Colbert Church Hosts Event Challenging Gender Diversity, Pediatrician to Speak

By Aaron Hedge | FāVS News

Contrary to a growing scientific consensus, the East Washington Freedom Alliance (EWAFA) believes any sex or gender outside the binary of male and female does not exist.

So does Dr. Erica Li.

That will be the subject of an EWAFA-sponsored presentation by Li at Colbert’s Liberty Remnant Church on Thursday at 6 p.m titled, “Genes, Gonads, Gametes, and Genitals: Why Sex is a Strict Binary.” Li is a pediatrician at Providence Sacred Heart Hospital.

During two short phone calls with FāVS Monday, Li bristled at discussing details of her talk. She declined to be recorded and to answer questions about it for two reasons. First: “I don’t want to spoil it,” she said. “I want people to become open-minded about how amazing our natural world is.” 

Second: “I don’t want you to write ‘transphobe Dr. Li.’ That happens to people.”

But Li kept talking. She acknowledged the existence of intersex people — who are born with sex characteristics that don’t fit into either the male or female category — but maintained that “all people who are intersex are male or female.” She based this assertion on the idea that a person can only produce one of two kinds of “gamete,” or reproductive cell: sperm or egg, which she said determines a person’s sex. This creates an “immutable” gender binary, according to the announcement of Li’s lecture sent to EWAFA’s listserv on May 13.

The idea that gametes define sex sits at the nexus of a roiling debate over queer rights nationally and locally. The Trump administration, among other attacks on the trans community, has used such arguments to officially declare trans people don’t exist. As Mead School District (MSD) debated a discrimination policy that would, among other things, encourage trans students to use a restroom stall to change clothing, the Central Valley School District asked the federal government to allow it to ban transgender students from sports, which would violate state law.

By contrast, the City of Spokane will likely become a “shield city” for queer people, meaning it would not help in any investigations of queer people and will guarantee the city will cover gender affirming care for city employees, along with other protections.

Who is Li? What is EWAFA?

Not much public information about Li is available in basic internet searches, but according to Webmd Doctor, she generally treats pneumonia, bronchial asthma, poisoning, constipation, dehydration, epilepsy and skin infections in children. Google Scholar lists a number of articles published by an Erica Li on COVID-19, diabetes, adolescent relationship issues and other topics not directly related to gender. 

But the Li who is the subject of this story would not answer specific questions about her qualifications, saying she was interested in gender “because I love biology.”

EWAFA organizes conservatives in the Inland Northwest, including support for the gubernatorial candidacy of upstart conservative Semi Bird — who was recalled from a school district seat for flouting COVID mask policy — and the anti-Muslim group Tactical Civics. (You may have seen activists with EWAFA waving Trump flags from overpasses on I-90 in Spokane and Spokane Valley.)

Neither EWAFA officials nor Liberty Remnant Church returned requests for comment.

‘This is the stuff of tragedy’

The Rev. Gen Heywood, who presides over the queer-affirming Veradale United Church of Christ, said in a phone interview that events like Li’s present a clear threat to LGBTQIA+ communities in the Inland Northwest.

“This is the stuff of tragedy because this leads people to believe that the church hates them — that it doesn’t believe what they say is true,” she said.

Heywood, whose church has a small number of transgender members, including some children, said she had never heard of a pediatrician who believed that gender is strictly binary.

Her church was vandalized last year during June, which is Pride Month in Washington, with an anti-gay message by four local people in their 20s. It was one incident in a rash of vandalism that took place across the Spokane area that month. One of the perpetrators was sentenced to two years of unsupervised probation for harassment stemming from the Veradale vandalism.

Trying to legislate trans people away

“Dr. Li will arm you with undeniable scientific truth (axiom) that sex is an immutable binary in all living beings,” says the announcement of the event sent to the EWAFA listserv. Speaking with FāVS, she supported this contention by saying that gametes define sex. 

She did not address gender, which is a socially constructed notion of what behaviors and roles men, women and anyone between are expected by a society to embody. And she stressed that her talk would be strictly scientific.

But conservative legislatures have used the idea that gametes define sex as the basis for denying that trans people exist and passing bills that bar trans people from public places, keep them out of sports and deny legal recognition of a person’s gender identity. 

In the United States, sex is assigned at birth based not on gamete production but on a doctor’s observation of external genitalia. And though it’s true that a human can generally supply only one kind of gamete, even after a gender transition, some humans don’t produce them at all because they are infertile or have had their reproductive organs removed.

But they still generally have a sex and a gender.

Sex is not binary in all living beings. Some animals, including many fish, change sex during their lives in response to environmental change. There is a species of all-female lizard that reproduces asexually. Earthworms produce both eggs and sperm. Research published in 2016 in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine observed rabbits that produced both sperm and eggs and were able to impregnate themselves.

Fear of gender-affirming health care

EWAFA’s event is titled “The Dangers of the Trangender Movement,” and the announcement is rife with language that is widely considered to be transphobic.

“Are you alarmed by the transgender movement’s relentless push to redefine reality, endangering our children and unraveling the fabric of society?” it asks. “Are you frustrated with Washingtons push to put biological men in girls sports?

“If so, you cannot miss this critical and empowering event.”

It ends by saying: “Dr. Li, a trusted pediatrician grounded in evidence-based medicine, will equip you with the facts to stand firm against this cultural assault.”

“I didn’t write that,” Li told FāVS. She volunteered that, “I’m not particularly right-wing” and that she was not transphobic. (FāVS did not ask her if she was.)

But EWAFA appears to believe Li’s presentation will support its political agenda, which includes overturning a Washington law that allows minors who are estranged from their parents to access gender-affirming care.

Washington has some of the country’s most permissive landscapes for children to access gender-affirming care. Under recently-passed laws, children who are estranged from their guardians can access some treatments without parental permission. This is a stark contrast to red states like Idaho, which banned gender-affirming care for minors last year.

But even here it’s not like a child can walk into a clinic and immediately get puberty blockers or bottom surgery. Most gender-affirming care for youth is social or based in counseling, meaning they get mental health care and stop behaving in ways traditionally associated with their assigned gender. 

It’s only after exhaustive consultation with a doctor and careful planning that young people start regimes of hormone therapy. Surgery is extremely rare.

Heywood said gender-affirming care is essential in a world in which many communities ostracize transgender people.

“I genuinely believe it’s life saving care,” she said. 

She told a story of a transgender boy who attended an after-dark Bible study at Veradale who said he was running away from home. She called Child Protective Services and learned that because the boy was so young, she had to call the county sheriff. She called the sheriff, and a deputy showed up. The deputy would only call the boy “she” and called the child’s parents, who picked him up. She never saw him again.

“I repeat that experience so many times in my head because I don’t know the address of that child,” she told FāVS.

Pastor wants trans kids locked up

Jay MacPherson, the pastor of the event’s venue, Liberty Remnant Church in Colbert, showed up to a heated public hearing at the MSD in March over a proposed revision of its discrimination policy, according to an article in The Spokesman. 

The revision removed the line: “the board believes in fostering an education environment that is safe and free of discrimination for all students regardless of gender expression, gender identity, or sex” and aligned MSD with the Trump administration’s broad set of anti-trans policies.

“Boys who think they’re girls need psychological care,” MacPherson said during the public comment session at the meeting, according to The Spokesman. 

He went further, commenting on trans girls who use the girls’ bathroom, “They should be incarcerated while they come to grips with who they really are.”

MacPherson did not return a request for comment.

But Heywood said her “heart breaks” for the transgender community and expressed suspicion about the motives of the anti-trans movement.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said after reading the EWAFA announcement. “Pick on somebody your own size. … This is such a tiny bit of the community. I don’t know if it’s smoke and mirrors in the sense of let’s pick on the small different person so that we can go ahead and do other things while you’re not looking.”