How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost
How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost
Jun 19 2025, 8:18 PM
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Quote:Others, however, saw the Skrmetti case as a tragic gamble built on flawed politics and uncertain science. Over the last decade, they told me, the movement was consumed by theories of sex and gender that most voters didn’t grasp or support, radicalizing its politics just as the culture wars reignited and the Supreme Court began moving further right. And as Skrmetti and other lawsuits made their way through federal courts, some of the central medical claims girding the legal case for pediatric gender treatments — that decades of thorough study had found them to be safe and effective — began to unravel amid growing scrutiny by other doctors and experts.
Last summer, thousands of emails and other documents released in a case challenging Alabama’s ban raised further questions about medical standards at the heart of the A.C.L.U.’s lawsuit against Tennessee. “This case exposes a lot of ethical problems in the practice of medicine,” a law professor with expertise in sex-discrimination law told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of blowback from students and colleagues. “For Skrmetti to be the next step in a progress narrative — an incrementalist would say, This is way far from where we ought to be.”
Along the road to Skrmetti, some believe, the L.G.B.T.Q. movement drove itself toward a cliff — and took the Democratic Party with it, chaining the Biden administration to one of the most divisive issues in American politics at a moment of shifting medical consensus and fierce polarization.
Warning that this article is LONG. But super informative, and goes in depth over the many errors the trans rights movement has made over the years - and how they’re now reaping the consequences. I thought it was balanced (definitely more so than NYT’s “The Protocol” podcast, though that is also worth a listen) and thorough, however I maintain the complaint that the NYT once again did not touch the fact that most dysphoric children are same-sex attracted.
Edited Jun 19 2025, 8:30 PM by MenacinglyLavender.
Quote:Others, however, saw the Skrmetti case as a tragic gamble built on flawed politics and uncertain science. Over the last decade, they told me, the movement was consumed by theories of sex and gender that most voters didn’t grasp or support, radicalizing its politics just as the culture wars reignited and the Supreme Court began moving further right. And as Skrmetti and other lawsuits made their way through federal courts, some of the central medical claims girding the legal case for pediatric gender treatments — that decades of thorough study had found them to be safe and effective — began to unravel amid growing scrutiny by other doctors and experts.
Last summer, thousands of emails and other documents released in a case challenging Alabama’s ban raised further questions about medical standards at the heart of the A.C.L.U.’s lawsuit against Tennessee. “This case exposes a lot of ethical problems in the practice of medicine,” a law professor with expertise in sex-discrimination law told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of blowback from students and colleagues. “For Skrmetti to be the next step in a progress narrative — an incrementalist would say, This is way far from where we ought to be.”
Along the road to Skrmetti, some believe, the L.G.B.T.Q. movement drove itself toward a cliff — and took the Democratic Party with it, chaining the Biden administration to one of the most divisive issues in American politics at a moment of shifting medical consensus and fierce polarization.
Warning that this article is LONG. But super informative, and goes in depth over the many errors the trans rights movement has made over the years - and how they’re now reaping the consequences. I thought it was balanced (definitely more so than NYT’s “The Protocol” podcast, though that is also worth a listen) and thorough, however I maintain the complaint that the NYT once again did not touch the fact that most dysphoric children are same-sex attracted.
