguishing that mere happenstance from how an individual identifies—as male or female.

That is key because it means that underlying every gender-identity law—whether municipal, state, or federal—is the premise that everyone’s sex is “assigned at birth.” In essence, gender-identity laws treat us all as transgendered, no matter how few people might actually identify that way.

Federalist senior contributor Stella Morabito first exposed this hidden aspect of the trans agenda three years ago in “The Trans-Agenda Seeks to Redefine Everyone.” Morabito noted that at its root the agenda isn’t about the transgendered:

It’s mostly about everybody else. It’s all about changing you and your self-concept. As fringy as they may sound, injecting such lies into our language—‘the pregnant man’ and the push to separate the word ‘pregnancy’ from the word ‘woman,’—are clear signals that we are moving steadily towards erasing all gender distinctions in the law. And why should we care? Because erasing gender distinctions, especially as they apply to childbearing and rearing, would serve to legally un-define what it means to be human. A new legal definition of human—as neither male nor female—would apply to you whether you like it or not.

Notwithstanding the activist left’s push to insert “pregnant man” into the vernacular, common sense gives middle-America pause. Kindness is one thing, but the general populace recognizes the blatant anti-science charade of claiming a man gave birth. We saw this too, to a lesser extent, when a boy who identifies as a girl recently captured two state track titles racing against girls. As one columnist put it: “On a biologically competitive basis, it was not [fair]… Humanity counts. So does biology.”

Trans Ideology Is Also a Frontal Assault on Faith

The trans movement is not just an assault on biology, it is also an assault on humanity as understood in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Pope Francis bluntly addressed this truth when speaking with a group of Polish bishops: “We are experiencing a moment of the annihilation of man as the image of God.”

The pope reiterated this point, commending Pope Benedict’s perception in proclaiming that “this is the age of sin against God the Creator… God created man and woman; God created the world in a certain way… and we are doing the exact opposite.” The Holy Father likewise stressed in “Amoris Laetitia” that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated,” and that instead “the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created.”

However, in discussing the transgendered, Pope Francis and the Catholic Church also “consistently affirm[] the inherent dignity of each and every human person and advocate[] for the wellbeing of all people, particularly the most vulnerable. Children, youth, and parents in these difficult situations deserve compassion, sensitivity, and respect.”

How to Be Compassionate Without Affirming Lies

How then can Judeo-Christian believers be compassionate? First by remembering that, while a cultural war is being waged, despite their rhetoric the transgendered are not warriors. Instead, they suffer from gender dysphoria. Keep this in mind and remember, then, that the truth of their existence—as a man or a woman—causes them extreme distress. It’s so extreme that they are willing to resort to physical mutilation to obtain relief.

Ask then how you would respond to others suffering from overbearing distress from a mental illness, whether it be post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, or schizophrenia. Show those facing a lifetime of gender dysphoria the same kind, compassionate, and thoughtful understanding.

For instance, if a friend had social anxiety, rather than planning a large dinner party to celebrate her birthday, I might invite her over for a nice quiet meal at home. Or, if a neighbor suffered from combat-induced PTSD, I would opt for an alternative location to set off Independence-Day celebratory fireworks. So, too, if a friend or coworker suffered from gender dysphoria, I might plan get-togethers in locales offering “family” restroom facilities and avoid using pronouns. But I would no more profess that a female friend is male than I would pretend an anorexic friend is obese.

It’s Not Nice For Us to Lie to You

Unfortunately, in the mind of many in the trans community, compassion, sensitivity, and respect require something more—and something those bound by either scientific or Judeo-Christian beliefs cannot (in conscience) give: Affirming a falsehood and denying the divine truth of the nature of man.

Last month saw this reality play out on Twitter as recounted by David French for National Review Online. As French detailed, after posting a comment about Chelsea Manning’s release from prison, he received a deluge of angry tweets for using male pronouns to refer to Chelsea: for “identif[ying] a man as a man.” In his piece, French responded to his critics:

When I use a male pronoun to describe Chelsea Manning, I’m not trolling. I’m not being a jerk. I’m not trying to make anyone angry. I’m simply telling the truth. I’m reflecting biological reality, and I’m referring to the created order as outlined in Genesis 1 — ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’ Nor is this a matter of ‘manners’ .… You cannot use my manners to win your culture war. I will speak respectfully, I will never use a pronoun with the intent of causing harm, and if I encounter a person in obvious emotional distress I will choose my words very carefully. But I will not say what I do not believe.

That is not good enough for the trans community. For them, our compassion and kindness means nothing if we refuse to attest to a falsehood, and by bending their ear to our every “he” or “she” they can easily assess whether we have bowed to their demands.

Activists are exploiting the public’s goodwill and pushing their liberal ideology under the auspices of compassion. As a result, we see bills such as Canada’s C-16 demanding that we acquiesce in the lie: that man is woman, and woman, man.

Critics of Bill C-16 and the corresponding trans movement in the United States rightly condemn gender-identity laws as compelling speech by mandating the use of preferred pronouns. But there is an even greater offense. The predicate of the transgender movement cannot be reconciled either with science or the Judeo-Christian belief that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”

As Lincoln, Nebraska Bishop Conley forcefully wrote: “The Church will not deny that God created us male and female. We will not confuse respect and compassion with capitulation to a tragic delusion.” We must be clear, then, and expose the truth: What the trans community demands is not compassion. It is scientific denial and heresy.