A nine-year-old boy who has been living as a girl since the age of five has been placed on the front cover of National Geographic magazine.
The publication featuring Avery Jackson has prompted some readers to threaten to cancel their subscriptions in protest.
The American Family Association (AFA) accused National Geographic of promoting transsexualism and said it should instead be “helping confused individuals accept their wonderfully crafted and God-given biology”.
The AFA also highlighted the “pain and psychological trauma” that gender dysphoria causes children and adults.
It said: “National Geographic is the latest print media company to abandon what it does best to foist a lifestyle in the American public that the medical community identifies as unhealthy.”
The magazine, released earlier this week, claims to be examining the “cultural, social, biological and personal” aspects of gender identity. The cover featured the quote: “The best thing about being a girl is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy.”
National Geographic’s Editor in Chief Susan Goldberg defended the decision to have a transsexual person on the magazine cover, saying the magazine thought the boy “summed up the concept of ‘Gender Revolution'”.
The issue of transsexualism – wanting to change physical sex because you feel you are ‘in the wrong body’ – has become increasingly high-profile and has already had implications for workplaces and schools.
To aid understanding in this area, the Institute has produced a briefing with key information and theology on the subject.
Transsexualism – wanting to change physical sex because you feel you are ‘in the wrong body’ – has become an increasingly high-profile issue. People in the public eye have ‘changed their sex’, and the media normalises transsexualism. There has been a corresponding push for greater transsexual rights. This briefing introduces some of the issues at stake.