Trans rights

The LGBTQ movement—first the campaigners for gay and lesbian rights, and now for transgender rights—deserve credit for shaking up our thinking. They’ve made a compelling case that most of the old beliefs about gender were arbitrary taboos, trapping people in lives that confined them and made them miserable. Just as we’ve rejected stereotypes about how women or people of color were “meant” to live, we’re now confronting these stereotypes in turn.

However, every step forward provokes a backlash from those who benefit—or seek to benefit—from oppression. The Catholic church (and, sad to say, Richard Dawkins) are clinging to the notion that all the old beliefs about gender were fine as they were and nothing needs to be questioned or changed. They continue to insist that people should be compelled into roles determined at birth, with no regard for what those people want for themselves.

“I want to be clear. Trans kids aren’t considering or attempting suicide because of who they are, but because of who we are in this building right now,” he said.

“The authors of this garbage are responsible for trans suicides, for trans attempted suicides. It isn’t the kids and their identities. It’s a society in which actual adults sit down in a room and put pen to paper to try to codify their hatred to try to mask their intolerance as concern and to cover their ignorance with a thin veneer of junk science.”