In The Transgender Culture War, Leftists Fired The First Shot

The transgender culture war sure has taken off since those ornery conservatives, snubbed by Obergefell, grabbed hold of the issue and thrust it into the spotlight and down the throats of Americans everywhere — so say the media.

It wasn’t a misprint, a Babylon Bee joke, or one of Sonny Hostin’s brainless musings. This claim came from none other than paper-of-record The New York Times, which attempted to make the case that after conservatives lost the same-sex marriage fight at the Supreme Court in 2015, “the religious right went searching for an issue that would re-energize supporters and donors,” and found it in the great transgender debate. In other words, Republicans needed a new red-meat issue they could toss to the base in exchange for donations and energized voters. And though bewildered leftists “are still uncertain about how to best navigate the fraught politics of transgender issues,” write authors Adam Nagourney and Jeremy W. Peters, the conservatives who birthed the whole trans controversy have got their cold-hearted strategy down. 

The article is pure propaganda. Besides calling the right’s pushback against science-denial and the sterilization of kids an “effort to restrict transgender rights” and a “focus on perceived threats to impressionable children,” the piece cites a Media Matters activist who declares without evidence that these efforts are a product of “general animus” toward transgender-identifying people. (It also lies about the removal of both pornographic books from children’s shelves — “banning books” — and racially divisive critical race theory from taxpayer-funded curricula — “curriculums that teach about racism”).

“The effort started with a smattering of Republican lawmakers advancing legislation focused on transgender girls’ participation in school sports,” the authors write.

While the whole piece is so blatantly dishonest that it belongs on a trash heap rather than dissected and amplified with a retort, this main argument — that the transgender culture war started with Republicans — is gaining steam on the left and must be confronted.

Here’s an unsurprisingly unamusing “Saturday Night Live” segment out the same day featuring Molly Kearney, introduced as “‘SNL’s’ first nonbinary cast member,” who floated in like a woke and unfunny female reincarnation of Chris Farley.

“There are now over 14 states that have passed bills restricting health care for trans kids,” said “Weekend Update” host Michael Che, teeing up the segment.

“Listen to that, Michael. Restricting health care for kids. For some reason, there’s something about the word ‘trans’ that makes people forget the word’ kids.’ If you don’t care about trans kids’ lives, it means you don’t care about frickin’ kids’ lives,” responded Kearney robotically to audience “clapter.” Kearney went on to imply it’s GOP lawmakers who are trying to interfere with kids just being kids.

Did you catch that? Republicans are the ones “restricting” trans folks and interfering with childhood innocence. The message from “SNL” and NYT is the same: In the midst of a cultural vacuum, conservatives fired the first shot.

Make no mistake, this is the left’s strategy in the frontier of sexual deviance: Push the radical envelope until conservatives enter the fray, and then pretend those conservatives conjured up a cultural rift out of thin air and executed an unprovoked sneak attack.

This exact strategy played out over the Nashville shooting. Recall that just weeks ago, a transgender-identified shooter blasted her way into a Christian school and murdered three 9-year-old children and three staff members in cold blood. How did the media respond? Not with reflection on how gender dysphoria converges with other mental health issues. No introspection on how mutilating young men or pumping young women full of testosterone might contribute to erratic aggression. There was no talk of the shooter’s manifesto nor the fact that law enforcement characterized the murder of these Christians as a “targeted attack.”

Instead, the media focused on how “Drag shows and gender-affirming care for minors were banned in Tennessee,” hanging the responsibility on Republican lawmakers. Premier newspapers left the words “Christian,” “transgender,” and “targeted” out of their unsensational headlines. NBC News had the gall to make transgender-identified people the primary victims: “Fear pervades Tennessee’s trans community amid focus on Nashville shooter’s gender identity.” The Biden administration declared a “Trans Day of Visibility” to stand up to the hate-mongering conservatives who allegedly want to “erase” trans people. It was gaslighting at its finest and sent the same unified message about conservatives being the real villains.

[RELATED: Fixed It For You: Here’s What The Vilest Headlines About The Nashville School Shooting Should Have Said] 

So it’s par for the course when corporate media propagandists declare “the religious right went searching” for the transgender culture war post-Obergefell, no matter how absurd the claim. Yes, because it’s totally believable that conservatives were fine with amputating healthy genitals before 2015, but overnight they galvanized against sexual appendage choppery. Good work, New York Times.

But understand the bigger picture. With the propaganda press, it’s all about narrative building and memory holing. The trans culture war must be pinned on Republicans because it can’t be pinned on municipal employees who usher drag queens into children’s libraries and local pride parades. Or male athletes such as Lia Thomas, who force biological females to see their privates in women’s locker rooms and then blow them out of the water with superior lung capacity, wingspan, and bone density. Or Jazz Jennings and other authors of pro-confusion children’s books. Or corporate “equity” initiatives that inject mentally ill cross-dressers into advertising and branding for every item Americans consume. Or taxpayer-funded educators and educrats who brainwashed a generation of college grads with radical gender theory that trickled down directly into K-12 classrooms and curricula.

It can’t be the fault of leftist politicians such as the incumbent president, who seized on confused kids to garner votes and normalize so-called “trans youth.” Or Planned Parenthood and other leftist behemoths that identified a goldmine in wrong-sex hormones and pivoted to experimenting on kids for profit. Or alleged medical professionals who tout a “consensus” on wrongly named “gender-affirming care” that’s really just handed down from trans-motivated ideologues at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Or same-sex adoptive parents who fail to model healthy sex distinctions by denying children their God-given right to a mother and father. Or other unhinged parents who catechize their kids in LGBT orthodoxy or welcome “theybies” into a world of disorder.

[READ: This Is Your Sign To Catechize Your Kids — And Yourself]

If the New York Times really wants to talk about Obergefell, this is a great place to do it — not because it was the catalyst for some right-wing anti-trans crusade, but because it toppled one of the first dominoes in the left’s war on sex and sexuality.

“I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in his Obergefell dissent. “It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.”

As with Obergefell, so with Bostock and now the transgender legal battles of today. No, conservatives didn’t go “searching” for this fight. The left fired the first shot and has been relentlessly pillaging ever since. Meanwhile, the battered right is triaging, surveying the casualties, and barely holding the fort.