Our gender debates aren’t going anywhere.
For years, there has been a growing chorus arguing that, in an era where Americans are increasingly devoid of faith and transcendent meaning, our sublimated religious impulses have found a new home in our political sphere, turning every policy debate into a zero-sum game with existential stakes. Add to this our social media echo chambers and the algorithms that highlight outlier positions on the left and right, and it’s no wonder that we assume the worst about our political rivals.
Nevertheless, few issue areas in our political discourse are as tense as the discourse surrounding transgender issues, particularly the medical transition of minors. Indeed, the discourse is likely to be reignited, with NPR recently reporting that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to issue two proposed rules later this month which would prohibit Medicaid and CHIP reimbursements for pediatric medical interventions for dysphoric minors, and Medicaid and Medicare funding for any hospital that renders these practices.
Ironically, both the “affirming” and what I’ll call the “restrictionist” camps are united by compassion for what they perceive as highly vulnerable and exploited groups, yet they diverge radically in how they define those groups and their needs. In the spirit of lowering the political temperature, I think it is useful to map out some of the basic assumptions underlying the affirming and restrictionist perspectives. Although years of research—and my own value judgments—have led me to conclude that the available evidence supports the restrictionist position, I view this exercise as a good-faith attempt to help readers, and each camp, better understand the nature of the debate.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Dispatch (paywall)
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Joseph Figliolia is a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
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