Evangelicals More Likely to Have Moral Objections Regarding Changing Gender, LifeWay Study Finds

Most Americans don’t believe it is morally wrong for an individual to identify with a gender different from the sex they were assigned at birth or to change the gender they were born with through either surgery or taking hormones, results from a recent study shows.

According to the latest survey by Nashville-based Lifeway Research, 6 in 10 Americans said it is not wrong for people to identify with a gender different than the sex with which they were born. Over half (55 percent) of respondents also said it is not morally wrong to change one’s biological gender through either surgery or taking hormones.

“We freely change many things about ourselves—we have cosmetic surgery, we use teeth whitener, we dye our hair, we get tattoos. Many Americans view gender as one more thing on that list,” LifeWay Research executive director Scott McConnell said in a statement.

On the other hand, more than half of evangelicals (54 percent) say it is wrong to identify with a different gender, which is higher than the number found among Catholics (26 percent), those from other faith backgrounds (35 percent), and the nonreligious (20 percent) who said to share that view.

More evangelicals say that using surgery or hormones to change one’s biological birth is morally wrong at 61 percent, while 32 percent of non-evangelical Americans would say the same. Similarly, fewer Catholics (29 percent), those of other faith backgrounds (41 percent), and the non-religious (21 percent) expressed the same view.

The survey also found that being acquainted with a transgender person affects one’s opinion about gender change and whether it is morally permissible.

According to the survey, evangelicals are less likely to know a transgender person (20 percent) than non-evangelical Americans.

Nearly half (48 percent) of the 71 percent of Americans who say they are not acquainted with any transgender people say it is wrong to change one’s gender through medication or surgery. According to the survey, this number drops by more than a third among Americans who say they know a transgender person.