I’ve been listening to a fascinating audiobook on my drives the last couple of weeks - Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion by Edward Larson. It’s a tremendous look at the debate over biblical interpretation and political discourse at a critical juncture in American religious history.
Here’s a fun little fact about Dayton, Tennessee, where the Scopes Trial was held. According to Larson, “a relatively high percentage of Dayton residents did not belong to any denomination; indeed, the town’s Masonic lodge claimed more adult male members than any local church.” The impression that you get from Larson is that a lots of folks in town were culturally conservative, even though they weren’t well versed in the tenets of biblical literalism or bothered to show up at church on an average Sunday.
That got me thinking - I believe that we can probably find an example of the Culture War in nearly every era of American history. Once the furor around creationism waned and we moved past the worst parts of the Cold War, Americans started debating the permissiveness of pornography and the value of obscenity. That, of course, gave way to what I would call the modern iteration of the Culture War debate. What began as a discussion about abortion in the mid 1970s lead to a concerted effort to push back on homosexuality in the last several decades.
With the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell, the debate over same-sex marriage has largely ended in the United States - the Respect for Marriage Act which was passed 2022, went a long way to ensure that SCOTUS would not reverse their prior decision. But the debate has now evolved beyond sexual orientation to gender identity. Consider this - the first “Bathroom Bill” passed in the United States was in North Carolina in 2016. Obergefell was decided less than a year earlier.
I haven’t dabbled in too much polling data that centers around issues related to a transgender identity - largely because I don’t have access to polls that include questions on the topic. But the 2023 Cooperative Election Study did ask a three question battery that I thought was worth some exploration. Here’s the top line results:
According to this one poll, about two-thirds of Americans believe that it should be a crime for a health care worker to aid a minor child in obtaining gender transition surgery. An even larger share (71%), seem to support the idea of Florida's ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill that created guidelines for what topics teachers could address in the classroom that related to gender identity and sexual orientation. But then the last question seems to point in a different direction. Fifty-eight percent of respondents agreed that local government should be prohibited from interfering with a person’s ability to obtain a gender transition operation.
The takeaway from these three questions is this - it looks like the public wants to put strong protections in place when it comes to discussing issues of sexuality and gender with kids in the classroom and make it illegal for a minor to receive transition surgery. However, a majority of the public is fine with an adult seeking out medical help with gender transition.
I do, however, think that the second and third questions there are just a bit muddy for my taste. It’s really hard to write poll questions. One thing that makes it incredibly difficult is that you have to be both descriptive and brief. Simple questions do better. I think that the first question meets that criteria pretty well and I wanted to focus on that one for the rest of the analysis.
Let’s break it down by religious tradition - which groups are supportive of a ban on gender transition surgery for minors?
The data indicates that a significant majority of religious groups oppose allowing minors to undergo gender transition procedures. Leading this opposition are white evangelicals, with 84% in favor of making it illegal for minors to change their gender. Other groups, including various Christian denominations, Muslims, and Hindus, show 70-75% agreement with this stance. Additionally, about two-thirds of both mainline Protestants and Black Protestants also believe that minors should not be permitted to receive gender transition procedures.
There are only two groups in this sample where a clear majority favor allowing minors to change their gender through surgical procedures - agnostics and atheists. Just 41% of the agnostics think it should be illegal for medical professionals to work in the area of gender reassignment for minors. It’s 35% of atheists. For both Jews and Buddhists in the sample, they are basically evenly divided.
But, let’s take this is a step further and subdivide each religious group by political partisanship, as well.
This is a classic example of how pervasive partisanship is when it comes to social issues like this. There is not a single Republican subgroup in this sample where even a significant minority are in favor of gender transition for those under the age of 18. In many cases, opposition is at least 80% and for some groups like evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Latter-day Saints it’s closer to 90% opposed.
For Democrats, it’s much more of a mixed bag. For instance, among evangelicals (regardless of race) a majority of Democrats support a ban on minors seeking gender transition services. That’s also true among Black Protestants and Catholics, as well. There are some religious Democrats, where support for a ban is much lower - it’s 32% of Democratic Jews, and the same percentage of Democratic Buddhists. Of course, the non-religious Democrats are real outliers - especially the atheists and agnostics.
There’s one finding that keeps popping up throughout these results that I wanted to dig deeper on - religious Democrats seem to be pretty reluctant to support gender transition for young people. It’s a sentiment that I have been hearing from a number of sources recently - the LGB movement is being held back by having the ‘T’ attached to it. So, I wanted to see what religious groups tend to lean toward the Democrats, but also struggle to accept the loudest voices on the left when it comes to the issue of gender transition among young people.
Here’s what I did - I calculated the share of each religious group that self-identifies as Democrats. Then I calculated the share of each religious group that would ban any health care worker from helping a young person undergo gender transition surgery. Then I shot a line through those data points. Here’s a quick way to understand this - those groups above the trend line are more likely to identify as Democrats, but less on board with the discussion about gender transition. Those below the line are the opposite.
Who fills up that right quadrant? I think we could guess several groups that fit the bill - non-white Catholics, Muslims, and Black Protestants. Those are groups that tend to align with the Democrats on election day. They are also religious traditions that take a more moderate stance on social issues like gender transition surgery.
What groups are below the trend line? Well, that’s a whole bunch of non-religious Americans - atheists, agnostics, and nothing in particular. But they are also joined by Buddhists and Jews, as well.
Let me point out that this graph perfectly illustrates the conundrum the Democrats face. Among Black Protestants, 78% are Democrats. It’s 73% of atheists. At the same time, two-thirds of Black Protestants oppose gender transition for minors. It’s only 35% of atheists. Good luck holding that coalition together in the decade to come.
I also thought it was worth our time to take a closer look at Christian Democrats, especially when race is part of the equation. I think anyone who is paying any attention to the electoral landscape understands that there may be a realignment underway. Specifically, people of color seem less wed to the Democrats and more willing to vote for Trump in 2024. Can I see a bit of this in the data?
I think I can.
Now, remember, this graph is just people who self-identify as Democrats. I broke the sample into white, Black, and Hispanic (I didn’t have a large enough sample to include other racial groups). Among Catholic Democrats, a majority of them favor a ban on adolescent gender transition. It’s 62% of Hispanic Catholics, and 58% of white Catholic Democrats. Among evangelicals, it’s largely the same story. Among Hispanic evangelicals who identify as Democrats, 54% of them are in favor of a ban on gender transition for minors. It’s 60% of white evangelical Democrats and two-thirds of African Americans.
The only group of Democratic Christians that I can find where support for a ban on gender transition among minors drops below 50% is among white, non-evangelical Democrats. Among Hispanic and African-American non-evangelical Protestants, it’s a slim majority in favor of a ban.
The way I like to think about issue is that there are activists on both sides of the aisle that really try to move the Overton window. For Democrats - this is an example of that phenomenon. Bathroom bills were generally accepted by the median voter. Gender transition for minors is generally not.
For Republicans, there’s always been a push to make abortions more difficult to obtain. Passing bills like mandatory waiting periods and parental notifications were accepted by the middle of the political spectrum. Making abortion illegal in the case of rape is not. Yet, you hear activists who loudly support a total abolition on abortion procedures, regardless of circumstance.
I don’t know how successful either of these approaches is going to be in terms of actual policy outcomes. I can’t imagine a future where the United States Congress passes a bill that makes abortion illegal in the case of rape or enshrines the ability of a minor to receive gender reassignment surgery.
But, activists are going to keep trying to move that Overton window. I have no doubt about that.
Code for this post can be found here.
The first graph in question asks which groups support making it illegal for healthcare professionals to provide someone younger than 18 with medical care for a gender transition. You start the discussion with this: "Let’s break it down by religious tradition - which groups are supportive of a ban on gender transition surgery for minors?" Medical care for transition in children and adolescents generally involves a number of activities including social affirmation and hormone therapy before surgical treatment. Current standards of care recommended by WPATH and leading medical groups in the US recommend that gender affirming surgery be done after a person reaches age 18 and has been supported with non-surgical treatment prior to that time. The 2023 Cooperative Election Study lacked the clarity and specificity needed in surveying opinions about gender affirming care. I don't feel the study could or did accurately portray the opinions of those surveyed. It does a disservice to transgender and non-binary people to discuss gender affirming care without being scrupulously accurate about defining clearly what is meant and without referring to current standards of care.
I know you addressed the difficulty of writing questions here, but the concept of "obtaining gender transition surgery" for a minor is so widely misunderstood that it is useless as measure of actual public opinion. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2808707