Just when you think the cross-dressing fetish is sashaying back into the closet where it belongs with every other form of sexual deviance, up pops a pastor who decides the best place for his fetish is in the pulpit.
Reverend Phillip Phaneuf, once married and father of a son and daughter, is, unfortunately, the pastor of North Chili United Methodist Church in Rochester, New York, which is a member of the apostate United Methodist Church.
This Advent season when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Creator of all that exists—including sexually embodied humans—narcissistic fetishist Phaneuf has decided to celebrate his (ungrateful) refusal of God’s gift of embodiment:
I am inviting you to join me in a season of creative transformation for myself and I think for all of us. … So, I get to announce with joy that I’m transitioning. I’m affirming and saying to all of you that I am transgender. And so, and so the best way to put this is that I’m not becoming a woman. I’m giving up pretending to be a man.
For someone making a joyful announcement, the 51-year-old Phaneuf looked downright downcast, at least in those rare moments when he opened his eyes.
Phaneuf never pretended to be a man. He was a man. He is a man. And he will remain a man eternally.
Phaneuf seeks to appropriate à la Victor Frankenstein a godlike power to recreate himself in accordance with his fallen desires.
God grants no authority to man to creatively transform our healthy, properly functioning bodies through the injection of opposite-sex hormones and surgery.
God grants no authority to man to decide whether he is male or female.
Scripture affirms the indissoluble unity of body and spirit. Phaneuf, however, has embraced the heresy of Gnosticism that divides a person’s body from his spirit, as defined in Phaneuf’s case by his subjective desires, and is treating his body as clay that he can refashion as if he is its creator and owner.
But Scripture teaches,
[D]o you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.
Phaneuf has neither a claim to the body God created nor a right to deconstruct it. God, whom Phaneuf claims to serve, created us male and female. God created us for his workmanship. The good works for which God created man do not include refashioning our bodies to fit our perverse desires.
Phaneuf, like the father of lies he serves, attempted to diminish the offenses he is committing, asking,
So, what will change? My voice. It might go a tad higher. Uh, pronouns: she, her.
Then implying that his sins against God are really nothing more than a new hairstyle and wardrobe, he said,
Thank God, you have never chosen me as your pastor based off of my appearance. … None of you ever judged me or that was not part of the intake process of me being your pastor was because of how my face looked or my body or how long my hair is or my clothes. Because at the end of the day, we know that clothes are just fibers. They do not carry an anatomy with them. So, to say that something is girls clothes or boys clothes, well, they don’t come with a reproductive system.
Phaneuf is right, articles of clothing “do not carry an anatomy with them,” by which he means that anatomy—not cultural conventions–determines maleness and femaleness. But, while clothes don’t come with a reproductive system, anatomy does. Phaneuf seems unaware that he undermined his own argument.
According to Scripture, clothing conventions do, indeed, have a function related to maleness and femaleness as determined by biology. Scripture explicitly prohibits cross-dressing:
A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.
All societies throughout history have had sex-based clothing conventions. While sex-based clothing styles look different in different parts of the world and throughout history, the existence of sex-based clothing distinctions is universal.
G.K. Chesterton warns that before we destroy something, we ought to know why it exists. Sex-based conventions do more than merely help us distinguish males from females. They also reflect, affirm, and reinforce the good of sexual differentiation. Sex-based conventions help children develop a sense of true sexual identity through membership in their respective sex-based groups.
Phaneuf tried to diminish the import of clothing while at the same time he affirmed its significance by announcing he will be cross-dressing. As he inadvertently acknowledged, clothing is an outward sign of an inward condition that is profoundly meaningful.
In a peculiar conclusion more befitting a teenage girl looking for pity than an adult pastor, Phaneuf read a text from his parents who reject his sinful decision:
They texted me this morning, and they asked for me to tell you all that they do not support me and that they have chosen their convictions and their beliefs over supporting their child.
Apparently, this dissolute middle-aged man believes his parents owe him support for his sexual fetish even if that requires sacrificing their convictions. Surely, Phaneuf knows that Jesus said he came, not to bring peace but a sword that will divide even families.
Maybe, wise, discerning parents know when support is warranted and when it’s not. Maybe they know which behaviors are God-honoring and which are dishonoring to God, their children, and society. Maybe support for our loved ones does not require affirming everything they feel, believe, desire, and do.
It’s clear that Phaneuf isn’t willing to sacrifice his fetish and its attendant rationalizations for his parents, his own children, or even his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Narcissist Phaneuf believes that from his actions, the small church he pastors will become “known within the community as an even safer space for people who have felt marginalized.” It is hoped by many that his church will become known as the space in which Scriptural truth about sexuality is no longer taught.
From the sympathetic whoop and amens heard during his joyful announcement, it appears the wolf in women’s clothing is successfully shepherding his flock straight into the outer darkness.