Democratic candidates in difficult election contests have begun ceding ground on pediatric transgender ideology, with a particular emphasis on young men’s participation in women’s sports. Do No Harm applauds these concessions to reality even as we question their sincerity and note that the more important battle lies elsewhere.
Making the rounds earlier this week was reporting in the Washington Post concerning the politics of youth transgenderism.
According to author Ben Binday, “[s]everal Democrats running in conservative-leaning areas have sought to blunt the effect of Republican attacks on transgender issues by publicly opposing transgender girls playing in girls’ sports.”
Some Democratic candidates have even gone “so far as to refer to transgender girls” — accurately — “as ‘boys’.”
Among the candidates mentioned in Binday’s article are
Sometimes politicians will reverse course on an issue after experiencing a true change of heart. We also know that politicians respond to political expediency.
After all, recent data from the Pew Research Center indicate that 73 percent of Americans are “uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on sports teams that do not match their sex at birth.” The specter of boys in girls’ locker rooms surely contributed to that number.
There is, too, the matter of previous voting records. As the Washington Post’s coverage acknowledges, Rep. Kaptur previously cast votes “against legislation barring transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports.”
During her time in the Iowa state legislature, Trone Garriott voted against a bill that would have sorted young athletes by biological sex and against banning gender-“transition” surgeries for minors.
As a U.S. Congresswoman representing Alaska, Peltola voted against a measure that would have barred boys from competing in girls’ sports and declared that the bill amounted to “bullying.”
While Acton and Sand have not previously served in legislative capacities, the former still has a “B” grade from the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Ohio despite her recent actions. The latter has previously backed transgender activists’ priorities in general and opposed a bill removing civil-rights protections for “gender identity,” according to reporting by an Iowa ABC affiliate.
The point is this: All candidates, regardless of party, must be held to their election-season promises on the crucial issue of protecting children from harmful “gender” ideology.
Moreover, while progressive candidates’ concessions on youth athletic participation are welcome and refreshing, that issue is not nearly as important as the medicalization of gender dysphoria, a phenomenon that is happening and is, heartbreakingly, far more common than transgender activists acknowledge.
To put it another way, the question of boys in girls’ sports is the public-facing tip of a much larger and more damaging iceberg.
Girls shouldn’t be forced to share courts, fields, and locker rooms with boys, but it is even more crucial that we put an end to “gender-affirming” surgeries and pharmacological interventions in minors.
Until Democrats — and Republicans — unite in opposing that barbarism, the battle over pediatric transgender ideology will not be over.
