Trans Moralism Is Killing the Democrats

By Rich Lowry

Sunday, November 10, 2024

 

The progressive answer to the humiliating rebuke that the Left suffered last week is still, “You can’t say that.”

 

The side that has believed it can bully its way to victory on cultural issues by policing the debate in its favor continues to act as if that’s so, even after getting soundly beaten last Tuesday.

 

The Left’s game has been to insist that everyone adopt its tendentious vocabulary, to call opponents bigots, and to use moral blackmail — and the threat of punishment — to keep any left-of-center doubters in line.

 

This model, which has been quite successful over the years, has a flaw, though. If a given cause is exotic and unpopular enough, and if it becomes subject to a political debate where the broader public can weigh in, the attempt to define common sense as a thought crime is doomed to fail.

 

This is what happened on trans issues in the election. Donald Trump’s “she’s for they/them” attack ad was the most effective and consequential political spot of this century.

 

How is the Left taking it? By clinging to the old rules.

 

In an exchange on CNN the other night that’s gotten attention, the Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton said a lot of families don’t think that boys should play girls’ sports, eliciting an outraged reaction from progressive panelist Jay Michaelson, author of the book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality.

 

Interrupting, Michaelson said heatedly that he wasn’t going to listen to such “transphobia” and maintained with great vehemence that it is “a slur” to describe “trans girls” as “boys.” Talking over Singleton, he insisted, “They are not boys. They are not boys.”

 

Notably, the anchor Abby Phillip — the moderator on what is supposed to be a straight-down-the-line news network — intervened, not to say that Singleton was free to use whatever term he thinks is most appropriate but to rebuke him and ask him “to try to talk about this in a way that is respectful.”

 

Singleton hadn’t interrupted anyone, raised his voice, or done anything that would ordinarily be considered inappropriate in the context of a cable TV debate — he’d simply called biological males “boys,” and that was ruled out of bounds.

 

Phillip did tell Singleton, generously in her own mind, “I know you are not intending to be transphobic.”

 

Oh, thanks.

 

The Left’s attitude on this issue is not, “You may disagree, but I believe trans girls are indeed girls” but rather, “They are girls, and you have absolutely no moral right to say or think otherwise.”

 

It adds a spirit of hectoring intolerance to the underlying absurdity of the position on the merits — making it all even more off-putting and difficult for an ordinary person to understand or accept.

 

The problem is that progressives consider whatever new boutique obsession they’ve come up with at any given moment to be the great moral issue of our time, indeed always to be the moral equivalent of the fight for civil rights.

 

So, someone who doesn’t want to see boys competing in girls’ sports, and simply rejects the fashionable terminology, is viewed as a modern-day Bull Connor.

 

This means no compromise is acceptable, even on the most pragmatic political grounds.

 

The longtime chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, Gilberto Hinojosa, just got defenestrated at least in part for daring to say the obvious on the trans issues.

 

“You can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support,” he said in an election postmortem.

 

He’d have been better off saying that the party should in the future call for the official end of the gender binary, by violence if necessary.

 

“Chairman Hinojosa’s recent anti-trans comments further demonstrate his inability to lead a party that values the dignity and rights of all individuals, including LGBTQ+ Democrats,” the Stonewall Democrats of San Antonio declared.

 

Others said much the same. Poor Hinojosa had to grovel.

 

“I extend my sincerest apologies to those I hurt with my comments today,” he said. “I recognize the pain and frustration my words have caused. In frustration over the GOP’s lies to incite hate for trans communities, I failed to communicate my thoughts with care and clarity.”

 

He’s gone anyway.

 

A top aide to Democratic representative Seth Moulton resigned after the congressman had the temerity to say that his party may have gone too far on the trans stuff. “I have two little girls,” he said. “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

 

Well, he’s supposed to be afraid for a reason.

 

The co-chair of the Bay State Stonewall Democrats said his remarks were “harmful to the queer community.” Mass Equality called him out for using the terms “male or formerly male,” which, of course, are “harmful and factually inaccurate.” And so it went.

 

The Left’s moralistic browbeating may succeed in reinforcing the trans orthodoxy among its own, despite the bitter electoral consequences. As we learned last Tuesday, though, the rest of the country won’t play by these poisonously stupid and illiberal rules, nor should it.