Republican candidate: ‘No one can change gender’ and ‘trans people can’t go to church’

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A Republican candidate for the Colorado House of Representatives has said it is “untrue” that a person can change their gender.

Dr Gordon Klingenschmitt, who in the past has often spoken out against homosexuality, said on the Monday installment of his internet talk show: “Even after the man is castrated, he’s still a man.”

Referring to the case surrounding Meggan Sommerville, a transgender woman who sued her employer Hobby Lobby after they refused to let her use the women’s toilets, he said: “And that not only should ban him from access to the ladies bathroom — whether or not he has the surgery, he still has XY chromosomes, he’s still a man, he’s just lying about it on his birth certificate.”

He also said that trans people should not be allowed in churches, citing the Bible’s Deuteronomy 23, which reads, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.”

Klingenschmitt, a former US Navy Chaplin, has previously claimed that “liberals demand public access to rape your girls” by allowing “transgenders” to use female toilets.