I find it fascinating how as a demographer of religion you interpret these results. I ran political campaigns for years, and from our vantage point, we would not interpret this in the same way. It would pique our curiosity, but for a practical standpoint it wouldn't change anything. I would be suspicious of the top line number fluctuating slightly while having significant swings in the cross tabs, particularly among political subsets. I would flag it to watch for future trends but my gut would tell me to focus on the top line and expect the cross tabs to fluctuate in the next data drops.
"These aren’t debates about culture. They are debates about partisanship." That is true-ish but I think it is more than that. It is both a cultural and a religious debate.
The Democratic and Republican parties are the largest and most dominant religious groups in America. Religion answers the scientifically "unanswerable" questions of morality and meaning. Political pundits and candidates preach sermons and pontificate about both morality and meaning. Some of the most religious people I know swear that they are not religious, but they are - they just call it by a different name. Many Christians are more Republican than Christian and I've met atheists more Democrat than atheist. Nature abhors a vacuum and in the absence of strong traditional religions, people align with political religions.
I would be curious about how the survey defined "medical care" for gender transition - e.g. even if there were no explicit definitions, were there prior questions that got people thinking of "medical care" as primarily surgical, hormonal, etc?
I assumed the question was talking about surgery and hormonal treatment and assume that most of the respondents did, too, since that's what the political conversation is generally about. Is there some other form of medical care that you think the people asking the question had in mind?
As mentioned at the start of this piece, trans issues come in many forms. Concerns about some trans issues (e.g., sports, XX-only spaces, youth gender affirmation, ...) are not properly seen as anti-trans by themselves, although anti-trans individuals undoubtedly make up some of the people holding such views. Many (a majority?) opposing trans-women in female sports believe (rightly given the research?) that trans-women retain a physiological advantage that makes participation unfair to (biological, CIS, XX, ...) women. Gender affirming care for minors would be more complex, but policies and practices are becoming more cautious even in countries that first adopted early trans care, such as the Netherlands and its Dutch Protocol. Hence, some basis for concerns?
Would be interesting to try and separate the "moral" (religious? ideological?) determinants of measures from the "rational" contributions? And how would politics enter the picture?
The question about a universal ban on transition is an extreme form of the issue. Before that there is the question of the transition of minors without parental knowledge or consent or permission. And then the question of public accommodation in speech, bathrooms, sports, etc.
Some of this is really heartbreaking. Can we recognize that every human is worthy of dignity and the opportunity to flourish? That we all have a spark of the Divine in us?
I find it fascinating how as a demographer of religion you interpret these results. I ran political campaigns for years, and from our vantage point, we would not interpret this in the same way. It would pique our curiosity, but for a practical standpoint it wouldn't change anything. I would be suspicious of the top line number fluctuating slightly while having significant swings in the cross tabs, particularly among political subsets. I would flag it to watch for future trends but my gut would tell me to focus on the top line and expect the cross tabs to fluctuate in the next data drops.
"These aren’t debates about culture. They are debates about partisanship." That is true-ish but I think it is more than that. It is both a cultural and a religious debate.
The Democratic and Republican parties are the largest and most dominant religious groups in America. Religion answers the scientifically "unanswerable" questions of morality and meaning. Political pundits and candidates preach sermons and pontificate about both morality and meaning. Some of the most religious people I know swear that they are not religious, but they are - they just call it by a different name. Many Christians are more Republican than Christian and I've met atheists more Democrat than atheist. Nature abhors a vacuum and in the absence of strong traditional religions, people align with political religions.
I would be curious about how the survey defined "medical care" for gender transition - e.g. even if there were no explicit definitions, were there prior questions that got people thinking of "medical care" as primarily surgical, hormonal, etc?
I assumed the question was talking about surgery and hormonal treatment and assume that most of the respondents did, too, since that's what the political conversation is generally about. Is there some other form of medical care that you think the people asking the question had in mind?
"Millennial men are less supportive of a ban on gender transition for minors than Millennial women."
You misspoke there. The graph just above shows the opposite for Millennials and it's statistically insignificant anyways.
Fixed that. Thanks for pointing it out.
And now everyone is sure that I don't use AI to write!
No problem! It feels nice to be the reviewer for a change! And hopefully I do better than reviewer 2! :)
As mentioned at the start of this piece, trans issues come in many forms. Concerns about some trans issues (e.g., sports, XX-only spaces, youth gender affirmation, ...) are not properly seen as anti-trans by themselves, although anti-trans individuals undoubtedly make up some of the people holding such views. Many (a majority?) opposing trans-women in female sports believe (rightly given the research?) that trans-women retain a physiological advantage that makes participation unfair to (biological, CIS, XX, ...) women. Gender affirming care for minors would be more complex, but policies and practices are becoming more cautious even in countries that first adopted early trans care, such as the Netherlands and its Dutch Protocol. Hence, some basis for concerns?
Would be interesting to try and separate the "moral" (religious? ideological?) determinants of measures from the "rational" contributions? And how would politics enter the picture?
The question about a universal ban on transition is an extreme form of the issue. Before that there is the question of the transition of minors without parental knowledge or consent or permission. And then the question of public accommodation in speech, bathrooms, sports, etc.
Gotta go with the question I have available to me, RAG.
Some of this is really heartbreaking. Can we recognize that every human is worthy of dignity and the opportunity to flourish? That we all have a spark of the Divine in us?