Editor’s note:

In February, the Kansas Republican Party voted yes on a resolution to “oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity.” Here the author of the GOP resolution shares his perspectives on the topic. Read another viewpoint from Larry J. Bingham, treasurer of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas and chair of it finance committee, here.

In 1856, a new political party held its convention in Philadelphia. They called themselves Republicans.

As violent skirmishes over slavery in “Bleeding Kansas” foreshadowed the Civil War, the delegates took their stand, resolving that “it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism — polygamy, and slavery.”

This legacy of moral clarity and courage is the inheritance of every Republican. It was in that spirit that the delegates at this year’s State Convention of the Kansas Republican Party passed a resolution regarding human sexual identity that I wrote.

The delegates at the convention affirmed “God’s design for gender as determined by biological sex and not by self-perception,” and resolved to “oppose efforts to validate transgender identity.” They declared that “public schools should not undermine the values of parents who do not agree with transgenderism; and that students have a reasonable expectation of privacy and safety at school.”

A media frenzy then ensued, from local papers and LGBT blogs to a shamefully inaccurate column in The New York Times. For the majority of Kansans, it is stunning that basic biology is now debatable, much less that to defend it is considered “undignified,” “crass,” and “hateful anti-science,” in the words of opponents of the resolution.

Just the opposite is true. In fact, the resolution affirms “the dignity of every human being, including those who identify as LGBT.” Compassion and concern for the well-being of others is what motivated the statement. There is no love in a lie.

Fellow Kansans are suffering and dying because of what I believe is a lie that one’s gender is whatever a person believes it to be. According to a January 2014 analysis by the Williams Institute, in collaboration with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and based on 2008 data from the National Center for Trangender Equity’s 2008 U.S. Transgender Survey, the rate of attempted suicide for those who experience gender dysphoria is 41 percent — 10 times the national average. A 2011 study in Sweden concluded that those who undergo gender reassignment surgery are 19 times more likely to commit suicide.

Children are now receiving chemical therapies that include experimental puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, despite the fact that many of these children might otherwise reconcile their dysphoria with their biological sex, as some researchers contend. Men and women who have “de-transitioned” have reflected with sadness and frustration that their doctors and therapists failed to help them explore other options.

Facts like these are the reason doctors like Paul McHugh professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, put a stop to gender-reassignment surgeries in 1979 (though they resumed last year). It’s not about bigotry or fear or being “anti-science.” I feel transgender identity is sexual ideology spread through shame and intimidation.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this isn’t your problem. Literature promoting homosexuality and transgender identity has been developed for children as young as kindergarten. One book, Alex Gino’s “George,” was on the William Allen White children’s book master list from Emporia State University for 2017-2018. Educators are being instructed to affirm transgender identities and coerced to use students’ “preferred pronouns.”

In 2016, parents in Derby, Kan., were shocked to learn that their high school’s locker rooms, bathrooms and other private facilities were to be open to students on the basis of gender identity, thanks to a guidance document issued by the Obama administration. Just last month, an Ohio judge revoked the parental rights of a couple who wouldn’t allow their minor child to begin hormone treatments.

We didn’t ask for this fight, but it’s here.

The rapid and widespread attention received by the Kansas GOP resolution indicates just how entrenched what I believe is a lie about human gender identity has become in a short amount of time. But it also tells of the thirst that good citizens still have for truth. Let’s be people who have the courage and compassion to tell it.