Messengers to this week's Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in New Orleans passed a resolution labeling gender transition a "direct assault on God's created order" and urging states to ban the procedure when it involves children.

The 700-word amendment, "On Opposing ‘Gender Transitions,'" passed easily by a show of hands and says the Bible "teaches that the differences between men and women are complementary, determined at conception, immutable, rooted in God's design, and most clearly revealed in bodily differences (Genesis 1:28; Psalm 100:3), not in self-defined and ultimately false notions of ‘gender identity.'"

The amendment says messengers "condemn and oppose ‘gender-affirming care' and all forms of ‘gender transition' interventions."

"We oppose ‘gender transition' interventions as a futile quest to change one's sex and as a direct assault on God's created order," the resolution says. "... We condemn corporate medical services that promote harmful and often irreversible ‘gender transition.'"

Gender procedures on children, the resolution says, "render otherwise healthy children sterile for life, impairing or destroying their fertility, reproductive organs, capacity for sexual pleasure, and at times causing lifelong medical dependency as well as unknown long-term consequences."

The rise in the popularity of gender transitions has been "driven by cultural change, the promotion of gender ideology, and social pressures," it says.

"[U]nprecedented numbers of adolescents and young adults are experiencing identity or body-related distress or asserting an identity at odds with their birth sex," the resolution says.

It concludes by urging state legislatures to get involved.

"We call on legislatures to reverse any law or policy that supports ‘gender transition' interventions, undermines parental rights, or creates supposed sanctuary jurisdictions that facilitate these harmful interventions for minors," the resolution says. "... We commend the legislatures who have undertaken just and praiseworthy action to protect children from ‘gender transition' interventions, have re-affirmed the rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, and have defended the free speech and conscience rights of religious believers from governmental efforts to coerce them into endorsing gender ideology."

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