And it's not just the Protestant world. Queer people around the globe are still reeling from the release of a recent Vatican document called Infinite Dignity. The Vatican used the idea of complementarianism to defend its sexist practices, and to call them dignified for women. It used the same foundation to condemn gay and transgender people, and withhold any sense of true dignity from us.

The document has made clear that we gay people can stop hoping to be considered anything other than depraved or disordered, although people should respect us at the same time. And isn't that just a disgusting thing to say? Calling somebody depraved means you don't respect them. Orwell is rolling over in his grave, seeing yet another example of a word twisted out of its ordinary meaning by propagandists.

True respect and dignity lie in equality, not in declaring particular types of humans less equal or less capable than others.

I don't know why Christianity has such a huge problem with this. But across the conservative Protestant world and the entire Catholic world, blatant sexism is a cancer. Formal marginalization of women is par for the course.

And it just so happens that those impulses are used to justify horrible levels of homophobia and transphobia.

Christians need to learn to do better. Much better.