Yes, Transgender Really Is the New Black in Hollywood
For all the talk about the “Year of the Bible” and blockbuster Bible-themed films like Noah, Exodus: God and Kings and God’s Not Dead, it appears there’s another force working in Hollywood and it’s anything but biblical.
Yes, it appears—as an article in Variety magazine suggested earlier this month—that transgender is the proverbial “new black” in Hollywood. The Variety article was based largely on Laverne Cox, who writer Ramin Setoodeh described as the “first breakthrough transgender star in Hollywood.”
“In June, Cox will slip back into the unglamorous outfit that opened these doors—the drab beige prison uniform from Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, which enters its third season,” Setoodeh writes. “It’s one of the many priorities on the 30-year-old actress’ packed schedule. She just wrapped a CBS pilot called ‘Doubt,’ in which she plays a defense attorney dressed in Hillary Clinton-like power suits; landed a Daytime Emmy for producing the MTV doc Lavern Cox Presents: The T Word; and travels to college campuses to deliver lectures as an LGBT activist.”
The Tipping Point of Perversion
About this time last year, TIME magazine put Cox on its cover. I proclaimed at that point that this was the tipping point of perversion. Sadly, it looks like I was right. Just four months later, Amazon came out with an original series called Transparent in which “an LA family with serious boundary issues have their past and future unravel when a dramatic admission causes everyone’s secrets to spill out.”
The mainstream media tested the waters, it seems, and discovered the temperature was just right to push a little further up the mainstream. In April, Bruce Jenner wowed 17 million viewers in a two-hour interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC. He offered intimate details of his journey from a male Olympic athlete to a woman.
The floodgates are now officially open. The Variety article points to Magnolia Pictures July release of Tangerine, a film that follows two transgender prostitutes on a Los Angeles Christmas Eve. In November, we’ll see The Danish Girl, starring Academy Award-winning actor Eddie Redmayne as a transgender painter.
That’s not the half of it. ABC Family will soon broadcast Becoming Us, about a teen who works through his father’s transition from male to female. Jenner is producing his own E! docuseries that will debut on July 26. Oh, and the Wachowski siblings, one of whom was the first Hollywood director to come out as transgender, will premier a new Netflix original program called Sense8.
On top of all that, TLC is rolling out All that Jazz, which focuses on a 14-year-old named Jazz Jennings who decided he was a girl at a young age. His parents let him live as a girl and give him hormone treatments from age 11. There’s more but we’ll stop there.
Battling the Prince of the Power of the Air
Satan is the prince of the power of the air (see Eph. 2:2). We’ve long seen all manner of perversion coming out of Hollywood, including the glamorization of adultery, fornication, idolatry, thievery, greed, drugs and more. Clearly, though, this devilish prince is strategically pushing perversion to new heights in the name of equality.
I don’t doubt there is a captive audience who will celebrate these films and television shows and others like them because it makes them feel accepted in a world that largely shuns them. We should not shun transgendered people or anyone else. We should show all people the love of Christ while rejecting the sin. People are not our enemy—there is no question that we’re not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (see Eph. 6:12). In this case, we’re wrestling for souls and we cannot compromise the truth to make someone feel good.
We need to remember this as the battle intensifies: Our war is not against transgender people. We love all people. Our war is against a demonic agenda to call evil good and good evil (see Is. 5:20). This agenda is seducing people into a lifestyle of perversion that ultimately separates them from God. This agenda is working to mainstreaming a way of life that leaves people in bondage. And, ultimately, this agenda is demonizing anyone who won’t embrace this new “civil rights” issue.
The Agenda Goes Beyond Hollywood
Mind you, this is not just an issue in Hollywood—the agenda is creeping into other aspects of society. The Girl Scouts are now allowing boys who identify as girls to join their ranks. Franklin Graham is calling out schools for teaching lies about transgenderism, as new class curriculum will teach gender fluidity as normative. One school district said the federal government forced it to allow transgender kids to use any bathroom and President Obama opened the first gender-neutral bathrooms at the White House.
There’s no hiding from this issue. The question is whether or not you will speak the truth in love or call evil good. Do you really care about people—all people—or is it easier for you to go with the flow on this one?
What would Jesus say to a transgender? Jesus would have compassion, but He would not embrace the false identity. Jesus would tell the transgendered man or woman that they are created in God’s image (see Gen. 1:26-28); that they need a savior just like every other person on this planet who is hurt and broken; that He can deliver them out of a lifestyle that separates them from Him—that He will help them every step of the way. Jesus loves transgenders and we should too, but love means sharing the truth with compassion. It’s a life and death matter.
Jennifer LeClaire is senior editor of Charisma. She is also director of Awakening House of Prayer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and author of several books, including The Next Great Move of God: An Appeal to Heaven for Spiritual Awakening; Mornings With the Holy Spirit, Listening Daily to the Still, Small Voice of God; The Making of a Prophet and Satan’s Deadly Trio: Defeating the Deceptions of Jezebel, Religion and Witchcraft. You can visit her website here. You can also join Jennifer on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.
