“So what I’m going to say is cautious and very much aware that there are enormous sensitivities around this issue,” Wright said. “And that as well, there are people who are capitalizing on the discomfort of some people in order to make, as it were, political points—and some who would say that all gender is entirely fluid and you can make up…who you want to be and how you should behave.”
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While Wright said that he can’t act as a pastor to the listener from afar, he is “struck by the distinction, if you like, between biology and feelings, because females quite clearly have XX chromosomes; males have XY chromosomes.”
“So I’m assuming that our correspondent still simply has XX and hasn’t somehow through hormone treatment acquired a Y chromosome. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that’s an option,” Wright continued.
After expressing sympathy for the concerns in the U.S. and the U.K. about biological males being placed in women’s prisons and competing in women’s sports, Wright acknowledged, “I’m not a scientist,” and said he does not fully understand “the biology” or how hormone therapy works.
“I think though, with many situations—and I have counseled people in all sorts of situations where their life has become very muddled and confused and different relationships and different things that they never meant to get into but here they are now,” Wright said, “and again and again I want to say, as with Jesus in the gospels, God meets us where we are and loves us as we are. That’s absolutely vital.”
“Grace enfolds us in the love of God. Then when we are enfolded and know that God is with us, then God may want to say to us, perhaps through a wise pastor, through our own voice of conscience or in prayer or whatever,” Wright continued, “now, there are certain ways forward that you now need to travel.”
“And that’s not to say, ‘Oh, you’re wicked. Oh, you’re a sinner. You shouldn’t be doing this, that, or the other,’” said Wright. “It’s to say, ‘Well, where we are now is quite complicated, and let’s see how we can move forward step by step knowing that the God of grace and love is with you.'”
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“And the fact that we say, ‘The God of grace and love is with you,’ doesn’t mean therefore everything that anyone might do before this moment of crisis is all right and perfectly okay. This is not an ‘anything goes’ question,” Wright added. “God wants you to be a genuine, fully flourishing human being.”
