He felt alone, misunderstood, and rejected by his parents because they would not accept his choice to be a girl. They felt confused, upset, and morally justified in denying his will. He could not see a way out and could not accept their view so he felt a better answer was to not exist. He wrote a note, planned it out, and stepped from this world to the next. Leelah Alcorn was a troubled and confused person whose choices I cannot agree with, but if we are unwilling to look at the problem honestly we are condoning it. I cant do that either. Camps are starting and the internet is full of people’s opinions. They start with or center on a pronoun. Should he have been or be called a she. The specifics and legal ramifications will be debated for a long time to come but the ethical response has no reason to wait.

Is Gender a characteristic that can be defined by human will or is it set in stone? Is it malleable or do we have the right and need to discover it? Science has an answer, conservatives have an answer, liberals have an answer, but are we asking the right questions? Human DNA coding on a base level promotes the pairing of chromosomes that either match in type or do not. If they match in type science determines the person female and if they differ in type it determines male. This seems simple enough as the DNA code writes the person and their growth patterns throughout their life. This however also creates a problem. If the will of the person does not agree with the genetic coding, is the coding wrong?

Gender dysphoria is understood as a person who strongly feels they are not the gender they physically appear to be. The DNA coding somehow misfired and their consciousness went one direction while their body went another. The medical response is to surgically and chemically alter the body to realign these two diverse views or recreate what has been created. God is removed from the picture and man takes over to right the wrong that has been done. Does that just address the symptom though? If the DNA code does not change, is the person truly changing? This may seem like a minor point but I think the entire argument rests on it. If the surgical and medical solution does nothing to change the causal factors of the dilemma, have we truly addressed the problem that the person has or have we merely changed outfits? I am not trying to make light of it, I think this is the core. If we are not able to fix the root issue then are we helping the situation by focusing on the pronoun and attacking those who do not agree?

Richard Dawkins stated that “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.” If nature (DNA) is truly purposeless, then it cannot be wrong as wrong would indicate it went against its own or a superior designer’s directive or desire. In other words DNA can’t be wrong, only God can. The very nature of this problem philosophically begs the question, “Can God make a mistake”?

In short, many on both sides of the fence, feel he can and does. I think the challenge is two fold. One, if we claim he made the mistake, we are claiming to have superior knowledge to him and thereby become better than him. If that is the case, why is the world still in trouble? The second part is that our answer doesn’t help the person in trouble. In the case of Leelah Alcorn, we all failed. The church, society, his school, his friends, his loved ones, we failed at helping him address the problem of accepting who he was. That lead him down a path to make a very dark choice. All we are left with is asking how we will help the next person?

The church should be a haven for people like Leelah but in his own words, it was not for him. Maybe that had to do with some misguided and frankly aberrant social science behavioral modification garbage his counselors were using, or maybe it had to do with just not communicating well enough that God loved him for who he was. Either way, we missed our goal of loving the world.

Gender is not truly malleable but a person has the freedom to be who they want to be. His parents felt that he was headed down a wrong path and wanted better for him. Society taught him rebellion against them was fine as long as it lead him to who he wanted to be. That frankly is as irresponsible as the behavioral modification. Like many social issues today, there is a lot of red paint. We will never solve the problems if all we do is blame the person who is covered the most. The issue of gender is symptomatic to the acceptance of who we are. Christianity teaches that who we are is less important than whose we are. Maybe we need to do a better job explaining that before our voice stops being heard completely.