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“Even though I am Miss San Francisco, I know my impact is much greater than that. Every time I put on the sash, the weight of it reminds me of the weight of my job, of the responsibility I have to make a difference for young children.”
–MONROE LACE
A man who believes he’s a woman won the Miss San Francisco pageant in March, which means he is eligible to compete for the title of Miss California, scheduled for this July.
Monroe Lace, a 25-year-old man and UCLA who suffers from gender dysphoria, is the “first trans-identifying man” to be crowned Miss San Francisco in the pageant’s 99-year history. He says he doesn’t take his win lightly.
“It felt like a dream, because it’s been a dream that I’ve had since I was a child,” Lace told CBS Bay Area. “Even though I am Miss San Francisco, I know my impact is much greater than that. Every time I put on the sash, the weight of it reminds me of the weight of my job, of the responsibility I have to make a difference for young children.”
As part of his Social Impact Initiative, Lace visits various elementary schools almost daily. In one video shown by a local CBS affiliate, Lace can be seen reading “Sparkle Boy,” a picture book about a boy who wants to wear women’s clothing, to fourth graders at Tenderloin Community School. According to Lace, who claims to have received death threats and “mean comments” about his appearance, he “know[s] that there’s a trans kid out there…who is reading [Lace’s] story as well.”
He wants to show children what it’s like to be a man dressed up as a woman and win women’s titles, and it’s having an impact. The same CBS news station reported that a fourth grade girl doesn’t see anything wrong with a biological man winning a pageant competition for young women.
“It was beautiful, ’cause I didn’t care if she was a boy or a girl. It was just like…normal,” the girl said.
Lace is not the first man to win a Miss America preliminary pageant. Last November, another man was crowned “Miss Greater Derry” and then moved on to compete in the Miss New Hampshire pageant.
Kataluna Enriquez, another biological male, won Miss Nevada and went on to compete in the Miss USA pageant. However, after the Miss USA organization filed a lawsuit in an attempt to protect its policy that requires contestants to be “natural born female[s]” under the First Amendment, a federal court ruled in its favor, blocking woman-identifying men from future pageants. Activists, female athletes, and lawmakers have also spoken out in defense of women who are now faced with competing against men in sports. As men begin to take up spaces in women’s pageants, the concerns of outspoken women may be amplified.
If Lace wins Miss California, he would be eligible to compete for the title of Miss America.
In reading news stories like this, Romans 1:24-28 immediately comes to mind. It says,
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”
The general response to such inanity is, “What is wrong with these people?” or “How is this happening?” and “Why is this happening?”
Romans 1 clearly explains it. People like Monroe Lace have been turned over to the lusts of their mind, sitting under God’s wrath for eternity, unless He wills that they might be saved by the power of the Gospel.
The lusts of an impure heart and the spiritual blindness of a reprobate mind result in men who dress up as women, fetishizing their femininity and making a caricature out of womanhood. It results in men who are so deceived that they actually believe they are women and are deserving of accolades that belong to women. It results in these same men surrounding themselves with children, destroying their innocence by normalizing this depravity, and teaching them of all the ways they can act on the lusts of their hearts.
What we see in culture today with all of the confusion interwoven into every facet of society is the warning of Romans 1 come to fruition. And we should prepare ourselves: The depravity of a man’s debased mind can become far more shockingly wicked than what we have seen thus far.
In response, Christians should do three things: Pray that the Lord remove His hand of judgment on this nation and restore it to Himself; preach the Gospel so that it will go forth to all who have ears to hear; and excel in the mundane tasks within their homes so that their children and their families will be equipped to face whatever trials the future brings.
Ready to dive deeper into the intersection of faith and policy? Head over to our Theology of Politics series page where we’ve published several long-form pieces that will help Christians navigate where their faith should direct them on political issues.
