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Weighing the tactical options facing Democrats, Singer was, nonetheless, forceful in his response to my emailed inquiry:
As a consequentialist, I don’t believe that the party is obligated to support discriminated against groups regardless of the consequences. After all, the re-election of Trump, and Republican control of Congress, would be a greater disaster than the rejection of the legitimate claims of transgender people to express themselves as they wish.
Most importantly, Singer continued, the re-election of Trump
would mean another four years in which the U.S. does little or nothing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which makes it difficult for other leaders to take the strong stand that is needed, and that could bring about changes that are catastrophic for hundreds of millions or even billions of people.
The harm that a second Trump term would produce, Singer argued, “puts the transgender issues you mention in perspective. We may believe that people should be able to use whichever bathroom they choose, but standing up for that isn’t sufficient reason to risk the future of our planet,” not to mention “the many other ways” that a “Trump/Republican victory would be bad.”
Taking a different position, Amie L. Thomasson, professor of intellectual and moral philosophy at Dartmouth, wrote by email:
I think that however much Democrats may want to win, we must not lose sight of our moral compass — especially in times like this. The commitment to protecting the rights, equality, and well-being of everyone — not just those with power, wealth, or privilege — is absolutely central.
This commitment is not subject to compromise: the Democratic Party, Thomasson argued,
would lose its soul to lose those commitments. What we need most in this country is an honest moral conversation — and that means not replacing moral considerations with strategic calculations, or burying them to meet short-term goals.
Moral commitments, Thomasson continued,
are not things that should be sacrificed in hopes of avoiding right-wing attacks, or hoping to maximize a calculation of expected votes. It does, of course, leave Democrats with a job to do, of making clear that it is moral rights, human rights that are at stake here; of making clear why recognizing transgender rights is not a threat; and of working through the details of policy proposals regarding the impact on health care, etc.
In fact, Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, does not expect Democratic presidential candidates to support every priority set by her organization.
In a phone interview, Keisling said that her organization’s first priority is that the candidates “show they are compassionate people who care about marginalized people.”
She said that if a Democrat wins the presidency, “we will have a policy agenda of maybe 200 items,” but her group would not expect full support on every one of them.
The center has been interviewing Democratic candidates and so far all of them have shown that “they think about trans people in a compassionate way. That’s a lot,” she said, and a sharp contrast to Trump.
I asked Grace Lavery, a professor of English at Berkeley — who describes her work in trans-feminist studies as “focused on the belief that transition works; that it is truly possible to change sex” — a series of questions, including: “How do you think Democrats should deal with some of the more complex issues raised by the transgender rights movement?”
She replied:
The same way that anyone else should: by discussing them openly, and ensuring that trans people’s accounts of our own experiences are being heard.
Trans people, Lavery continued,
need access to health care, we need equitable treatment by a criminal justice system, and we need equal protection under existing civil rights/Title IX legislation. Given which, we don’t tend to care what cis people think about what transness means.
The basic issue, Lavery argued,
is about safeguarding the civil rights of a minority of people, at a moment in history when we are being singled out for prejudicial treatment. There are no real policy issues to address other than prejudice and squeamishness.
Robin Dembroff, a professor of philosophy at Yale who prefers the pronouns they/them, wrote me that Democratic candidates should treat “the Trump campaign’s focus on transgender issues” as a “divisive tool for stoking fear, distracting from economic, health care, and climate issues, and dismantling already tenuous women’s rights.”
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