Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion

by Allie Beth Stuckey

These are people saved because the government, which God instituted to be his servant to do good and punish wrong (Rom. 13:4), recognized that they have the right to life and thus deemed their murder illegal.

The truth is, even if there were no resources available to women in crisis, even if our government provided no welfare, even if we accepted zero refugees each year, abortion would still be evil. Its legalization would still be wicked. And it would still be righteous and urgent for the Christian to fight against it. Those who say they’re Christians yet believe abortion should be legal follow the same logic of Peter Singer and the eugenicists, though they don’t realize it. They’ve imbibed the dark, depraved, demonic lie that humans in the womb are less people than humans outside the womb. Therefore, they believe, the conversation around murdering them should be “nuanced” and “holistic” rather than straightforward.

Those who profess to follow Jesus yet sit on the side of those who advocate for the legal killing of defenseless image bearers don’t just need their minds changed by people like you and me, they need their hearts changed by the Holy Spirit.

Empathy tells us only to care about how the pregnant mother is in that moment. Truth and love demand that we recognize without qualification these babies’ right to live. Yes, we also want abortion to be unthinkable and therefore rare, but first and foremost, the humanity, value, and rights of these children must be recognized by law so that they can receive the same legal protection that the rest of us have against violence and murder.

And if we want to care for the poor and vulnerable, we don’t need to outsource all of our compassion to the state when we are called to take up the mantle of charity ourselves.

After all, it is a cheerful giver God loves, not one who only provides for others when the government forces them to (2 Cor. 9:7). Charity is the responsibility first of the church.

One thing all Christians should agree with: It’s truth and love, not fake empathy, that will lead to a true culture of life in our country. And that can be found in the gospel alone.

This is exactly what Satan does: He lies, he steals, he destroys. He promises relief from our anxieties and burdens while delivering only pain and sadness.

Toxic empathy is a cancer.

But ultimately, such empathy-driven affirmation is not just shortsighted, but unloving. The implications of transgenderism go far beyond any one testimony of hurt and healing and into a tangled, dark, and deadly web of ideology, politics, bunk science, bad medicine, and corrupt powers that exploit the pain and confusion of people like Laura, resulting in destruction both for those caught in it as well as the rest of us. Remember: Love and truth go hand in hand (1 Cor. 13:6), and only the truth can set us free (John 8:32). While the dive we’re about to take into the depths of transgenderism is disturbing, it is necessary for us to fully grasp the concept of “gender identity” and therefore to offer truth-filled love to a realm of our modern era completely doused in deception.

The truth is, this toxic empathy is a dangerous guide for our decisions, behavior, and public policy. What someone wants or feels can’t tell us what’s morally right or beneficial, either for the person as an individual or for society as a whole. Feelings are often misaligned with reality and can actually blind us from—rather than lead us to—wisdom.

Our bodies were designed in certain ways. No matter how much empathy you have for gender-confused people, rejecting that design comes with a heavy cost. When you take a step back, it’s surreal that we’re even talking about things like creating penises out of girls’ forearm skins or carving out permanent wounds inside of young boys. Many believe that these “affirmative” responses to transgenderism are driven by nothing more than empathy and the best science. We’ve already seen how toxic empathy can lead to mutilation. But proponents of transgenderism don’t have science on their side either. The truth is, the “science” behind sex transitioning has a decidedly dark, twisted, and harmful history.

The history of transgender treatment isn’t built on solid science and empathy. It’s built on the eccentric ideas of perverse, powerful men who all had the goal of deconstructing traditional morals to achieve their sexualized vision of how the world should be. Instead of helping kids, these “experts” hurt children by subjecting them to cruel experiments to justify their theories and play out their sick sexual fantasies. Sadly, little has changed today. If anything, it’s gotten worse. Kids are still in the crosshairs.

Of that tiny number of kids, the vast majority were found to grow out of their gender confusion as they hit puberty and adulthood.

Despite these known risks, kids are still signing up for “treatments,” even with their parents’ permission. Why? One big reason adults go along with the madness is moral blackmail. When their child comes out as trans, they’re immediately asked: “Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?” This is one of the main empathy-driven pressure tactics the transgender movement uses. It’s based upon studies purportedly showing that kids who don’t medically transition are significantly more likely to commit suicide. If you don’t accept the transition, you’re complicit in your own child’s death, the argument goes.

The problem is, those studies are bunk. Many are paid for by pro-trans groups[41] and have sample sizes that are too small to be statistically significant. Some studies cited by the trans movement actually show the opposite, such as that those on puberty blockers can be more likely to commit suicide than those not on blockers.

Likewise, these aren’t random kids coming out as trans. The vast majority of those studied by Dr. Littman have a mental health condition, like autism, or have suffered trauma of some sort in their lives, like a bad breakup or their parents’ divorce.[45] These are vulnerable kids, and they are the perfect target for an ideology and identity that promises them a new identity, one in which they will finally be happy.

On social media, being a normal, heterosexual, and, heaven forbid, white girl often means you are automatically an enemy, an oppressor, and privileged. Trans people, on the other hand, are celebrated and affirmed victims.

There are many reasons for this: ideology, the drive since the sexual revolution to overturn all sexual norms, false science, and wrong beliefs about the nature of the human body, to name a few. But the transgender craze is also extremely popular because it is making powerful people rich. The market for sex reassignment surgery in the United States was estimated to be $1.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $5 billion by 2030.[48] The cost of phalloplasty ranges from $20,000 to $40,000, and the entire “bottom surgery” package can generate up to $100,000 for hospitals.[49] “Chest reconstruction” can cost $40,000 per patient, and vaginoplasty generates at least $20,000,[50] not including the hospital stay, anesthesia, and post-op visits. Increasingly, health insurance is required to cover it all.

And that’s not to mention that people attempting to trick their body to “become” the opposite sex must regularly pay for hormones, injections, and other pharmaceuticals for the rest of their lives to keep up the charade. To the medical establishment, child transitioners are the best customers of all—they will pay for medical services from puberty to their graves. And if a kid has regret and wants to detranstition? Well, then the medical system can make even more money on more treatments.

Thanks to weaponized empathy, gender-confused people are sent down an expensive, irreversible medical rabbit hole. But they are far from the only people harmed by the lies of transgenderism. All around the country, women’s spaces are being violated by men who think they are women.

The Bible is explicit from the beginning: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). When it comes to gender, we know what the biological and biblical reality is. There is no scientific nor scriptural category for a “gender identity” that is independent from sex. Sex is not a spectrum, and gender is not fluid. While the manifestations of femininity and masculinity vary somewhat from culture to culture, or even between individuals, this variation does not create new identities or sexes. No amount of empathy for confused people can change that.

Further, God created us as male and female so that we could be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth, and have dominion over it (Gen. 1:28). Here, Scripture provides a teleological view of human nature, which means it shows us the purpose of our biology. We were not given our bodies arbitrarily, but by a God who does everything with intention and purpose.

Ultimately, this false belief about the body is the root of the world’s misunderstanding around issues like same-sex relations, euthanasia, abortion, and gender.

Christians reject this view. We know that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). Yet even for non-Christians, the body has both temporal and eternal significance. God dictates what bodies we have and how our bodies are supposed to function, and promises to resurrect and redeem the bodies of his faithful without sickness, pain, or decay (1 Cor. 15:42–45).

Every Christian would deny these accusations of blasphemy, but every time we use preferred pronouns we are implicitly saying that God, who created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1), does not have authority to define all things—and that he is not good to do so. We’re saying we are nicer, more merciful, and more compassionate than God.

But she continued to tell herself something she heard Dr. Everett Piper say on the radio: “We are not made up of our feelings, instincts, and inclinations. Despite our feelings, we can choose our behavior. We are made in the image of God.”

Every Christian testimony has one key commonality: someone in their life was brave enough to tell them the uncomfortable truth. Essentially, that uncomfortable truth always boils down to this: “You are living a lie, and the path you’re on won’t give you the happiness you’re seeking. Your sin, which you think is your friend, is actually killing you. That love, purpose, and identity you’re seeking—it won’t be found in sex, alcohol, your job, your boyfriend, yourself, your gender identity, or any of that. These things can only be found in the God who created you.”

Yes, there are well-meaning people who believe supporting transgenderism is loving and virtuous. But they are, whether they know it or not, merely useful idiots. They enable the chemical castration of young boys, the mutilation of teen girls, the manipulation of autistic youth, the sexualization of children, the violation of women, the mockery of science, the demolition of proper medicine, and the destruction of cohesive society. They sow confusion and induce chaos by perpetuating the lie that it is possible to become the opposite sex.

So, what must we do in contrast? Most importantly, we must tell the truth and never back down from it. We never give in even an inch to the madness. We never declare our pronouns, even when told we must by our employer or professor. We never use a person’s pronouns that we know contradict their God-given gender.

While we can understand Glennon’s struggle, our sympathy must submit to our belief in a God who is real and authoritative, and who therefore defines sin, relationships, proper sexuality, and marriage. These definitions all matter, and they matter much more than a person’s seeming happiness or authenticity. What’s more, only by submitting to the truth as God defines it can we—and those we love—be truly and eternally happy. But saying as much is hard.

because these are identity-related issues that have a major impact on how we think of ourselves, others, sin, and God. They matter immensely to our theology, our society, to children, and to human happiness—especially for people with same-sex attraction.

How we define biblical marriage and sexuality affect how we respond to stories like Glennon’s: either with affirming but toxic empathy or with truth-filled love. As difficult as it might be, Christians are always called to choose the latter. And when it comes to marriage, our choices have high stakes.

Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and the vast majority of Americans weren’t extreme for opposing the redefinition of marriage. They simply believed what human beings across the world have known for millennia—that a society has an interest in protecting the special union between a man and a woman, primarily because of its unique ability to produce children. Without this life-giving relationship, no society exists.

Keyes asserted that marriage between a man and a woman is life-producing in principle, even if not always in practice, and that is what makes it unique. The word “in principle” means “relating to the definition of.” Not relating to particular circumstances…Human beings reason by means of concepts and definitions. We also make laws by means of definitions…. An individual who is impotent or another who is infertile does not change the definition of marriage in principle. Because between a man and a woman in principle procreation is always possible, and it is that possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first place as a matter of law and governance. But when it is impossible as between two males or two females, you’re talking about something that’s not just incidentally impossible, it’s impossible in principle. And that means that if you say that that’s a marriage, you are saying marriage can be understood in principle apart from procreation. You have changed its definition in such a way as in fact to destroy the necessity for the institution, since the only reason it has existed in human societies and civilizations was to regulate from a social point of view the obligations and responsibilities attendant upon procreation.[4]

The breakdown of the family nearly doubles a child’s chances of failing at school, doubles a child’s chances of becoming a criminal, more than doubles a child’s chances of becoming homeless, and increases the risk of mental health problems and drug addictions.[5]

Suffice to say, two out of five studies in the analysis found children with gay parents suffer more emotional problems than kids with traditional parents. One study showed children with lesbian parents had worse physical health. Likewise, in four of the six studies analyzed, children in gay households had lower graduation rates and worse educational attainment than kids in traditional households and were more likely to repeat grades.[11] But we don’t need studies to tell us what we already intuitively know: The same people needed to make a baby are needed to raise her. Only men can be dads, and only women can be moms. Each has their own irreplaceable role to play.

Moms and dads complement each other in a way that brings security and stability to their kids’ lives.

And we shouldn’t support the redefinition of marriage just because it’s the popular thing to do.

We may be in the minority, but no poll can ever change what the truth about marriage or the effect redefining it has on children, the most vulnerable and voiceless members of society. Marriage between a man and woman is a child-producing and child-protecting institution. “Love is love” may sound like a no-lose slogan in support of “gay marriage,” but it undermines and collapses the purpose of the marriage union. When this union is deprioritized or redefined based on the desires or political agendas of adults, children suffer, not just during their upbringing but from their conception.

After the baby is born, she’s immediately taken from the surrogate and given to her new male caretakers, one of whom is her biological father. She’s not only robbed of her biological mother, the egg seller, but she’s also separated from the only other person she’s ever known. For nine months, she’s found sustenance and security in the womb of the woman who carried her. She knows this woman’s smell, voice, and heartbeat. This is a powerful, primal bond that’s not meant to be broken. We understand this when it comes to puppies and kittens, who we know must be kept with their mothers for eight to twelve weeks after birth, but we’ve decided that for surrogate babies, it doesn’t matter.

Bass robbed his children of a mother, but that didn’t stop their instinctive desire for maternal affection.

Even so, adoption is generally redemptive, whereas egg/sperm selling and surrogacy are not. Adoption has the power to redeem a broken situation, while these technologies create a broken situation. Adoption helps a life that’s already been created, whereas the reproductive methods we’ve just described create a life with the express intention of taking the child away from its mother or father.

“We have the right to know where we come from,” Olivia told me. “We have the right not to be separated from our mothers at birth. We have the right to be raised by our mothers. And these are just such primal and important rights that we step on and we just spit on with surrogacy.”

The redefinition of marriage is a radical social experiment at the behest of adults and at the expense of children. All progressive social experiments require children to make sacrifices: whether it’s abortion, gender ideology, race-based DEI education, or shutting down schools for COVID-19. The voiceless and most vulnerable are always made to pay the price.

This is the opposite of humanity’s intended order: the strong are supposed to sacrifice on behalf of the weak, not the other way around.

Yet through the redefinition of marriage and reproductive technology we’re creating fatherless children every day—and celebrating it. We’re likewise creating motherless children. The Bible doesn’t have much to say on motherlessness, simply because this has never been a widespread phenomenon. Moms are less likely to abandon their children; the biological bond between them is so strong that it’s much more difficult to sever than the bond between a father and child. Mothers are predisposed to stick around. And yet, again, by redefining marriage and employing the reproductive industry, we’re creating a new tragic trend: motherless babies. It doesn’t take much to see that this, like fatherlessness, is a biblical category of oppression for which God has great anger and sadness.

We must advocate for their right to a mother and father. We must defend their dignity from conception onward, refusing to accept a world in which tiny image bearers of God are bought, sold, frozen, and discarded.

Toxic empathy says we must only consider the feelings of adults who want children and affirm their relationship by agreeing with whatever means they choose to fulfill their wants. Biblical love sees the destructive consequences of this affirmation and prioritizes the rights and well-being of the little ones who can’t speak up for themselves.

It’s illogical because the absence of condemnation doesn’t equal support. Just because we don’t see Jesus mentioning homosexuality by name in the Gospels—just as we don’t see him mentioning, say, sex trafficking or torturing animals—doesn’t mean he supports it. It misrepresents Jesus because He is God. Therefore, whatever God says in the Old or New Testament, Jesus says also. Jesus’s words aren’t limited to what we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The entire biblical canon is His, and it’s all authoritative and without error (2 Tim. 3:16–17).