It’s the fear that matters.

Have you ever noticed that they all fall back on the same two ad hominems every time? There’s a reason for that.

I’ve written before that ad hominem is a stupid fallacy, because sometimes it really is the best argument. But in many cases, like here and like most grievance politics, it’s not the best—just the only one they have left.

Rogan’s rant came after a rare moment of clarity from Steve-O, and while it began with bathroom bans, it soon veered wildly into school shootings.

You see, he argued, most trans women are no more than autogynephiliacs and murderers. Sure maybe some aren't, but 99% of them are. Those two claims crop up constantly in the anti-trans crusade. They’re demonstrably false (and absolutely stupid—that’s a valid ad hominem): autogynephilia isn’t widely accepted as a real disorder by psychologists, and if you ask the right or the TERFs to name five trans school shooters off the top of their head, they won’t be able to. Like DPS and ICE, they apply the label every time one happens, before any investigation. And every time, it’s disproven. Yet they repeat the claim ad nauseum until people believe it’s true. Doesn’t matter that the scaremonger knows it isn't.

Same cycle in bathroom bans: in every state and every city that's instituted them, it’s been found that, not only do they fail to protect anyone, but in fact they actually make harassment much worse than it would’ve been otherwise. Every time, cis women who don’t look feminine enough are accused of being trans by fanatical witchhunters. Meanwhile, trans women are harassed and assaulted by men in men’s restrooms. It’s a clear and obvious pattern, but every argument for them flies baldly in the face of that reality.

Rather than accept that, rather than be forced to critically reexamine their preconceiveds, the right and the TERFs find themselves casting desperately about for an argument to prop up their crumbling house—one they don’t have to prove (since they can’t), and one that will still sound scary enough to win them support. They find a buzzword, they find a conspiracy, and they cling to it. They repeat it like robots.

It happens in every theater on the right. If it’s not trans women with “autogynephilia” than it’s “criminal illegals.” If it’s not “false flag gun attacks” than it’s “election fraud.” If it’s not “woke politicians” than it's “climate hysteria.” You can unravel any one of these claims with about two seconds’ thought, but that’s not what’s important.

It’s the fear that matters. It’s the anger. That’s what the right thrives on, and that’s how they legitimate their delusions in the halls of power. Once they do that, they’ve won. It doesn’t matter how they did.

In fact, if the TERFs weren’t hurting so many people, I’d feel bad them. They’re going to find out (if they haven’t already) that the moment the right gets what it wants, the leopards really will eat their faces.

Tone policing is a weapon.

When your opponent repeatedly and deliberately promulgates vicious, demonstrably false rhetoric against your fellow human beings, when they use that as a pretense to harass, assault, and execute them, or when the despair it engenders in its targets brings them to the point of harming themselves instead, you are not the villain for fighting back.

If you're facing an enemy with zero regard for the lives, the dignity, or the fundamental rights of your fellow human beings, they will not suddenly gain it because you refrain from using four-letter words. You cannot fight evil with strongly worded letters, especially when you're forbidden by the very mores your enemy gleefully disregards from using the strongest in your repertoire.

There's only so much that most of us can do, so don't surrender the one tool you have, and do not comply meekly in advance because it's "mean" to fight.

"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than 'politics.' They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away." -- Naomi Shulman.

We're not the martyrs here.

I’ve never been told I couldn’t get married, or that I couldn’t adopt a child. I’ve never been turned down for housing, harassed in the grocery store, or lost my job because one vindictive customer decided they didn’t want me serving them.

I’ve never been told that the story of my life was no better than porn, or had my romantic relationships compared to bestiality. I’ve never had laws written to disenfranchise me by some politician who thinks they’re a priest, or been told that I couldn’t serve my country because my identity makes me inherently dishonorable, dishonest, and unfit for the military.

I’ve never contemplated suicide because that would be easier than dealing with the cloud of suspicion and hatred that follows me everywhere I go.

For most of you, like me, the sum total of your “oppression” during Pride Month is that you might see a shirt with a rainbow on it in Target. You might see a book at Barnes & Noble with a queer protagonist on the cover.

That’s not oppression, and I’m sick of hearing that I should be angry about it. I’m tired of the delusion that I—a cis, straight, white, middle-class dude from the suburbs—am the real victim.

It’s not oppression. It’s a plywood cross you’ve built yourself so you can pretend to be a martyr, and it’s time to come down and open your fucking eyes.

The blue dude on your television isn’t going to destroy the Western world, Mr. Prager—but you might.

Excerpted from: https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/30/you-dont-have-to-be-christian-to-loathe-the-opening-of-the-paris-olympics/

Dennis Prager: he’s absurd. He’s hysterical. He assumes that the mere existence of a minority he doesn’t understand is inherently evil and an existential threat to his entire civilization.

I’ve never understood how anyone takes that level of delirium seriously. To be critical of an institution—especially institutions with pasts as checkered as the Catholic Church and United States government—does not equate to wishing for the downfall of a civilization. We absolutely should be critical. Even setting aside centuries of history, in the last fifty years alone, how many sex abuse scandals has the Church ignored—or outright covered up? And they have the gall to call anyone else a groomer?

But if you criticize the Church, you must hate Christianity. If you criticize the American government, you must hate Americans. It’s the most inane, academically lazy “argument” in the right’s repertoire (and I’m using the term “argument” generously). I don’t hate America. In fact, I love what America is supposed to represent. But when you truly love a person, you don’t ignore their flaws; that’s toxic to both parties. You love them despite their flaws, and you do your best to help them overcome each one, even though you know you’ll never be completely successful.

The same holds true for a country. The “left” isn’t at war with civilization or with Christianity. In fact, from what I’ve seen, the “left” behaves more like Christians than the “right” ever has. Consider the difference between “pro-life” and “anti-abortion.” According to the Catechism, “pro-life” means that life must be protected at every level and with every measure at your disposal. That includes opposing the death penalty, and that includes putting a piece of cloth over your face to help keep your fellow human beings safe during a global pandemic, even if it’s a wittle stuffy.

What Christ never said is that being poor is a moral failing—He said to give your neighbor the clothes off your back and the food off your table. He never said to close your doors to refugees—He said to welcome them into your home and wash their feet with your own hands. He certainly never said that it’s our job to denigrate and demonize an entire group of people based on ideological hysteria, but the right has decided that’s what Christ stands for. Then, they’re surprised when that stigmatized group finally bites back. Of course the opening ceremony was a satire of the Last Supper; the designer even said as much. (It was also a depiction of a Bacchanalia and a celebration of France; two things can be true at once.) But are you really going to sit here and be shocked, Mr. Prager? I am a Christian, but I’m not a perfect one, so if God decides I need some time in Purgatory to repent for this, then so be it: you damn well had it coming.

For an outlet published by The Heritage Foundation to accuse anyone of trying to tear down civilization is hypocrisy as high as Mt. Olympus. You know what is a danger to civilization? Giving the President unquestionable, unilateral authority to behave anyway he sees fit in office; gutting the entire DOE because you’re upset that trans people exist and because you want the world to forget America ever did anything bad; slashing the EPA because you’re somehow still living in willful denial of the only actual existential threat to civilization.

The blue dude on your television isn’t going to destroy the Western world, but you might.

Boo, Caligula!

Opponents of gender-affirming care sound a whole lot like their enemies on the pro-choice front. It's a nearly identical argument, just in reverse: Anti-GAC: "This one extreme example justifies criminalizing gender-affirming care for everyone." Pro-choice: "This one extreme example justifies legalizing abortion access for everyone."

But why are we letting the government make medical decisions for anyone? There are exactly two people who should be involved: the doctor and the patient. Not a senator, not a priest, and certainly not you and me—regardless of my, your, or anyone else's religious convictions.

Religious faith, by definition, is inherently illogical. But the statement "faith is illogical" does not equate to the statement "faith is stupid." It means "faith is a choice." By its very nature, faith is the choice to believe an idea, even in the face of very little evidence to support it. To use Christianity as an example: there are syllogisms created by writers like Thomas Aquinas that attempt to logically prove the existence of God, and there are historical records that suggest a prophet who taught what Jesus taught lived at about the right time in history.

But that's pretty much it. We choose to believe almost everything else Christianity teaches because the Bible says it, or a priest says it. Even C.S. Lewis, exploring the idea of the Holy Trinity in Mere Christianity, eventually reached the conclusion that the concept only makes sense up to a certain point, and past that...well, you just kinda have to roll with it. That's why it's called a "mystery."

We have that right: to choose to believe something even if it can't be proven. But the moment you're elevated to a position of power over millions of people, you also gain an ethical obligation to make decisions based not on an illogical conviction, but on concrete reality and demonstrable facts. That goes beyond any nation's constitution or belief system's creed.

There are certain things we've known as a species since before we could articulate them, as illustrated by the very first laws ever written (well before Christianity and almost as old as Hinduism), i.e., "killing each other is bad." One of those is that a leader should make just, fair decisions based on evidence (yay, Solomon!), and not be, as modern law phrases it, "arbitrary or capricious" (boo, Caligula!).

Anyway. Happy Saturday!

179 Million

Let's put something into perspective here: Elon Musk has 179 million followers on Twitter. Million. According to the Census Bureau, the population of the United States of America is something like 340 million. Obviously, all his followers aren't American, but that's not the point. The point is that he has the equivalent of half the population of the entire United States of America getting updates every time he tweets.

So while he has the legal right to say whatever the hell he wants, he has the moral and ethical obligation to wield that power responsibly. When he retweets a conspiracy theory and lends it his support, and that conspiracy theory results in a man's family fleeing their home because they aren't safe to remain there, he bears a significant measure of responsibility for it.

To take things a step further, when a figure with as much abstract power as Elon or JKR, or as much concrete power as the President of the United States, promotes conspiracies about queer people; when they tell the world that queer people are a threat to their children and their country, and then a maniac with a gun murders six people in a gay nightclub, that figure is not innocent. They might not have literal blood on their hands, but they sure as hell have blood on their soul.

Not the mask, and not the armor

I am the opposite of a minority in every way imaginable. I’m a straight, cis, white man from the suburbs, a member of the most populous and prosperous demographic in the United States.

I will never know the pain of having every loved one tell me I’m broken because I marry a man and not a woman. I will never know what it is to look in the mirror and see a person I know, from the bottom of my heart, that I am not. I will never know what it’s like to walk the street with my head bowed, terrified to meet the wrong pair of eyes, lest they see my skin and decide that I’m a threat.

I will never know any of those things, but I do know, at the very, very least, what it is to just want to be seen. Not to be famous, not to be popular, not to be adored, but to just be. To have someone look at you and know that you aren’t the mask you wear; you aren’t the armor you don. You’re just a person, trying their best, probably not thinking about anything bigger than what the hell you’re going to make for dinner later. To know that it’s okay that we get cold, that we cry, that we really just have to fucking pee.

And the rare someone who sees past even that? Who can reach up, pull off the mask, look in your eyes, and know that what you really need is a hug or a blanket or a beer? That is something astounding and wonderful and absolutely terrifying.

It’s scary as hell, being seen, because that mask is just as much for you as it is for everyone else. It’s scary to realize that you can’t hide anymore. But so much more than that, it’s everything to know that you don’t have to.  

Empathy is a strength, not a weakness. That's why it terrifies us.

I once told my former counselor a fact about myself that I’ve never entrusted to anyone else: that in many of my relationships—even those dearest to me—I felt like a manipulator.

It hurt to say, like I’d dredged the word from my gut with a hook. When I’d finally pulled it out of the muck, my counselor, Phil, considered me a long moment over the lip of his iPad. Then, he smiled and said, “I know. Thank you for admitting it to me.”

What Phil recognized was that I didn’t manipulate to take advantage of people (although I’ve often been passive-aggressive, a toxic trait I’m still working incredibly hard to overcome). I did it because I was scared. I was terrified that at the dark nadir of my soul, I wasn’t good. I didn’t want to go down there, because what if I hated what I saw? I was afraid to let anyone else down there either, because what would on earth they see?

And so I presented them with what I thought they should see, and I got very, very good at tweaking myself to suit whatever version of me they seemed to like. In psychology, it’s called “mirroring.” It’s a trait often seen in narcissists, but despite that fact, it’s not an inherently bad one, nor did Phil think I was narcissistic. (You can imagine my relief.) Infants learn by mimicking. Most people with close relationships start to look and sound like each other over time.

“Here’s the thing,” Phil said, “your mirroring requires a tremendous amount of empathy,” and unlike a narcissist, I was mostly employing it subconsciously. I had to intuit my subject’s opinions and emotions. I had to understand their reasoning and personality. I had to see myself in their eyes and adjust accordingly.

Phil told me all that, and then he finished with something that made me cry: “That’s not your weakness. It might be your greatest strength.”

Therapy’s pretty cool, y’all. Everyone should do it.

Empathy is a scary thing. It takes us to the darkest nadirs of other people. It makes demands we don’t want to hear. It forces us to see things we might be happier ignoring. But it also shines a bright golden light on the best of us. That’s how shadows work. They need light to cast them.

Empathy says, “this is how it feels to be another person.” And that’s not just terrifying to the empath; it’s terrifying to the people who benefit from our inability (or unwillingness) to understand others. They don’t want you to see the immigrant chasing a better life for her family or the single father drowning in the mire of greed. They just want you to see a leech. They don’t want you to see the kid from a bad neighborhood. They just want you to see a monster. They don’t want you to see the trans person struggling with stigma and longing to be loved for who they are. They just want you to see a lunatic.

“Surely,” they say, “this can’t be real.” “I’ve never experienced it, and if it’s outside of my experience, it must be wrong. You must be wrong.”

That is narcissism. And if they let themselves feel empathy, they might recognize that. More importantly, if they let us feel empathy, we might recognize that. And so, they dismiss; they disenfranchise; they demonize. They wax hysterical about the fall of society and the end of days, then they pin the histrionics on the empaths. They tell you that your compassion only enables insanity. They tell you that your open heart strips you of your reason. They tell you that the people you admire—the teachers, the activists, the leaders—will be our undoing. They tell you that if society collapses, it’s because of you. Personally. Because you were kind when the hard choices required ruthlessness.

They manipulate you. Because they’re afraid to face the darkness in themselves.

Iron Widow and the Privilege of Optimism

[This post contains spoilers.]

It’s rare for me to read a book that so sharply diverges from my worldview. And by that, I don’t mean I disagreed with Iron Widow’s feminist and queer-positive messages. Far from it. Neither do I claim that I’m right and the novel is wrong. 

In fact, I starting to doubt my perspective was ever accurate. 

In Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao shows us a society fundamentally broken, fundamentally irreparable, one that must be forcibly pushed aside before hope can ever blossom. Their protagonist, Wu Zetian, lives a life of constant pain — thanks to her ritually mutilated feet — and constant abuse, thanks to her violent father and misogynistic culture. Her country is rotten at its core, grown from the ground up to force women into subservience and martyrdom. There’s nothing to be saved. 

Yet, it took me til halfway through to get on board with that notion. I remember turning to my sister, who’d recommended the book, and saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever rooted for the torturer before.”

In the weeks after, I kept coming back to the novel’s central idea, expressed best by Wu Zetian herself:

Some of us were born to be used and discarded. We can’t afford to simply go along with the flow of life, because nothing in this world has been created, built, or set up in our favor. If we want something, we have to push back against everything around us and take it by force.

For much of my life, I’ve insisted the latter isn’t true—that people are basically good, that evil is bred by pain, not malice, and that if we all just sit down and talk it out, we’ll solve the world’s problems. I’ve clung desperately to that sliver of faith, but I’ve also watched pleas for science and cries for justice fall on deaf ears. I’ve watched Americans scoff at 1.2 million deaths, valuing their own comfort over a statistic. I’ve watched as, one by one, people I care about fall victim to insidious rhetoric—either as its carriers or as its victims.

And, for the first time in my sheltered life, I’ve started to think, “maybe everything won’t be okay.”

Many people don’t get three decades before they start planning for the worst. I’ve never had to hunch my shoulders and drop my eyes in white neighborhoods. I’ve never had to lace my keys between my knuckles in case someone attacked me on the way back to my car. I’ve never lived in a place where I couldn’t, at the very least, expect food on the table and a roof over my head. Even when I was bullied, it was never physical because I've been 6’4’’ and over 200 pounds since I was fifteen. And so it’s easy for me to sit in my air-conditioned ivory tower in my middle-class suburban neighborhood and wax poetic about hope and love. Optimism comes naturally when life has been comparatively easy.

But the opposite is also true. Is it any wonder that people are angry? Is it surprising that anxiety and depression have skyrocketed? The kids aren’t oversensitive; the kids aren’t alright. We’re looking at a world made finite by denialism and greed. We’re sticking up for the folx we love and getting nothing but mockery from one side and platitudes from the other. We’re watching as, slowly but surely, the values our country is supposed to stand for are twisted out of shape.

I mean, for God’s sake, a former president of the United States of America went live on the Internet for millions of voters and laid out his step-by-step plan to disenfranchise and destroy an entire group of people. And his base cheered.

We’re not Huaxia, just like we’re not Oceania. But things are getting tenser every day, and sometimes I wonder how long it’ll be before the world is no longer “worthy of [our] kindness or compassion.” What will we do when we wake up one morning and the planet’s on fire and the State is ascendant and our friends are Undesirables?

I doubt we’ll content ourselves with “I told you so.”

No, the far right actually can’t claim victory in Colorado Springs. [MEDIUM REPOST]

Repost from Nov 26, 2022

In the wake of last Saturday’s tragedy at Club Q, a number of far-right pundits (the usual crowd — Matt Walsh, Tucker Carlson, and the like), along with a few left-wing gender-critical commentators, are desperately hoping to turn five deaths into a gotcha moment.

Their argument stems from an article published by The Independent speculating that Anderson Aldrich’s lawyer will leverage his client’s gender identity in an attempt to dodge a hate-crime charge. It goes something like this:

Tweets from Matt Walsh accusing the left of ignoring Anderson Aldrich’s identity.

Walsh repeated his rhetoric on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” where he and the host gleefully told the left to respect Aldrich’s identity and insisted that we should honor the shooter’s “choice.”

That last word, “choice,” has been the crux of the far right’s crusade against homosexuality and gender nonconformity for decades. Yet despite his years of self-imposed soldiering, Walsh has failed to learn the most fundamental aspect of his enemy.

Identity isn’t a choice, and it never, ever has been — no matter how hard anti-LGBTQ commentators manifest. That’s why they have to invent controversies and conceal information instead.

No one wakes up one morning and decides, “I’m no longer cis” or “I’m attracted to the same sex now.” The realization doesn’t happen immediately; it’s a journey I’ve personally witnessed multiple people very close to me — including my little brother — embark on and continue, but rarely finish.

None of us knew what was happening to our bodies during puberty. Maybe we were lucky enough to have sex ed. (before the far-right went after that too), but as pimples broke out across our skin and we slowly discovered who we found attractive, we were mostly just along for the ride. It’s no different for a queer person, as almost every major medical association can attest. That’s why us scary liberals support transgender care; that’s why we believe schools should be welcoming places and respect teachers who make that happen.

Newsflash, Matt: we’re all human beings. We’re all just as messy and confused and wrapped up in stupid mores as you are.

And if you could be bothered to understand a life experience different from your own, you would grasp that.

So no, queer people aren’t dart-boarding an identity that will benefit them, regardless of how many prison cases you cherry-pick or scientifically inaccurate claims about athletes you make. You don’t get your perverse victory in Colorado Springs. Because we do respect gender identity, but it has absolutely nothing to do with this case.

I have no way to know whether Anderson Aldrich is truly nonbinary or if their lawyer is making a bad-faith ploy for sympathy from the court — nor do I particularly care. I can express empathy for a queer kid raised in a broken home with a father who’s relieved to hear that his son is simply a mass murderer, not gay. I can also condemn a cis man who walked into a club and started shooting because he too hated queer people.

Neither narrative changes the fact that five human beings are dead and over a dozen more are injured (and one of them could well have been a dear Colorado-based friend of mine if she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time). Neither narrative shields you and yours from the consequences of your hysteria. Either Aldrich went into Club Q to open fire on an enemy, or they went in to find the only release for their anguish they had — anguish your ilk caused.

Violence like this is the utterly predictable, blatantly obvious outcome when you arbitrarily select a minority to scare voters with. Your rhetoric did this, not ours. You’ve turned human beings into political scapegoats, not the left. You tell the world LGBTQ people are endangering children, not us. And you know that; otherwise you wouldn’t be desperately deflecting the truth with empty rhetoric about pronouns.

Now take your medicine and shut up.

I’m a lifelong Catholic, but the Church needs to get out of Washington. [MEDIUM REPOST]

Repost from Jul 18, 2022

When I was eleven years old, I took communion in the Catholic church.

In other denominations, this might not have been any particular cause for celebration. After all, the Eucharist (the bread and wine) is an integral part of nearly every Christian service. For Catholics, though, First Communion is a holy rite of passage. The Church holds that the bread and wine are not merely symbols but are in fact the essence of Jesus Christ himself, and so before a Catholic can accept the Eucharist, they must be taught exactly why it’s treated with such reverence.

A note in my personal Bible, given to me 18 years ago in honor of my First Communion.

That was 2004. About a year later, I started sixth grade at St. Joseph’s Catholic School. I argued, I cried, but ultimately, the decision had been made. Instead of attending Smitha Middle School with my neighborhood friends, I began my Catholic education.

And…I loved it.

I’d never had many friends in public school. I was a bespectacled, overweight nerd who loved Harry Potter and Star Wars way more than he’d ever love football. And though I was still bullied at St. Joseph’s, here was a place where —like Harry — I finally fit in. So, when 2008 rolled around and it was time to think about high school, I entreated my parents to send me to Blessed Trinity in Roswell, where many of my new friends planned to attend. Though it was expensive, and though it was a forty-minute drive from home, my mom and dad acquiesced.

That’s about the point the Church really started drilling “pro-life” into my head. When I was maybe 15, my religion teacher showed us a PowerPoint that depicted the various medical procedures involved in abortion in graphic detail. I harbor no illusions about the objectivity of the lecture; it was propaganda, clear and simple. But it’s the sort of thing that haunts you, that whispers “pro-life” into your ear at every turn.

Now, when I say “pro-life” aloud to most Americans, they no doubt attribute that phrase to a very specific set of convictions. Namely, the belief that life begins at conception, and that abortion is no less than infanticide. To some extent, their assumption is correct. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (“CCC”), Paragraph 2270, “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.”

However, read in its entirety, the Catechism actually provides a much broader definition. For example, it states that “the moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger” (CCC, 2269); “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (CCC, 2267); and “the moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law.” (CCC, 2273).

In other words, the Catholic definition of “pro-life” requires that we cherish every life, whether it belongs to a fetus or a serial killer. It places the burden of protecting each and every one of those lives squarely on our shoulders, because we’re told from day one that to do anything less is a mortal sin in the eyes of God. That’s why I spoke out when George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other black lives were taken. It’s why the flippant response to COVID-19 infuriated me. To refuse to do something as simple as wear a piece of cloth over your nose, at the possible cost of God knows how many lives, spat in the face of my most sincerely held beliefs — the ones the Church is supposed to protect.

I’m well aware that my Church has done both great good and great harm over its two-millennia existence — as I’m sure many of my fellow students would attest. As part of our grade, we were expected to perform a certain amount of service hours per semester. Likewise, millions of Catholics every year foster children, feed the homeless, donate to charity, and volunteer their time to other worthy causes.

That doesn’t change the fact that in our senior year, we all signed a petition begging the school not to fire our chorus teacher simply because they’d been open about their non-hetero marriage. That also doesn’t change the fact that, whether we like to admit it or not, this is the same Church that founded the Inquisition and that forced Galileo to recant under threat of torture (see CCC, 2298, admitting that the Church “adopted in [its] own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture”). In fact, he would have been tortured even after he recanted, if not for his advanced age.

And while you’d be correct to argue that both offenses were centuries ago, this is also the same Church that has been very credibly accused of shunting pedophilic priests between parishes in an attempt to conceal their crimes. Those accusations are so damning that Wilton Gregory — former Archbishop of Atlanta and now the first African American Cardinal — issued a formal apology on behalf of the Church and worked to implement the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”

More recently still, as my classmates and I found out, it’s the same Church that insists to this day that homosexuality is a “grave depravity” (CCC, 2357). Modern scientific consensus holds that forcing a gay or transgender teenager to suppress their identity leads to lifelong mental health issues and (according to data collected by the Trevor Project) a fourfold increase in suicidal ideation. The American Medical Association agrees, stating in no uncertain terms that to allow governments to dictate what care a transgender person may receive is “a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.” In the face of those facts, the Church’s stance is irrational and, frankly, indefensible. It’s difficult to reconcile “pro-life” with “rhetoric that quadruples suicide risk.”

That same irrationality taints the abortion debate, too. I know this because it’s something I’ve struggled mightily with over the past ten years. I know the facts; I’ve read the science. The medical community has studied the reproductive process extensively, and they’ve determined exactly when, why, and how an abortion should be performed. Despite that, my heart still clenches at the thought of terminating a pregnancy. Part of me still shouts, “this is wrong!”

I realized around 2014 that those beliefs had turned me into a single-issue voter. I disagreed with 90% of what the Republican party stood for (particularly its apathy toward climate change and antipathy toward the LGBTQIA community), and the only reason I wasn’t voting Democrat was because Republicans were — ostensibly — pro-life.

I told myself that I could vote third-party instead, perhaps find a Libertarian candidate who was pro-life, but who opposed oppression of LGTBQIA Americans. But Libertarians also oppose economic and environmental regulation, no matter how well-intentioned. Any hope I held that gold was the way to go died when I watched the country’s meltdown over mask mandates.

The problem wasn’t the parties, it was me.

I couldn’t condemn the Church for involving itself in one aspect of American politics while simultaneously asking it to do the same in another. That’s a Pharisaic level of hypocrisy. It’s completely irrational. What’s worse, here was a cisgender man — who does not have a uterus and who will never, ever carry a child to term — inserting himself into a debate that he had no business being a part of. Same goes for the Church, which doesn’t allow female priests and doesn’t acknowledge trans identities, and so is governed entirely by cisgender men.

The truth is, no matter what I, you, or Samuel Alito may believe about abortion, that Church cannot be allowed to dictate medical and penal law for the entire country. The U.S. and all the states are republics; they are not theocracies. But with Dobbs, we have allowed Catholics (and, admittedly, other Christians too) to decide a point of science and medicine for all of American society — damn what the doctors say. The fact that we insist life begins at conception, despite the mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary, speaks to a level of faith-fueled irrationality that absolutely cannot coexist with the reason and temperance required in lawmaking.

“But John,” you could argue, “It wasn’t the Church that passed the bill, it was the Mississippi Legislature!” To that I ask, “Who influenced them? What are their stated reasons for writing the laws?”

The answer? They, like me and like many other Christians, sincerely believe that life begins at conception. If someone I loved were considering abortion, I would present them with as many other options as possible; I would sooner adopt the baby myself. But I would not stop nor condemn them, because that is not my decision to make. It is not the Church’s decision, the state’s decision, nor even the doctor’s decision. That choice lies exclusively with one person: the one who’ll carry that child to term.

It may turn out that Christians were right all along, and science will verify that life really does begin at conception. Perhaps then we will reassess our laws. But all the data we have suggests otherwise, and no matter how hard Christians believe, faith can’t be the deciding factor. Faith can encourage the hopeless and strengthen the hopeful, but it can also twist the mind and cement the heart. That stands in stark contrast with the law, which must be decided objectively and enforced equally. Insisting on laws that criminalize accepted medical procedures — be they for reproductive health or gender transition therapy — is no better than condemning Galileo or rooting out heretics with a sword.

Many of my fellow Catholics also sincerely believe that a happy, healthy gay marriage is inherently evil and that allowing a trans woman to live her truth is an affront to God. Should that allow Catholics to dictate their rights to them? A few hundred years ago, it was heresy to teach children that the Earth orbited the Sun. Shall we torture Neil DeGrasse Tyson until he recants?

Of course not. Christians do not have the right to enforce a religious belief in a republic. They can preach it in church, they can teach it in parochial schools, but they cannot criminalize it. Just like the government cannot criminalize our attending Mass.

That’s just how America works.