How Should We Interpret the Recent Public Shift against Transgender Rights?

Gavin Newsom’s declaration this week that transgender athletes should not have the right to compete in girls’ and women’s sports was perhaps the clearest sign we’ve seen that the Democrats believe that transgender rights in sports are a losing issue. If even Newsom, the California governor who built his career on defending same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights in the early 2000s, was ready for an about-face on transgender rights, it seems pretty clear that the Democratic Party is ready to cut its losses and tack toward the center on the issue.

But that leads to a question: Why couldn’t progressives such as Newsom translate their earlier sweeping public policy victories on same-sex marriage (which 69 percent of Americans now support) into political victories on transgender athletes’ participation in athletic events that do not correspond to their birth gender (which 69 percent of Americans oppose)?

The answer, I think, tells us a lot about the limitations not only of cultural progressivism but also of Christian conservatism.

A majority of Americans, it seems, are libertarians by default on social issues. They believe in the rights of individuals to define their own identities without interference from the federal government.

Decades before same-sex marriage became a topic of political discussion, Americans adopted a view of marriage that saw it as a partnership rather than a covenant, and that emphasized companionship over procreation. That’s why arguments against same-sex marriage didn’t resonate with most Americans. Once straight Americans got over their initial personal discomfort with same-sex marriage, it was only a short time before they decided that there was nothing wrong with it, since it generally accorded with their preexisting views on matrimony. The campaign against same-sex marriage collapsed in little more than a decade after its formation. Even before the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Obergefell, a majority of states recognized same-sex marriage and a majority of Americans supported it.

Other social issues have followed a similar libertarian pattern. In all but a handful of socially conservative states, voters who have been asked to decide whether marijuana should be legal have chosen to approve it. And in most states where abortion has been on the ballot, voters have supported legalization.

But there are a few issues that have not quite followed that pattern. Last year, voters in the generally progressive state of Massachusetts chose not to legalize hallucinogenic drugs. The Oregon state government decided to recriminalize drugs after a short experiment in decriminalization that many of the state’s residents considered disastrous. And over time, alcohol sales policies have become tighter rather than looser.

In each of these cases, voters or legislators were persuaded to modify their default libertarianism with a recognition that the law should restrict substances or practices that result in demonstrable harm to others. It was statistical evidence about teens’ involvement in alcohol-related car accidents that led Americans to support raising the drinking age to 21. Americans were okay with teens drinking until they realized that it might be causing harm to others – and at that point, they decided to take away the privilege.

Something similar has happened with abortion. For decades, support for abortion legalization has been much higher than support for government funding for abortion. Even though perhaps as many as two-thirds of Americans want abortion to generally be legal – a reflection of a generally libertarian attitude on the issue – 60 percent oppose using taxpayer money to pay for it. It’s fine with these voters if people make their own choices with their own bodies (which is how they likely think about abortion), but they don’t want anyone else taking taxpayer resources to do it.

I think that public attitudes toward transgender rights have followed a similar pattern. The participation of transgender athletes in sports where their bodies might give them a competitive advantage has led even some progressives to concede that this social policy might come with unacceptable cultural costs. Americans’ default libertarianism is coupled with a deeply held belief in fairness – and a majority of Americans are convinced that if people are allowed to be classified as anything other than their birth gender in athletic competitions, it will impose be unfair to all other athletes.

But this doesn’t mean that Americans are generally skeptical about a broader array of transgender rights. A poll taken last summer showed that more than 60 percent of American adults opposed laws banning gender-affirming care for minors.

While transgender rights are still a matter of debate, I think that it’s safe to predict that Americans’ default libertarianism will win out in the end. Most Americans don’t want the government telling parents (or teens) what medical care they can or cannot access with their own money or through their own healthcare policies. At the same time, they don’t want transgender athletes gaining an unfair advantage over their own daughters.

This default libertarianism has at times frustrated progressives who would prefer a more systematic cultural liberalism, but it should give even greater pause to Christian conservatives, because it seems clear that whatever backlash might currently exist against the LGBTQ+ movement is based not on a return to godly principles or a Christian worldview but rather to a libertarian-compatible sense of individual fairness. The transgender rights movement probably overstepped in its push for full transgender participation in women’s sports. Once the movement retreats to a more modest position, it’s likely to gain more success in its quest to gain full acceptance in American life.

After all, a nation that now overwhelmingly accepts same-sex marriage is not likely to be very amenable in the long term to philosophical or theological arguments about gender that are based on natural law or a Christian worldview. That should make theologically conservative Christians cautious about expecting too much from the current slowdown in support for transgender rights.