A few comments on Psaki's "transgender kids" press conference remarks yesterday
An unusually newsy post for me... but this is an event we should notice
This is going to be an unusually “newsy” post from me (but with some philosophical speculations of course), but I really have the attitude here that “Christians need to know this is happening”. As Rod Dreher said toward the end of his post on the subject, we need the ordinary people to wake up, not just the always-online people. If you already know this is happening, that’s great, you may archive this email and move on with your life.
In a press conference yesterday Jen Psaki, speaking for the executive branch of course, threatened federal action against states that take legal steps to restrict “gender affirming care” for children, a euphemism for the drugging and permanent physical alteration of children who believe they are the opposite sex.
She accused Republicans who pass such legislation of “attacking vulnerable transgender kids”, referred to transition procedures as “medically necessary lifesaving healthcare”, warned that states that pass such legislation have been “put on notice” by the DOJ and HHS that their laws might violate the US Constitution, and said that every major medical association agrees that gender affirming care is a best practice.
Abigail Shrier called it an “address full of fiction” and wrote her own response, which I do recommend.
There is much you could say about such remarks.
One, let’s dwell for a moment upon the fact that she is talking about children here. This all happened very quickly, didn’t it? Wasn’t it just yesterday it was just about “look, if an adult, or two consenting adults want to ___, who are you to stand in the way of…”. Another video making the rounds yesterday was of Dennis Prager on Bill Maher’s show in late 2019. He says (in 2019) that some people are saying now that “men can menstruate”, and Bill makes fun of him, and the audience laughs at him, because nobody is saying anything that ridiculous! Berkeley is now providing tampons in the men’s restrooms, Prager says - the audience laughs again, Maher says that’s probably just because their girlfriends are telling them to go get them a tampon.
So that was held to be laughable just two and a half years ago. Now you have the federal government threatening states that just try to prevent children from making these alterations to their bodies. (“So you have to be 18 years old to get a tattoo”, I saw someone say, “but somehow…”.)
Why? Well I might suggest that this is a religious movement, so of course children should be included. Political liberalism might just say “oh, let adults do what they want”. Political liberalism maybe doesn’t pass judgment on whether it’s a good choice or a bad choice, but whatever it is it is your choice. But religious progressivism cherishes the idea that all of nature can be reworked into the image we desire, and of course children should be included in that victory. (The technological limitations of that reworking - like the fact that these changes to a body will be permanent - are largely denied or ignored right now because they are inconvenient to the faith, probably also with the unstated expectation that the problem with soon be technologically solved anyway.)
Two, it has been said that statements like Psaki’s will be used to justify removing children from their parents. Psaki does describe transition procedures as “medically necessary, lifesaving healthcare”. How would we normally look at parents who deny their children medically necessary, lifesaving care? But it’s crazy to think they would ever go that far, you say. Have you seen anything in US progressivism lately aside from external threats that ever makes them stop? So far as I know, all the cases like this in the US so far have involved divorced parents so, so far, it hasn’t been a matter of the state overriding the will of the parents so much as choosing one parent over another. But have you seen anything lately that would make progressive activists ever stop short of a firm no from the people?
Have we all learned now that this is why you have to say “no, this is wrong”, right away? And you have to keep saying it. Because they’re going to keep saying it’s right. Endless repetition does its work.
Three, I don’t want to see any handwringing from Christian leaders next election about how presumptuous it would be to claim that your Christianity tells you how to vote. The lines are pretty clear these days. One side has staked out some of the most extreme positions on abortion and the drugging of confused children literally to be found on the planet today. The other side, though often weak and pitiful, makes at least some efforts to oppose those things. Let’s not wring our hands and act like it’s a subtle, difficult question to figure out where Christians should exist in the US political landscape today. Maybe thirty years ago it was. It isn’t any longer.
Four, my usual first refrain on Twitter, “so how bad exactly do things have to get before Roman Catholic bishops take official action?” Biden is nominally a Roman Catholic president. He apparently regularly attends church. He’s one of your guys, Roman Catholics. And he holds some of the most extreme positions on abortion and transgenderism of any political leader in the world. If you’re not going to officially rebuke him, then apparently you can get away with anything and still be a communing Catholic. Needless to say, this is terrible for the Roman Catholic witness. You want to speak truth to power? Well here would be a very appropriate time to speak truth to power. Let people know that to be a Roman Catholic means to believe, dearly, that certain things are true.
Five, it’s a spiritual battle all the way down these days. I’ve seen some people saying “why are Democrats even choosing this battle, this seems like a strange hill to choose to die upon?” Indeed we should pay attention to which topics seem to excite the activist progressive crowd the most. Ten years ago I would have said abortion, nothing seemed to provoke as much passion and excitement as expanding access to abortion. And that is still quite high, perhaps still top, on the list. But I sense that “teaching children gender ideology and affirming them in their whateverness” is rising rapidly as another place of extreme passion. These are, of course, two of the most contrary-to-what-is-good-and-true positions in US politics today. It’s a spiritual battle all the way down.
And six… why is US progressivism in particular so uniform and extreme? As part of Shrier’s response she mentioned, and she is the expert but this has been my observation too, that US Democrats are making themselves a world outlier here. Properly credentialed Europeans, including people who would be described as “pro-transgender rights” in the US, are increasingly sounding caution at least as regards whether these procedures are the right thing for children. From one link she provides:
The National Academy of Medicine in France has issued a press release in which it cautions medical practitioners that the growing cases of transgender identity in young people are often socially-mediated and that great caution in treatment is needed. The Academy draws attention to the fact that hormonal and surgical treatments carry health risks and have permanent effects, and that it is not possible to distinguish a durable trans identity from a passing phase of an adolescent's development.
So in France you’re allowed to say “let’s remember these are children, and they are often responding to social pressures, and we shouldn’t rush them headlong into transition treatments”. (There are more good details in the press release if you care to click through.) Rare, rare indeed is the progressive in the US who would dare to say such a thing, even in the context of otherwise speaking in favor of transgender rights.
Why? Why is it particularly characteristic of US progressivism that once something has been declared good, you are not allowed even to nuance its general goodness with cautions about when it might still be limited? (For other examples, see also the fascination with masking young children, another US oddity with increasingly undeniable harms and near zero benefits, or our abortion laws.) I don’t have a particularly clear answer to that except to say that progressivism in the US feels like a religious movement, a highly dogmatic one with no tolerance for heresy. But why that should be the situation here and less so in France, for example… well I’d be happy to hear your comments.
As a Catholic, I cannot tell you how disappointing it is to watch the Catholic Church remain silent on these issues. The "velvet mafia" in the hierarchy goes a long way to explain the silence on these issues. Chicago's Cardinal Cupich goes so far as to prohibit priests from praying in front of abortion clinics.
For maybe 5 years now, I've tuned in to Relevant Radio, a nationwide Catholic station, every few days. It was explained that in one of the Marian apparitions, Mary warned that the final battle between good and evil would be fought over the family, an eerily prescient statement made decades ago.
As a former Democrat horrified at what the party has become (literally celebrating the destruction of human life in the womb/denying the reality of sex), US progressivism does indeed feel like a religious movement: satanism...
Why America? I'm not in deep tune with progressives' emotionalism, but isn't it clear that young white U.S. adults who vote Democratic have a unique fixation on race and historical guilt? Sex changes and masking, and the covid vaccines, aren't overtly tied to that, but I think it's all part of the same ideological/moral/emotional river for them. They believe they can redeem themselves only by advancing programs that reprogram society.