The details of the March 2023 mass killing in Nashville, Tennessee are all too familiar now: Little children were slaughtered in cold blood and innocent educators gunned down. Yet something was different about this tragic massacre. This one took place in a Christian school — the very school the shooter went to as a child.

And this time, the shooter was a woman.

As The New York Times noted on March 27, 2023, “In a database of 172 public shootings involving at least four fatalities over the last five and a half decades, all but four of the perpetrators were male.”

Yet this female mass murderer, Audrey Hale, was different in still another way: She identified as a man.

It has been known since last year’s horrific attack that Hale’s writings, called a “manifesto,” outlined her reasons for the massacre. But until last week, those writings had not been released by the police.

Now that some of them have been made public, we have a window into Hale’s tormented soul.

Twisted Fantasies

According to the Daily Mail, Hale

wrote about her ‘imaginary penis’ and how she would ‘kill’ to get puberty blockers in the weeks before her horrific attack on the Covenant School in Nashville last year. . . .

Hale wrote about anger toward her parents, how she hated her conservative Christian upbringing, and how she had suffered because hormone blockers were not available when she was as a child.

She said “that being raised as a girl was ‘torture’” but the Daily Mail says, “That all changed when she learned about transgenderism in her early twenties. ‘I finally found the answer — that changing one’s gender is possible.’”

Her parents, however, held to conservative Christian views, which Hale grew to hate as well. She fantasized about being a male and having intercourse with women.

In fact, just days before the shooting, she wrote, “God, I am such a pervert. I waste too much time in my fantasies.”

Medical Malpractice

As for getting access to puberty blockers, which her mother would have forbidden, it was too late for Hale, since she was already in sixth grade when they came on the scene. This was all the more reason for her rage. She would have killed to get them, she wrote in her manifesto.

Could it be, then, that Hale could have lived a well-adjusted life as a transman — a woman who “changed her gender” and became a man? Could she have been spared the “agony” of being raised as a girl if her parents had understood what was really happening in her life? Could puberty blockers have saved her life — and those of the adults and children she so ruthlessly gunned down?

In terms of all possible scenarios, the answer is only God knows what could and would happen under hypothetical circumstances.

But we can say three things with certainty: 1) Only a deranged and/or very evil person slaughters little children, no matter what torment and pain they live with. Such as person has far deeper issues to deal with than gender confusion. 2) What Hale needed was serious counseling, a life-changing encounter with God, and possibly even deliverance from demonic powers. 3) The European nations that led the way in promoting the transitioning of children now view it as harmful and are discouraging the practice.

As one concerned mother in America opined, this will one day go down as the worst example of medical malpractice in history.

No Magic Pills

On May 29, Dr. André van Mol wrote an article published by the Christian Medical and Dental Association about the final Cass Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People, which “was released in April. It was four years in the making, commissioned by the National Health Services (NHS) in England in 2020, and “comprehensive, clearly and painstakingly explanatory and already controversial.”

Among the conclusions van Mol drew from the study, which totals 387 pages, is that “gender dysphoric minors have multiple unmet needs and require a holistic approach throughout with strong emphasis on mental health, even if they transition (para.13, p.21; recommendation 2, p.28; para.66, p.30).”

To imagine that Hale’s problems would have disappeared if only she had received hormone treatment to stop the onset of puberty is to fail to realize that her gender confusion was one of many issues that needed attention.

The study also issued “repeated cautioning against rushed and premature decisions by patient and professionals (para 13, p.21)” and found “no evidence that social or medical transition/pathways reduce suicides (para.76, 86,15.43).”

The study also found “no evidence that puberty-blocking agents buy time to think; most youth on them proceed to cross-sex hormones (para.83; p.32).”

Not only so but, “Puberty-blocking agents compromise bone density, do not improve gender dysphoria or body satisfaction and ‘There was insufficient/inconsistent evidence about the effects of puberty suppression on psychological or psychosocial wellbeing, cognitive development, cardio-metabolic risk or fertility’ (para.81, 82; p.32).”

There was no magic cure, then, for Hale, no “Take this pill or get this shot and your troubles will go away.”

To the contrary, this was a deeply disturbed young woman who needed transformative help from the inside out, and one can only imagine what would have happened to the rage inside her if she started to receive hormone treatments to make her feel more male.

Tragically, she did not receive the real help she needed, resulting in horrific bloodshed and the loss of her own life.

In the days ahead, may God give us wisdom to help identify these troubled young people in advance and minister grace and transformation to them before it’s too late.

 

Dr. Michael Brown is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. He is the author of more than 40 books, including Can You be Gay and Christian?; Our Hands Are Stained With Blood; and Seize the Moment: How to Fuel the Fires of Revival. You can connect with him on Facebook, X, or YouTube.