Vatican Rejects Notion That Gender Identity Can Be Chosen

ROME — The Vatican on Monday released its first extensive official document on gender theory, rejecting the notion that individuals can choose their own gender identity.

The document, issued by the Vatican department overseeing Catholic education, argued that increasing acceptance of fluid definitions of gender by schools and legal systems posed a threat to traditional families and ignored the natural differences between men and women.

It lamented “calls for public recognition of the right to choose one’s gender, and of a plurality of new types of unions, in direct contradiction of the model of marriage as being between one man and one woman, which is portrayed as a vestige of patriarchal societies.”