With teens increasingly identifying as non-binary and transgender, this other side of the story needs to be told. Don Johnson’s new documentary Dysconnected: The Real Story Behind the Transgender Explosion does just that—and much more. Through a combination of powerful personal stories and interviews with top-notch scholars and medical experts, Dysconnected explores why transgenderism is on the rise, the understanding of human nature that is driving it, and how Christianity’s vision of male and female provides a much richer alternative.

As puberty hits for a young girl, imagine the additional earth-shaking and existential uncertainty caused by wondering whether she might actually be a man trapped in a woman’s body. She starts on puberty blockers, moves on to cross-sex hormones, and even goes through with top surgery (a double mastectomy). But she realizes shortly thereafter that these extreme and invasive interventions didn’t relieve her distress. The euphoria of each phase was short-lived as the familiar struggles returned and nothing really improved. This is the tragic story of many young people today who are being steered into so-called “gender affirming” care, only to realize that it doesn’t work in the long run.
With teens increasingly identifying as non-binary and transgender, this other side of the story needs to be told. Don Johnson’s new documentary Dysconnected: The Real Story Behind the Transgender Explosion does just that—and much more. Through a combination of powerful personal stories and interviews with top-notch scholars and medical experts, Dysconnected explores why transgenderism is on the rise, the understanding of human nature that is driving it, and how Christianity’s vision of male and female provides a much richer alternative.
Daisy’s Detransition Story
The film begins with gripping video footage from a teen named Daisy who followed the exact “gender-affirming” progression explained above. Hearing and seeing the real video she recorded of her teenage self as she documented her F2M (female-to-male) transition made me sit up in my chair and lean in. Her first-person account is captivating and offers an ideal launching-off point for exploring the many factors that lie behind this transgender moment.
Daisy’s story is woven throughout the film and her frank and clear articulation of her experiences and the broader societal issues is one of the most compelling aspects of the film. And, as the film concludes, Daisy’s recent life events make for a wonderfully surprising and redemptive ending—or perhaps more accurately, a merciful gift and new beginning. The film’s conclusion brought my wife and me to tears.
DSM Depathologization
One of the insidious aspects of transgenderism uncovered in the documentary is medicine’s bowing the knee to the LGBT agenda. Plastic surgeon Patrick Leppert shines throughout the film in exposing exactly how this has happened. He explains that by the time plastic surgeons have patients referred to them for gender transition surgeries, the diagnosis and treatment plans are already well-established, frequently originating from a child’s self-diagnosis many years prior. Leppert explains:
You’ve got a thirteen, fifteen, seventeen-year-old young lady who’s going to have a mastectomy, and the plastic surgeon is relying on a diagnosis that was made by that child perhaps ten years before. And nobody has waived a flag on this and said, ”Wait a minute, what are we doing here?” The plastic surgeon at that point is a technician, and that is contrary to everything I learned as a surgeon.
Leppert also explains how the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the definitive text used for psychological diagnoses) has been modified not because of any new research or data, but to fit the transgender narrative. Gender Identity Disorder has been depathologized into the more nebulous and neutral Gender Dysphoria, which then gives way to affirming a cross-gender identity, rather than treating what really is a body dysmorphic disorder.
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If you watched the synod delegates speak, it sounded more or less like an even split between those for and against the codifying of biblical sexuality. But what didn’t split evenly were the ages of those speaking. Often, those who argued for the welcome and inclusion of homosexual lifestyles had grey hair and wrinkles. Many of those who spoke for biblical sexuality were visibly younger.

Last month, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) voted 123-53 to affirm that “unchastity” in the Heidelberg Catechism includes adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography, and homosexual sex. The move wasn’t just an affirmation of biblical sexuality but also a call for church discipline for congregations that dissent.
You’d think, with numbers that decisive, that no one would be surprised by the outcome. You’d be wrong.
“No! Seriously! Only 53?” one woman tweeted, and she wasn’t the only one caught off guard.
“I was very surprised!” said Mary Vanden Berg, a Calvin Theological Seminary professor who was on the committee asking for the vote. “I had no idea there was that level of support.”
The CRC synod met in June in Grand Rapids, Michigan / Photo by Steve Herppich. Copyright © 2022 The Banner, Christian Reformed Church in NA. All rights reserved. Used by permission. // TheBanner.org
I was at the TGC women’s conference when I got the text from my husband. We’d been watching it closely—it felt like a watershed moment for the denomination we’d both been born into.
The CRC was founded in 1857, arising from a group of Dutch immigrants who split off from the Reformed Church in America over arguments about sound doctrinal preaching (the CRC said the RCA didn’t have enough) and accommodations to American culture (the CRC said the RCA was doing too much). Since then, the Grand Rapids–based denomination has grown—and then declined—to around 200,000 members in about 1,000 churches, and includes Calvin University and Calvin Seminary among its denominational institutions. It’s the third-largest Reformed denomination in the U.S.
Six years ago, a committee was appointed to wrestle through the church’s stance on sexuality. They submitted a 175-page report—in both English and Spanish—essentially clarifying and upholding the church’s historical teaching.
Honestly, I thought the delegates to synod (the CRC’s annual leadership convention) would vote to accept the report, but I had no confidence they’d affirm the confessional status of biblical sexuality and put church discipline behind it.
Five hours after the first vote, they did.
“They told Neland Avenue CRC to immediately void their appointment of a deacon in a same-sex marriage,” my husband texted.
I couldn’t believe it.
To me, the actions read like a sharp correction in a denomination where Neland’s ordination of a married lesbian deacon was done with “assistance from church advisers from Classis [Grand Rapids] East,” according to the church publication. Where a third of the faculty at Calvin University—the CRC’s flagship school—said this vote would hinder their academic freedom. And where just six years ago, a different report—one that allowed CRC ministers to officiate civil same-sex marriages—was submitted to synod.
Synod delegates worshipping together / Photo by Steve Herppich. Copyright © 2022 The Banner, Christian Reformed Church in NA. All rights reserved. Used by permission. // TheBanner.org
The CRC’s sexuality struggle isn’t really news. As same-sex marriage was legalized and became more common, I’ve seen most denominations wrestle (and sometimes split) their way through sexuality debates. Even the leftward shift of the denominational leadership and educational institutions sounds typical for a lot of denominations.
But there are two things that stand out to me about the CRC.
First, it’s unusual to have a denomination on the path to liberalism yank itself around. It can be done (see the Southern Baptists) but it’s not normal (see the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and even the Africa-heavy Methodists).
Second, statistics are clear that in America, the younger you are, typically the more liberal you are. Millennials and Gen Z are more likely to be comfortable using gender-neutral pronouns, believe same-sex marriage is good for society, and identify as LGBT+.
But at synod this year, it wasn’t the young people voting against biblical sexuality. Judging by those who stood up to share their views, it was largely the older generation asking for sexual inclusion and the younger crowd pointing back to the Bible.
What’s going on in Grand Rapids?
Watershed Moment
The last time the CRC had a battle this big was a generation ago. In the mid-1990s, after two and a half decades of committee meetings, synod effectively moved the denomination from complementarian to egalitarian. Reasoning that both views “honor the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God,” synod said each church could decide for itself whether to ordain women to church office.
Chart created by Neil Carlson of DataWise Consulting
“It was a watershed moment,” C. J. den Dulk told me. He’s been pastoring at Trinity CRC in Sparta, Michigan, for the past 32 years. “It changed the hermeneutic way of approaching Scripture. And a lot of people said if you change [the church ordinances] on women, homosexuality will come later.”
He could’ve left the CRC back then. A lot of conservatives did. In 1996, 36 complementarian churches with about 7,500 attendees left to form the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA). Over the years, more conservative CRCs have joined them. By 2021, the URCNA held 130 congregations with more than 25,000 attendees.
“[A number of churches] decided that, at least from a human perspective, it didn’t seem that the direction of the denomination as a whole is going to change,” Godfrey said then.
In one sense, that was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without the pull of a substantial conservative caucus, the CRC began to list leftward. Nearly 30 years later, about three-quarters of CRC churches ordain women deacons, and more than half ordain women elders. Synod said churches didn’t have to meet twice on Sunday, teach through the creeds and Reformed confessions, or wait for children to profess their faith before welcoming them to the Lord’s Supper. Students and faculty at Calvin University wrote about being pro-choice, openly queer, and welcoming and affirming.
But over time, something else was happening too, so quietly that it took me a while to find it.
What’s Going On: The Kids
If you watched the synod delegates speak, it sounded more or less like an even split between those for and against the codifying of biblical sexuality.
But what didn’t split evenly were the ages of those speaking. Often, those who argued for the welcome and inclusion of homosexual lifestyles had grey hair and wrinkles. Many of those who spoke for biblical sexuality were visibly younger.
I wasn’t the only one to notice.
“We’ve been seeing that over time,” said Chad Steenwyk, CRC pastor and chairman of the Abide Project, which formed in recent years to support the CRC’s historical teaching on biblical sexuality. Of the hundreds of church leaders associated with the project, most are in their 30s or 40s, Steenwyk estimated.
“It’s taken a while to raise up a new conservative generation,” he said.
Some of those young pastors are coming from conservative seminaries outside the denomination—Reformed Theological Seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary, or Westminster Seminary California. Of the leaders at synod this year, president Jose Rayas, vice president Derek Buikema, and the chair of the advisory board for the human sexuality report Tim Kuperus are all Westminster grads.
Even Calvin Seminary, which is run by the denomination, has historically been more conservative than the university, Steenwyk said. (The seminary has not made a public statement on synod’s decision.)
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Written by R. Albert Mohler Jr. |
Thursday, May 2, 2024
What is not unclear is that the students now condemning Israel are the products of an elite American academic industry that offers leftist ideologies as its main product and, brace yourselves, the younger professors on many campuses are much further to left in both ideology and politics. The old liberals are scared to death of the young leftists. Furthermore, the young professors are scared to death of the students, many of whom have been coddled in privilege and even more of whom have been marinated in a brine of radical ideologies.

The chaos engulfing elite college campuses across America should surprise no one. The sight of privileged university students chanting “from the river to the sea” and calling for an end to American support of Israel was absolutely predictable. This is exactly what happens when the ideological left is in the driver’s seat and leftist students are all too ready to go along for the ride. Americans of a certain age might be tempted to say this is 1968 all over again. But, in the case of the campus protesters, the current situation is actually far worse.
Just look at New York’s famed Columbia University, founded as a college by the Church of England and later the historic school of American patriots. In 1968 Columbia was the scene of campus protests and a surging ideological Left, with students directing their ire at the U.S. government and the war in Vietnam. Like many elite institutions, it has a long history of anti-Semitism. Fast forward to 2024 and the same scenes now flood back, with students protesting and leftism ascendant. This time the anger is directed at the State of Israel and the students have styled themselves as liberationist allies of the Palestinians, who they present as victims of Israel’s “settler colonialism.”
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