Free Speech, Free Reign: The Pious Speech of Andrew Sullivan

– Another chapter in the radicalization of young Andrew Sullivan, generated by AI based on the essay below –

“Words connect with the rational part of our brains; images target the sub-rational. And in a sub-rational world, liberal democracy simply cannot exist” – Andrew Sullivan 

Andrew Sullivan can’t get enough of the video of Charlie Kirk’s murder. In a recent Substack, he claims to have “watched that video a couple of times.” 

The video of Kirk’s shooting, along with the recording of a young Ukrainian woman’s murder on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, especially the quasi-beheading character of the killings, seem to have reinvigorated Sullivan’s old-world imagination. 

Sullivan correctly notes that these truly horrific murders attack two core principles of any decent democratic society: “the right to be safe in public, and the right to speak freely without fear.” Sadly, Sullivan goes on to write a Tudor-era fiction, and he needs villains.

Andrew enlists “the woke” as his story’s villains: Muslims, critical theorists of all kinds, anti-exclusionary feminists like Judith Butler, faggy gays, Trans* activists, Black activists, and others. These villains are those who Sullivan believes can’t handle the truth: speech is never violent. 

“The woke left, especially in the fringes the mainstream left adamantly refuses to rein in, condemn, or control,” Sullivan asserts, “bears some responsibility [for Kirk’s murder], because it has long equated speech with violence.” The “deeply illiberal idea” that a “bullet is no different in kind than a verbal provocation” has, according to Andrew, been forced upon a nonconsenting “young generation” by “the academic and journalistic left.”

Sullivan believes that speech and violent behavior are fundamentally separate realities, and he ridicules the supposedly woke notion that speech and violent actions can—and do—overlap. However, every democracy acknowledges a connection between speech acts and violent or hateful conduct. 

In the U.S., the law makes a distinction between what is considered harm and actual harm. For example, it may hurt Andrew’s feelings if I call him a twat—but legally, my disagreement with Andrew is actionable only if I slap or scratch him. Actual harm involves a physical toll (Martha Nussbaum points out that courts recognize that smell can cause actual harm. See Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law [2004], e.g., 158-163). 

A similar logic applies when distinguishing between speech, protected by the First Amendment, and conduct, which the law can restrict. Consider R.A.V. v. St. Paul (1992), a case Judith Butler discusses in Excitable Speech (1997).

In R.A.V. v. St. Paul, the Supreme Court ruled that a white person burning a cross in a Black family’s front yard is speech, not violent or harmful conduct. Therefore, St. Paul’s ordinance banning such burnings was declared unconstitutional. 

The Court corrected itself in Virginia v. Black (2003). In this case, the Court ruled that Virginia’s law banning all cross burnings, regardless of context, is unconstitutional. However, the Court also decided that when context shows that a speech act, like cross burning, is intended to cause harm, it becomes unprotected speech and may be lawfully regulated. 

U.S. courts distinguish between speech and violent acts (e.g., burning a cross at a klan rally). In these cases, words can—and do—act like bullets, piercing our psyches with unforgiving force, but that doesn’t make them unlawful or punishable by law. 

U.S. courts also acknowledge a connection between speech and violent acts (e.g., a klan member burning a cross on a Black family’s yard). Every democracy affirms that words can—and do—act like bullets when they are fired off with the intent, for example, of inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol.

Andrew’s beef with his young woke despisers (he’s consistently miffed that the young woke don’t like him) is that they won’t make a distinction between speech and violence. Thus, the young woke believe, according to Sullivan, that violence/self-defense/legal regulation is always justified agianst speech they don’t like because such speech is always actually harmful speech.

Sullivan, on the other hand, contends that speech is never actually harmful. Words can never actually hurt us. Thus, violence/self-defense/legal regulation is never justified against speech.

So what?

Denying any overlap between speech and violent conduct enables Sullivan to neatly drop all speech acts in one bucket and all violent acts in another. Charlie Kirk’s public murder on a college campus in Utah, the young Ukrainian woman’s slaying on a train in Charlotte, and George Floyd’s death at the knees of a white cop in Minneapolis all go in the same bucket. 

Likewise, arguments against gay marriage and abortion are treated similarly to arguments that deny or demean Trans* existence and oppose parents’ rights to make healthcare decisions for their Trans* children (while at the same time justifying the right of religious conservatives to determine the character of their children’s public school education [see also the New Thoughts Podcast, episode 4, Sex Changes]). 

Sullivan’s refusal to recognize any link between speech and violent or hateful behavior allows him to take rhetorical aim from a high position on the whitewashed tomb of piety. “Tell the truth fearlessly,” Andrew preaches, “but always be open to correction. Decency, civility, nonviolence, humor, humility, grace: these are the virtues a free society needs to endure.” 

Yet, without irony, humor, or humility, Sullivan claims, “It is never ‘hate’ to tell the truth: that men are not women; that children cannot meaningfully consent to sex changes. . . ,” while insisting that “the mainstream left . . . rein in, condemn, or control” the so-called “woke left,” including, presumably, parents of Trans* children (emphasis added). 

It is dishonest, absurd, and manifestly wrong to either (a) collapse the distinction between speech and violent actions or to (b) deny any connection between speech and hateful acts. But what should a fair democracy do about and with disturbing speech?

The delicious irony is that Sullivan’s answer to that question (i.e., no regulation) closely resembles Judith Butler’s, as it is presented in Excitable Speech (1997).

Although Butler does acknowledge the overlap between speech and harm—arguing that speech can harm the human subject (i.e., the human being) because the subject is made of language—their solution to hurtful speech is resistant speech: more speech (of a different kind).

In fact, it is Butler’s reasonable, in my view, insistence that resistant speech acts–rather than political/legal intervention/regulation, are the solution to, say, fascist speech acts, that contributes to Martha Nussbaum’s damming assessment of Butler’s theory–worked out in Gender Trouble (1990) through to The Psychic Life of Power (1997)–as “quietism.”

Nussbaum concludes that Butler’s theory “collaborates with evil” (see Nussbaum, Philosophical Interventions [2012/1999], 215; responses and Nussbaum’s reply, 215-222).

I cover the specifics of Butler’s theory and Nussbaum’s critique of it in a forthcoming essay. For now, I want to emphasize what is at stake (at least for us villains) in denying any link between speech and violent or hateful behavior, namely, the monarchic spirit manifestly possessing some speech acts is allowed to go entirely unchecked.

As I was reading Sullivan’s Substack, I kept thinking about Anne Boleyn as she’s portrayed in the Broadway musical SIX. In the song “Sorry, Not Sorry,” Boleyn reflects on her tonsorial audacity. 

Speaking of Catherine of Aragon, she says, “[King Henry VIII] doesn’t wanna bang you / Somebody hang you. . . . / Mate, what was I meant to do? . . . / Sorry, not sorry ’bout what I said / I’m just tryna have some fun / Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t lose your head / I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” 

Later, Anne recalls Henry taking issue with her flirtatious behavior with other men. She responds, “Mate, just shut up / I wouldn’t be such a b- / If you could get it up. . . . And now he’s going ’round like off with her head. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he means it (seems it).”

Even while lamenting that Trump is incapable of cooling the rhetorical temperature, and demanding that we “[c]ool the rhetoric,” Sullivan denies that what he—and any of us—says has any real consequences. Kirk/Andrew desperately wants us to believe that he is just having some good ole, traditional political fun. Like, what is he meant to do?

Don’t lose your head, Andrew. 

Kirk/Andrew’s “free” speech leads to the free reign of conservatives over the most vulnerable in U.S. society, such as immigrants, Trans* adults and children, Muslims, and others. 

That’s why any just democracy should make speech acts that re-create and re-enforce a U.S. caste system, speech acts that come at the cost of the dignity of others, speech acts that demean and subjugate fellow citizens—and those who aspire to become citizens—not worth the cost of such illiberal behavior. 

We can begin to rid our democracy of its monarchic spirits by supporting, defending, and fully funding a rigorous public school education in the sciences and humanities.

The Politics of Unity

– Yinka Shonibare, Scramble for Africa (2003), 14 life-size fiberglass mannequins, 14 chairs, table, Dutch wax printed cotton. The Pinnell Collection, Dallas –

Calls for unity are being heard from across the political spectrum following the murder of Charlie Kirk. What is unity?

The production of unity requires creating a shared or “good language,” words permitted to be spoken. Unity is playing out in at least three different ways in relation to Kirk’s murder:

  1. Kirk is a saint.
  2. Kirk is a devil.
  3. Kirk is a human animal, deserving of compassion.  

However, the production of unity is not initially affirmative. Unity is predicated on censorship (see Judith Butler, e.g., Excitable Speech).

The politics of unity is founded on the creation of the zone(s) of its own dissolution, on the “bad speech” that must be silenced for unity to take its affirmative shape. Thus, at least three different speech acts are prohibited, depending on which one of the three unities you find appealing:

  1. Kirk is a devil.
  2. Kirk is a saint.
  3. Kirk is inhuman, undeserving of compassion.

Similar scenes of unity usually unfold for me on an ecclesial stage. Consider the following examples:

Scene 1: I am prohibited from preaching/speaking of LGBTQ+ themes from the pulpit, to avoid being labeled as “controversial,” and to have the opportunity to preach about unity.

Scene 2: A lesbian pastor is prevented from asking for accountability when a guest delivers an anti-LGBTQ+ sermon from her pulpit, to maintain the unity of the church.  

There is no escape from the scene(s) of unity. The subject is founded on its exclusive stage. Our readability as human animals entirely depends on an initial exclusion, on the prior “knowledge” of what constitutes the off-stage, the inhuman.

Another example from the ecclesial sphere may help us understand how the politics of unity shapes or fashions the subject. I wrote about it on a friend’s blog ages ago, in 2015.

I was asked to contribute to a blog series inquiring about the character of pastoral identity. Instead, I wondered about what was beyond pastoral identity. I illustrated my argument like this (I am amused by the person who decided to draw out his argument):

I explained:

The square[s constitute] the world. The circles (thin lines) represent various modes of life, the Hetero-social::State::Church and the homo-social::church::world, respectively. The thick black lines symbolize the circuitry of desire.

The image on the left represents our problem. The image on the right represents what is beyond pastoral identity. The dotted-line between the images indicates that the two images do not overlap; the church (right) is in a non—relationship-or to the side of—the Church (left). How are we to interpret the image on the left?

The fact that there are three circles is not important. The Church, the State, and the Hetero-social occupy the same sphere. As you can see, [those spheres keep] desire [. . .] in its place.

Desire is stuck to the Institution and is, therefore, necessarily immobilized within the system imaged on the left. The Church, let us say, is structured like a certain ego [subject, identity, etc].

The image on the right is my attempt to represent a step to the side of the system within which our problem makes any sense. Note the square(s) at the center of the circle(s) on the right. The church’s desire is in the world—where the church always-already re-finds itself—welcomed. The church corresponds with the world.

I did not know it then, but by sidestepping the invitation to define pastoral identity, I was, in fact, describing it. Pastoral unity or identity depends on what is outside or beyond it, namely, the world.

Thus,

we may not say:

  1. The pastor is the world;

we may say:

  1. The pastor is the Church/State/Heterosexual.

Given that we cannot escape the politics of unity, the question arises: What do we do with it? It is a possibility/question inherent in the politics of unity itself.

In 2015, referring back to my drawings, I wrote, “This [threatening] possibility is imaged on the left by the diagonal sphere [formed by a dotted black line meeting a solid black line that then spins outside of the Institution, into the world], that exceeds the system within which it is initially confined. We might understand this movement as desire’s resistant drift.”

We may not be able to escape the pull of unity, but unity’s regulatory power is not fully within its direction. Spinning off-stage, we may occupy the space of unity’s first creation: the sphere of its dissolution, disruption, or redefinition.

If we remain strictly within the scene(s) of unity, we are obliged to lie and deceive. Specifically, we are compelled to confuse the world with our projections or phantasms, pretending that what we are not is strictly outside of us, in the world.

As I have written elsewhere, the author of Ephesians offers us an alternative to the normative politics of unity. We may speak the truth in irony (Ephesians 4[:15]).

One way to understand speaking the truth in irony is as a practice of not . . . taking ourselves too seriously. Unity is not worth the price of someone’s or some other group’s degradation.

In the resistant ecclesial space, we may say that the pastor is the church (lowercase c) in the world (illustrated by the image on the right). In the resistant murder scene, we may say that Kirk is a human animal undeserving of compassion.

Speaking the truth in irony, we may, or at least this is what the author of Ephesians hopes will happen, grow up in unity.

The Murder of Charlie Kirk

– Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1599 by Caravaggio –

Why is it difficult for progressives to respond to the murder of Charlie Kirk?

Yes, gun-related violence is tragically all too common in our country. Yes, murder is not an appropriate way to resolve disputes with our fellow citizens. Enough said, no?

Apparently not, as Kirk is quickly becoming an exemplar of American politics, which means having the “courage” to make the most extreme, anti-democratic arguments in a democratic forum (e.g., that the 2020 election was stolen . . . ).

Tears are being shed because Kirk’s kids are now in the worst possible situation—well, at least the worst situation conservatives (and more than a few, it seems, male progressives) can imagine: alone in the world with their mother . . . . It occurs to me, since their mother is white, Kirk’s kids are not, from a conservative perspective, in the worst possible situation.

One of the things the HIV/AIDS crisis taught many of us is that conservatives enjoy dancing on the graves of those who lived in ways with which they disagree. “Bad” lifestyles, they continue to argue, inevitably meet with God’s wrath–or, in his stead, the subcommittee of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: the Supreme Court of the United States.

Of course, that kind of theology is stupid and gross. Nonetheless, it makes sense when viewed as a strictly social phenomenon.

We can (a) agree that murder—that gun violence—is not an acceptable political strategy, and we can (b) insist that compassion for Kirk is not warranted. The facts of his life make him culpable for his death.

One may counter that (c) compassion must eventually follow (b) one’s lack of compassion for Kirk. But that is to misunderstand the logic of compassion itself. Compassion is warranted only in those instances where a subject is not responsible for the tragedy that befalls them.

Traveling around the country, disparaging and demeaning your fellow citizens—even arguing that “[i]t’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment”—will inevitably make some number of amygdalae twitchy. Flight is not the only response to perceived threats to one’s dignity, freedom, and well-being (and all that is about to get worse as it seems Kennedy is calling the efficacy of SSRIs, like Lexapro, into question).

I take no pleasure in Kirk’s death, and I am not indifferent to it, either. A human being was murdered yesterday. Yet, c need not (eventually) follow a and b.

If you encourage cruelty, you should not be surprised when it finds you. If you live by the sword, why are you surprised when you die by it, too?

In any case, Kirk is God’s problem now.

Sex Changes

The most recent episode of the New Thoughts Podcast is ready for your ears.

In this episode, I examine recent Supreme Court decisions, North Carolina legislation, and Andrew Sullivan’s op-ed for the New York Times to explain how legal and cultural forces are shaping public views of Trans* loves and lives. I argue that Trans* people are figures of change. And it is change that the forces opposed to Trans* loves and lives want to end.

I also introduce basic ideas from gender studies, focusing on Judith Butler’s recent book, Who’s Afraid of Gender. I hope you will be inspired to advocate for and protect the dignity of Trans* people and the right of parents to support and care for their beloved Trans* kids.

Keep up with the cast at newthoughtspodcast.com. Send your feedback and stories about change in your life to info@newthoughtspodcast.com.

EXPLORE:

Listen to Lucia Lukas.

Watch a clip from Into The Woods.

Find the 36 Questions To Love here.

Read Mahmoud v. Taylor.

Read U.S. v. Skrmetti.

Read NC House Bill 805.

Read Andrew Sullivan’s op-ed for the NY Times.

Read Tony’s response to Sullivan at here.

Listen to Judith Butler explain gender.

Read Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender.

Read David M. Halperin, “Sex / Sexuality / Sexual Classification.”

Cardi B on why she thinks her security guard = fat.

Evangelical straight men like it up the butt: pegging and evangelicals.

Excitable Truth? On Speaking the Truth in Love

– Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1995. Three gelatin silver prints, 148 x 121 cm each –

“But on rising from the table where [Foucault] had inwardly decreed this end [to the writing of History of Sexuality 2 and 3], he knocked over a glass that broke, and just then it seemed to him that the time of satisfaction was ended; it had not lasted but a few seconds.”

– Mark Jordan, citing Mathieu Lindon, Ce qu’aimer veut dire (2011), in Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault (2015), 200 –

“Philosophy [and, in my view, Theology] is always a breaking of the mirror.”

– Alain Badiou, Conditions, 25 –

The author of Ephesians (most scholars don’t think it’s a Pauline letter) writes, “But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up . . . “ (4:15, NRSV).

Riffing on Judith Butler’s analysis of speech in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), in which Butler continues their engagement with J.L. Austin’s theory of language, I ask, What kind of speech act is “speaking the truth in love”?

Is speaking the truth in love (a) an example of a performative speech act (a type of illocutionary speech act), a form of speech that immediately does what it announces (e.g., “I pronounce you husband and husband”)? Or, is speaking the truth in love (b) an example of a perlocutionary speech act, a type of speech that, as a result of being spoken, sets in motion a chain of consequences (e.g., “Get out, get out before I kill you!”)?

In other words, when we read, “But speaking the truth in love, we grow up . . .” are we to think that (a) we grow up at the very moment we speak the truth in love, that in the act of speaking the truth in love we become a body possessed by the mind of Messiah? Or, are we to think that (b) we grow up into Christ as a consequence of speaking the truth in love, that the future or promise of speaking the truth in love is growing into a body ruled by the mind of Messiah?

Perhaps the answer is (c): none of the above.

The Greek is (for me!) a bit tricky, but it is helpful to have it before our eyes: “[1] Alētheuontes de en agapē [2] auxēsōmen eis auton ta panta, hos estin hē kephalē, Christos.”

What we take Ephesians 4:15 to mean is, I think, determined by the words 1) Alētheuontes and 2) auxēsōmen.

  1. Alētheuontes = speaking the truth, and it is a present active participle. It means that speaking the truth in love is a way of life that is ongoing.
  •  Auxēsōmen = must/should/might grow into, and it is an aorist subjunctive verb, first person plural. It means that growth is a possible outcome of beginning to (I take the aorist here as indicating a “point of entry” into some action) speak the truth in love.

If my analysis is correct, it would seem that “speaking the truth in love” is neither a performative nor a perlocutionary speech act. It does not do what it says in the moment of its saying. Moreover, there is no guarantee that in saying it, that in speaking the truth in love, we will grow into a body ruled by Messiah. The author hopes that growth will follow the act of speaking the truth in love.

There is another possibility, answer (d): speaking the truth in love is neither a performative nor a perlocutionary speech act, but it is intended to become a perlocutionary speech act.  

Ephesians 4 begins with the author neither asking nor demanding that their readers “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Instead, they “beg” their readers to do so (vv 1-3). The author does not have the necessary status to make either a performative or a perlocutionary statement. The outcome of either kind of speech act depends on a convincing citation of law, tradition, context, and so on.

The force of the author’s statement depends entirely on the character of its readers. If they are the subjects of messianic desire, then they will forsake deceitful living and speak the truth in love, growing into the body of the Messiah and thereby maintaining “the unity of the Spirit in the body of peace.”

These observations are essential for understanding what it means to speak the truth in love. For too many Christians, this passage means: You are free to say the nastiest things to others so long as you do it gently and with a smile. Bless their hearts!

Ephesians 4:15 is often read as blessing hubris–this even though the author begs the readers to adopt a position of weakness and humility at the outset (vv 1-3). Weakness and humility are the preconditions for speaking the truth in love.

To understand why weakness and humility are preconditions for speaking the truth . . . in love, let us briefly consider Alain Badiou’s elaboration of the Truth in Conditions. “I propose to call ‘religion,’” Badiou writes, “everything that presupposes that there is a continuity between truths and the circulation of meaning” (24). Furthermore, Badiou contends that “any truth that accepts a position of dependency with regard to narrative and revelation is still gripped by mystery, whereas philosophy [and, in my view, theology] only exists in its desire to tear down mystery’s veil” (36). Moreover, “Philosophy [and, in my view, theology,] commences . . . only with a desacralization: it establishes a regime of discourse that is its own inherent and earthly legitimation . . . the authority of profound utterance [being] interpreted by argumentative secularization” (36, emphasis original).

Why, though, is religion as the “continuity of truths and the circulation of meaning” and mystery (related as it is to veiling meaning) opposed to the Truth, while secularization is amenable to it?

All too briefly, Badiou defines the Truth as an empty or operational category out of which truths are seized. Truth is not the same as presence; it is not present; thus, it cannot be associated with “the circulation of meaning” (23).

The Truth is precisely what is not present in a text, play, film, and so forth. Philosophy—and, in my view, theology—is the practice of seizing truths out of the void of Truth, of trying to say what is impossible to say.

Philosophy—and, in my view, theology—is “subtractive in that it cuts holes in sense, or causes an interruption in the circulation of sense, so that it comes that truths are said all together” (24, emphasis mine). Yet, the truth is not a “mystery,” veiled and unknowable. We can “know” the Truth as truths that cause knowledge to fail (46).

Truth is necessarily fiction. Thus, power cannot make Truth persuasive. Hence the significance for philosophy, and, in my view, theology, of address. “Addressed to all so that all may be in seizing the existence of truths, it is like a political strategy with no stake in power” (23). A disciple is one persuaded by such an address; a disciple is the subject of the address, “one who knows that [they do] not form a public or constitute an audience but support a transmission” (28).

My all too hasty reading of Badiou on Truth in Conditions brings us back to Ephesians 4. Recall that the author begins from a standpoint of weakness and humility. They address the reader with a Truth that is truths. Take note of the one that is seven ones in Ephesians 4: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God (vv 4-5). The Truth exists for all those who are subjects of its truths—hence the author cannot guarantee if their admonition will inspire growth into the one body that is not one—and not whole. If the body were whole, there would be no need for the address.

So, what does all this potentially mean? What truth may we seize from this address and so address to others?

My answer: The Truth is fiction, so it must be shared with a sense of irony (i.e., in agapē — and why I think agapē should be interpreted as an already ironized form of desire is a topic for another day).

Put another way, Truth is just not that serious. Truth is (un)serious. Unity then, or growth in love, or growing into the one body that is not one, involves trying things out, imagining things differently: an open mind. It does not require belief in any doctrine or even belief, a force of will that purports to make the Truth present.

“The modern sophist,” Badiou writes, “attempts to replace the idea of truth with the idea of the rule” (6). I have argued elsewhere that the (modern) cleric attempts to “replace the idea of truth with the idea of the” norm.

“But speaking the truth in love” entails living without such assurances. It is more like sending a postcard: we hope the exposed truths make it to the listed address, to the all to which it is (un)intentionally addressed—”so that all may be in seizing the existence of truths.”

What is life due?

– Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document 3, 1973–79, perspex units, white card, sugar paper, crayon –

In one National Geographic presentation on migration, gazelles run across the screen as the narrator says something like, migration is life. Movement, multitasking, scanning the horizon for prey or for predators–even as they eat or sleep–is animal life.

We recently traveled to Chicago, and our son was especially interested in the “L” system. As we walked to the train, I shared with him that city life involves a lot of flexibility. A young man immediately made my point.

Inexplicably, the young man decided to stop and take a call midway up the stairs leading to the train, reducing two lanes of pedestrian traffic to one. If he had cared to notice, he would have seen that people were building up behind him, unable to pass without colliding with the people walking freely down the stairs in the opposite direction.

A lady passed the young man before turning around to stare at him violently, as if to scream “WTF?!” in the young man’s face. He did not notice her.

We were next. We passed quickly and quietly around the young man. However, the man walking behind us, struggling to carry many bags, let himself be heard: “Bro! What the fuck are you doing?! Take your fucking call at the top of the stairs—you’re blocking everyone from the station!”

We laughed. We kept moving, eventually boarding the Brown Line.

When we exited at Sedgwick and started walking back to our hotel, we noticed a group of teenagers entering the crosswalk early. A passing white truck almost hit them. The driver of the truck stopped just past the intersection, and he yelled, “Are you ok?!”—and in a way that clearly conveyed that he thought the young men were not ok, as in not mentally well.

The young men got it. They yelled back, even more mockingly, “Are you ok?!” And this went on until one of the young men made a gun with his fingers and the sounds pop, pop, pop before saying to the man in his white truck, “You better get moving.”

Inflexibility, getting stuck in the moment, is the (potential) death of you. We kept moving.

Ben Rhodes recently argued, “Short-term compulsions blind us to the forces remaking our lives.” What Rhodes calls “short-termism” is not exactly a lack of movement. “We are all living in the disorienting present,” Rhodes writes, “swept along by currents we don’t control. The distractions abound.” 

For Rhodes, distraction is a type of stuckness “in . . . currents we don’t control,” the movement of other people’s, (in Rhodes’s article, Trump’s), desire.

I see it the other way around. Distraction is the solution to presentism.

We tend to think that the opposite of distraction is attention. But attention is a form of distraction.

As we walked around Chicago, I often reminded my son to “pay attention.” I meant for him to focus less on the objects of his desire, the cute Labubu in the store window, my mother at the jewelry counter, getting to the bathroom or on/off the elevator, and to attend to the world around him, to the people and cars moving toward him and to details, like what floor the elevator had stopped on.

The meaning of “pay attention,” to pay attention its due, was dramatically revealed when my son accidentally hit an old woman’s cain with his foot, nearly sending her to the ground. He didn’t notice her cain because he was focused on an object of his desire.

Staying focused is a form of traction rather than a form of attention, a type of distraction. Animals tend to die when they are focused, when they are not paying attention, when they are attracted to the delicious grass, the person with a nice gyatt, the phone call, the teenagers in the crosswalk, and so on.

I was walking around Brussels when I noticed an attractive young man and his friends standing on the sidewalk. He noticed my loud stare (I know, a bad habit!), and he smiled before asking me something innocent. Before I knew it, he had tripped me and stole my wallet (talk about being caught in currents!). For whatever reason, when I asked him to give my wallet back–he obliged (perhaps he was just practicing to rob people or he though it unethical to rob gay men or he noticed my wallet was empty or he had made his point about staring, about traction . . . )!

I learn the hard way. When I first moved to Chicago, I owned a car (I know dad, you owned a car!)–and I quickly learned why city folk fervently pray for parking spaces. In this instance, my prayers were not answered, and I decided to park in a prohibited space.

I reasoned that it would only take me sixtyish seconds to use the bank’s ATM. On that day, I learned that it takes less than a minute to have your car towed. The upside of this is experience (one of 2 dramatic times I got towed in Chicago. The second time, keyed and covered in syrup[!], the car was towed to a 103rd street!) is that I got to explore lower, lower Wacker Drive, the location where a few scenes of Dark Knight and Transformers: Age of Extinction were filmed–and of one of the city’s impound lots.

Traction costs a lot, too.

The question now arises: should we always resist traction for the pragmatics of distraction? Or, if collective life requires the suspension of one’s own desire, is there a time to forsake attention for the pleasures of traction or focus?

In the rural Idaho town where I grew up, it was not uncommon for farmers to pull off the side of the road, one truck on each side, and talk for a good while. On many early mornings my dad joins a group of men at the local gas station to talk about only God knows (I surely don’t want to know!).

In the country, one is not often punished for this kind of decadence. No one dies for focusing on friends or neighbors–and no one gets their car towed for parking incorrectly or even unwisely.

I thought of this on our recent visit to New York City (if you have not seen the musicals Operation Mincemeat or Death Becomes Her [so, so much better than the movie!], you must! Go now!). We were walking along the edge of Times Square, and I noticed a man on the ground, in a position that suggested he was sleeping. “Tourist-looking” people were sitting on the bench near him, looking unconcerned.

Even though his position on the ground caused me concern, I irrationally assumed others would have already taken action if the man was not well. I kept moving.

I should have stopped; I should have focused on the man, if even just long enough inquire about his well-being or to ask someone else to do so.

Rural Studies research makes the valuable point that rural spaces exist in cities. The reverse is also true: city spaces exist in rural towns.

The division between the city and the country can be translated as city = space that requires distraction (i.e., vigilance, forward think, reality principle) while rural = space that allows for the indulgence of traction (i.e., talking to strangers, walking in the street, and so on).

Collective life, of whatever size, requires an ethics or practice of distraction. Yet, if our collective life is just, it will make space for individual pleasures, space for stopping, caring, helping, loving, creating, spontaneity-ing, moments discomfiting, focusing–in a word, pleasuring–possible.

I grant that we must pay attention to live together; we must keep on the move, facing multiple directions at once. If living together is what we really want, we must pay attention its due. Yet, we seem to “know” that collective life is not always what we really want. We seem to “know” that life is not always worth its due.

Hence the relief of letting go, of finding ourselves temporarily “dropped back into the immense design of things” (Willa Cather). It feels good to give into our anti-social impulses–and justice allows it, for a time.

Traction isn’t free. Nonetheless, we more often than not experience the cost of it as worth every dime. Thus, making America distracted again is an urgent political task.

Coming Soon

– AI generated image based on the content of the post below –

This summer has been full for our family! We have been traveling a lot, including to Alaska, and next week we’re heading to New York to catch Broadway shows like Six, Death Becomes Her, Hamilton, and Maybe Happy Ending. So, the time to read, write, and cast has been compressed!

But here is what I am working on:

For Gay Thoughts, I am working on an essay bringing together Judith Butler, Martha Nussbaum, and Adam Phillips on the purposes of theory. I will call it When (Not) To Play Around.

Speaking of Butler, I was enjoying a dry cappuccino at Cup of Joe in Raleigh yesterday–rereading Gender Trouble–and the only reality that perplexed me at all was the young woman dressed like a cat, acting like a cat, and talking (in that voice we sometimes speak to cats) to her cat stuffies that she had laid out on her table as she … studied? (Sometimes she would scold them, making me laugh— but I physically jumped when she unexpectedly lunged into my space!).

As for Butler’s writing, it was not only thrilling but entirely comprehensible. I loved rereading it as much as when I first read it (although the pleasures associated with reading Gender Trouble now are informed by decades more study, whereby I earned my views about gender, identification, and many of the primary sources Butler reads).

If you have not read Gender Trouble, why not? Alternatively, here’s a great, short YouTube video of Butler explaining gender.

For New Thoughts, I am working on two new episodes. The first, Sex Changes: On Trans* Desire(s)–will feature Butler, specifically their recent book, Who’s Afraid of Gender? Kara Fisher has a great interview with Butler on her podcast. Listen in here.

I am also working on an episode regarding Social Media Changes and Teens. It will feature a conversation between Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, and Matt Ritchel’s book, How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence.

Animal Changes – The NEW Thoughts Podcast

Host Tony Hoshaw opens with a viral Donald Trump claim about immigrants eating pets and uses it to explore how we dehumanize people by turning them into "animals." He traces his own journey from a hunting childhood to a Christian conversion and tentative vegetarianism, shares stories of his companion pets, and criticizes careless hunting and factory farming. The episode brings in thinkers—Derrida, Ken Stone, Carol J. Adams, Val Plumwood, and Martha Nussbaum—to discuss animal sentience, the predator–prey dynamic in the Bible, and the ethical implications of edibility and sacrifice. Hoshaw argues for treating sentient animals as beings with species-specific lives, calls for more compassionate practices, and closes the season asking listeners to "rest from cruel dominion" and rethink our relationship to animals. EXPLORE: Read a preview of Tony's essay, *The Bible Isn't Edible* here: https://gay-thoughts.com/2025/12/04/on-the-urgent-matter-of-the-bible-or-on-how-vegetarians-should-use-the-bible/ Read Tony's sermon, *Rest From Cruel Dominion* here: https://gay-thoughts.com/2024/05/15/rest-from-cruel-dominion-embracing-mercy-on-the-sabbath-day/ Read *Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy* by Matthew Scully: https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Power-Suffering-Animals-Mercy/dp/0312319738 Read *The Animal That Therefore I Am* by Jacques Derrida: https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Therefore-Perspectives-Continental-Philosophy/dp/082322791X Read *Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies* by Ken Stone: https://www.sup.org/books/religious-studies/reading-hebrew-bible-animal-studies Read *The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegan Critical Theory* by Carol J. Adams: https://caroljadams.com/spom-the-book Read *The Eye of the Crocodile* by Val Plumwood (edited by Lorraine Shannon): https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/eye-crocodile Read *Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility* by Martha C. Nussbaum: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Justice-for-Animals/Martha-C-Nussbaum/9781982102517 Read "Questions of Biblical Ambivalence and Authority Under A Tree Outside Delhi; Or, The Postcolonial And The Postmodern" in *Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections*, by Stephen D. Moore: https://www.amazon.com/Postcolonial-Biblical-Criticism-Interdisciplinary-Postcolonialism/dp/0567045307 Read *Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel* by Theodore Jennings, Jr.: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/jacobs-wound-9780826417121/      
  1. Animal Changes
  2. Social Changes
  3. Sex Changes
  4. Summer Update
  5. Sexual Changes

Thanks for staying tuned in!

And remember: even if you are (headed) back to school, there is still time left to enjoy the summer!

God’s Semen and Alien Mushrooms: The Christology of Joe Rogan?

– AI generated image based on the content of the post below –

Recently, Joe Rogan has become part of my daily podcast routine, helping me pass the time while taking the kid to and from theater camp, nearly an hour away from home. I was surprised to find that The Joe Rogan Experience is very entertaining and engaging. I was especially amused by pieces of what I take to be Rogan’s christology, shared in two recent episodes of his cast: #2356 with Mike Vecchione and #2357 with Sarko Gergerian.

Does Rogan believe Jesus Christ is an alien mushroom born of God’s semen?

In #2356 with Mike Vecchione, a comedian and actor, Rogan brings up the discovery of a large object that seems to be on an unusual trajectory toward earth. Discovered on July 1, 2025, 3I/ATLAS has been the subject of ongoing observations by astronomers, who are monitoring its movement through space. Rogan notes that Harvard scientist Avi Loeb believes it could be an alien spacecraft.

They go on to discuss the idea of extraterrestrial life, including the possibility that Mars may have supported life. Here it is (2:49:00):

R: It’s weird.

M: Well, just because we [can’t] exist there doesn’t mean other life forms [can’t] exist there.

R: Or other life forms used to exist there.

M: Right.

R: [I]f Mars at one point in time had a sustainable atmosphere, like millions and millions of years ago, what if there was life on Mars? What if we are the offspring of the life on Mars? What if those fucking guys just realized like, hey, this place is falling apart, let’s shoot over to earth and reestablish?

M: Yeah.

R: I mean, that might be why we’re so different than every other primate that’s here.

M: I never thought about it like that. That might be true. I just think it’s so vast, and we know so little about everything, it’s possible. . . . [I]t’s all possible, the universe is infinite, and we know very little about it.

If Rogan is correct, we humans (thus, Jesus) are descendants of an alien race from Mars.

Add to our alien origins Rogan’s observations, shared with Gergerian, a police lieutenant–and therapist trained to use psychedelics–serving in Winthrop, Massachusetts, about God, Jesus, and mushrooms (1:32:30):

R: Have you ever heard of John Marco Alegro’s book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross?

G: No.

R: It’s a book that he wrote after he was one of the people that was, he was contracted to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was like a 14 year job where they were deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he was the only one on the committee that was agnostic.

He was an ordained minister, but through his studying of theology, he started becoming agnostic because he recognized that there’s just too many religions and too many parallels and like, what’s the real religion and root of this all? Or origin rather, and root of this all. So he wrote this book after 14 years where he, I’m gonna sort of paraphrase, but he thought that the entire Christian religion was based on the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals. . . .

And it’s a fascinating book. It’s a fascinating book because he translates or he breaks down the word Christ to an ancient Sumerian word, which was a mushroom covered in God’s semen. And this is what he’s saying is that they thought that when it rained that this was God, his semen on the earth, which has caused all life to rise from.

We all need water. And then plants, of course, need water. And then after rainfall, they would find these mushrooms.

Because mushrooms grow incredibly quickly. And they would consume these mushrooms and have these religious experiences. And this was a hugely controversial book, of course.

And to really be able to know if he’s right or wrong, you would have to have a deep understanding of ancient languages and the Bible and so many different things.

There you have it: The Joe Rogan Experience of Jesus Christ: a descendant of an alien race from Mars, the offspring of God’s semen, who grants us access to the realm transcendental.

As Elder Cunningham from the musical The Book of Mormon exclaims, “I’m interested!”

I am especially interested in how Joe Rogan talks. Why is his podcast so popular? My theory, or one part of it, is that he talks how most of us talk: there is a thread of intelligibility that allows for improvisation, insight, transgression, creativity, honesty, and so on.

Democratic politicians should do more than go on Rogan’s podcast. They should also study how he talks to people and why people find him so compelling to listen to–even when he is talking about alien beings and God’s semen (and maybe even especially so).

The Digital Cleric: AI, Theology, and the End of Textual Authority

– David Hammons, The Holy Bible: Old Testament, 2002 –

“ChatGPT is going to kill God.”

Here is the argument:

God is thought. What constitutes thought is the interpretation of (authoritative) text (e.g., the Bible). AI (e.g., ChatGPT) is transitioning us into a “post-literate” (and so “post-legal”) society. Thus, AI will kill the God of monotheisms: the God of letters, of text and law. The moral of the story is that only a proper hermeneutics can save God from the murderous rage of AI.

What authoritative text and what proper method of textual interpretation will compete with AI and heroically save God from it? The Bible is one obvious answer, but we are told that the Bible contains content even worse than what AI produces. And the proper method is? Unquestionably, it is what the cleric claims it to be.

Long before AI (or Trump) threatened God, the cleric killed the Truth of God by successfully reducing theology to hermeneutics.

Briefly: The most revolutionary characteristic of the Reformation was an insistence on translating the Bible (and liturgy) into the vernacular of the people. Reformation = the democratization of authoritative text, an event made possible by the invention of a radically new technology, the printing press.

The underlying value of the drive to translate was that the Truth of God belongs to everyone. Hence, the importance of learning to read. The literate person could know God apart from authority or the authorities, namely, the literate cleric.

Yet, the vast majority of Christians became (and remain) entirely dependent on translations of the Bible. They are mesmerized by what the learned cleric projects on the page for them to read and buy into or believe.

Consider the witness of Fastrada from the musical Pippin:

I know the parables told in the holy book
I keep close [or closed?] on my shelf
God’s wisdom teaches me when I help others, I’m
Really helping myself
And if we all could spread a little sunshine
All could lend a helping hand
We all would be a little closer
To the promised land.
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo (emphasis added).

Nearly all of the history of Christianity can be summed up as a battle for control over the interpretation of letters. It is only through a proper hermeneutics/methodology that we can know God and thus be saved by God. An obsession with method/hermeneutics long ago killed the Truth of God.

In my view, the quasi-theological critiques of AI are nothing more than outbursts of jealous rage. The learned human cleric does not want to give up their prestige to a rival, digital cleric, namely, AI. Is there nothing new under the sun?

What makes any cleric attractive is our drive for satisfaction, meaning, coherence, and a sense of authority. It is the cleric who attempts to tempt us to look away from the Truth of God and find salvation in method itself.

The cleric desires to be our ágalma.

“In Greek,” Lacan scholar Bruce Fink reminds us, “[ágalma means] shine and brilliancy: ágalma is something admirable or charming . . . it is a trap for gods – it draws their eyes . . . it is an uncanny object or charm – the Trojan horse, for example, is referred to as ágalma” (191).

The cleric’s charm is literally all too alluring. I take that to be the point of David Hammons’s Old Testament. Open it up, and you find The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, by Arturo Schwartz. The question is: What appears when we look beyond the wisdom of the cleric?

The lure of the cleric remains all too alluring because theology has lost its way. Theology has become the shitty version of any number of other disciplines, especially hermeneutics.

Theology has forgotten itself. It has lost sight of its singular task: to seize the Truth of God, the Truth that is truths—and so cannot be method: permanently located, situated, placed. God is Truth that is always revealed in truths, in the act of Truth’s dis-appearance from reality or what is entirely realizable in this world, here and now.

Following Badiou, whose thinking, especially in Conditions, makes this writing possible, I define Truth as the void or the hole in (common) sense. Theology, as the discipline of seizing of the Truth of God, makes holes in the sense of God.

The radical claim of what goes by the name of Christian theology is that the Truth of God became flesh in Jesus the Messiah, not in the cleric. The theologian’s task is “to draw from this observation the most joyous consequences” (Badiou, 48; Badiou is thinking about poetry). Theology does not interpret or circumscribe the Truth of God. That is the cleric’s task.

In its loyalty to the Truth that is not One or Whole, theology makes it possible for us to recognize the impossible, surprise, or the miracle in this world. The Truth of God as the truths of Jesus the Messiah does not require interpretation but rather conceptualization. Or, as Paul of Tarsus would affirm, it does not require any clerical authority.

Christian theology conspires with the Truth of God as the truths of Jesus Messiah, trapping our attention and thereby disrupting the reproduction of meaning, of (common) sense, and to the end of seeing what is new in the world. Thus, theology can only oppose the normal and established norms. Theology is necessarily the critique of religion (i.e., norms) and so of politics (i.e., the incarnation of norms).

Nonetheless, there is no theology without the cleric. If the cleric is the enemy of theology, theology must love them with all its heart, mind, and soul. Otherwise, the Truth of God will literally die.

And that’s why I’m just not too literal. I just can’t be too literal.

Against (Virtually) Normal: Law, Politics, and the Trans/Queer Body

AI generated imaged based on the essay below. Notice the young Andrew Sullivan in the foreground?

Girl: “Are you sure you are not really a girl?

Boy Sullivan: “Of course not.”

Parent: My child knows who they are.

Adult Sullivan: “But do they? . . . I sure didn’t.”

I.

In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Andrew Sullivan contends that the gay rights movement has “radicalized, and lost its way.” Sullivan asserts that the gay movement has abandoned traditional, virtually normal politics (i.e., the defense of marriage equality and the expansion of non-discrimination protections in the workplace and housing for gays, lesbians and trans adults) and adopted a fascistic queer gender ideology—a transgender ideology that disregards the naturalness of the “sex binary” and seeks to impose itself, like a “theology,” on society—and especially on children and teens.

The irony is that Sullivan’s argument perfectly aligns with conservative theological reasoning. Sullivan follows the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, naturalizing a conservative theology of sex while masquerading it as liberal neutrality.

II.

Taking sex as a synonym for gender and vice versa is a hallmark of conservative theological thought. For example, Associate Justice Thomas Alito, writing for the majority in Mahmoud v. Taylor, observes that “[m]any Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly” (24).

In queer and gender studies, the term gender ≠ biological sex. As David M. Halperin reminds us, “Sex has no history. It is a natural fact, grounded in the functioning of the body and, as such, it lies outside of history and culture” (“Is There a History of Sexuality?,” in the The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 416 [416-431], emphasis mine).

In contrast to sex, gender (like sexuality) does have a history (although a much longer one than sexuality). It refers to the cultural habits and practices that a society determines make, for example, a male (= sex) a man/masculine (= gender).

Sullivan’s conservative theological sex ideology comes through in his definition of homosexuality. “My sexual orientation,” Sullivan shares, “is based on a biological distinction [= sex] between men and women: I am attracted to the former and not to the latter” (emphasis mine). What this implies is that (homo)sexuality is, for Sullivan, like sex: an entirely biological, neutral fact of the human condition.

Sullivan complains that “[d]issenters from gender ideology are routinely unfriended, shunned and shamed. . . . That’s the extremely intolerant and illiberal atmosphere that now exists in the gay, lesbian, and transgender space” (emphasis mine). If that’s true, it’s unfortunate because Sullivan’s conservative theological sex ideology does have an upshot: it implies that homosexuality “reflects divine creation.”

The drawback of Sullivan’s sex ideology is that it cannot account for the fact that some of us are, as Michael Warner observes in The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (1999), more marked than others by our sexuality (23).

Like many proto-gay boys, I learned in middle school that having a penis does not necessarily make one a legitimate boy. According to my peers, the way I walked, talked, dressed, and styled my hair all cast doubt on the legitimacy of my penis. Thus, I was a queer, fag, and so on.

My middle school experience amply illustrates an essential point: sex has a gender. Sullivan may insist that sex/sexuality is “a neutral fact of the human condition,” but sex/sexuality is not merely a natural/neutral fact. Sex/sexuality is also an object of human interpretation.

Sullivan and his fellow conservative Catholic/religious friends are all too aware that politics will ultimately determine what sex/sexuality means. Sullivan and company want to end the hermeneutics of sex. They want the last word, and they know the deciding battlefield is the public school system.

III.

Sullivan worries that queer gender ideology is akin to an insurrection, a “societywide revolution” against traditional sex/sexuality norms. He is especially concerned about queer ideology being taught in our public elementary schools.

To Sullivan’s mind, helping children recognize that the relationship of sex to gender and vice versa is wiggly, by allowing them to play with pronouns and their gender comportment in public schools, is to play God. It has the power to resurrect Anita Bryant!

She is risen! She is risen, indeed!

The Supreme Court recently ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor that parents can opt their children out of public school lessons that include books with queer themes, including same-sex marriage, on religious grounds. Consider the mercifully brief sample of Associate Justice Alito’s “legal” reasoning for the majority below (for a complete analysis of the Court’s overreading and misreading of the relevant children’s books, listen to the recent episode of the podcast Strict Scrutiny):

In light of the record before us, we hold that the Board’s introduction of the “LGBTQ+-inclusive” storybooks—combined with its decision to withhold notice to parents and to forbid opt outs—substantially interferes with the religious development of their children and imposes the kind of burden on religious exercise that Yoder found unacceptable.

To understand why, start with the storybooks themselves. Like many books targeted at young children, the books are unmistakably normative. They are clearly designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected. . . .

Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, the only book that the dissent is willing to discuss in any detail, conveys the same message more subtly. The atmosphere is jubilant after Uncle Bobby and his boyfriend announce their engagement. Id., at 286a (“Everyone was smiling and talking and crying and laughing” (emphasis added)). The book’s main character, Chloe, does not share this excitement. “‘I don’t understand!’” she exclaims, “‘Why is Uncle Bobby getting married?’” Id., at 288a. The book is coy about the precise reason for Chloe’s question, but the question is used to tee up a direct message to young readers: “‘Bobby and Jamie love each other,’ said Mummy. ‘When grown-up people love each other that much, sometimes they get married.’” Ibid. The book therefore presents a specific, if subtle, message about marriage. It asserts that two people can get married, regardless of whether they are of the same or the opposite sex, so long as they “‘love each other.’” Ibid. That view is now accepted by a great many Americans, but it is directly contrary to the religious principles that the parents in this case wish to instill in their children. It is significant that this book does not simply refer to same-sex marriage as an existing practice. Instead, it presents acceptance of same-sex marriage as a perspective that should be celebrated. The book’s narrative arc reaches its peak with the actual event of Uncle Bobby’s wedding, which is presented as a joyous event that is met with universal approval. See id., at 300a–305a. And again, there are many Americans who would view the event that way, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. But other Americans wish to present a different moral message to their children. And their ability to present that message is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.

Next, consider the messages sent by the storybooks on the subject of sex and gender. Many Americans, like the parents in this case, believe that biological sex reflects divine creation, that sex and gender are inseparable, and that children should be encouraged to accept their sex and to live accordingly. Id., at 530a–531a, 538a–540a, 543a, 625a. But the challenged storybooks encourage children to adopt a contrary viewpoint. Intersection Allies presents a transgender child in a sex-ambiguous bathroom and proclaims that “[a] bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space.” Id., at 323a. The book also includes a discussion guide that asserts that “at any point in our lives, we can choose to identify with one gender, multiple genders, or neither gender” and asks children “What pronouns fit you best?” Id., at 350a (boldface in original). The book and the accompanying discussion guidance present as a settled matter a hotly contested view of sex and gender that sharply conflicts with the religious beliefs that the parents wish to instill in their children (23-24, unattributed italics mine).

The Court rightly observes that “there are many Americans who would view [the marriage of two men as a joyous occasion], and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so.” What the Court does not recognize is that such a view is not only that of “many Americans,” it is also the nonmetaphysical position of their Government.

If the Court’s majority were at all inclined to affirm the appropriateness of the Government teaching a nonreligious, nonpartisan view of sex in our public schools, it would have concluded the following: There are many Americans who would view the marriage of two males as contrary to their religious beliefs, and it goes without saying that they have every right to do so. However, the Government has no role to play in teaching theological metaphysics. Religious instruction is the obligation of parents of faith and their respective religious institutions.

We are right to worry that the majority opinion in Taylor takes religion from the football field (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District) into the classroom by implicitly questioning the legitimacy of the Government’s nonreligious view of sex. In my opinion, Taylor goes far beyond protecting religious liberty. It protects the status quo by incentivizing the teaching of traditional, religiously inflected sex ideology in our public schools.

But Sullivan is worried about Big Trans “overhauling the education not only of children with gender dysphoria, but of every other kid as well.” 

Sullivan does not mention Mahmoud v. Taylor in his opinion piece for The New York Times. Besides the shared insistence on the naturalness of a conservative theological understanding of sex, one other thread links Sullivan’s essay to the majority opinion in Taylor.

Sullivan, like the majority in Taylor, is expressly concerned about (gay and lesbian) youth being coerced by authority figures, such as teachers and doctors, into believing what he considers to be an unnatural gender ideology.

“As a child, uninterested in playing team sports . . . ,” Sullivan writes, “I was once asked by a girl when I was just 10 years old, ‘Are you sure you are not really a girl?’ Of course not, I replied” (emphasis mine). Nonetheless, Sullivan wants us to believe that he may not have given the same answer to the same question if the questioner had been “someone in authority—a parent or a teacher or a doctor [or a priest?].”

Alito expresses a similar concern in Taylor,

“The books therefore present the same kind of ‘objective danger to the free exercise of religion’ that we identified in Yoder. Id., at 218. That ‘objective danger’ is only exacerbated by the fact that the books will be presented to young children by authority figures in elementary school classrooms. As representatives of the Board have admitted, ‘there is an expectation that teachers use the LGBTQ-Inclusive Books as part of instruction,’ and ‘there will be discussion that ensues.’ App. to Pet. for Cert. 605a, 642a.” (25, emphasis mine).

Among the things Alito thinks coercion means is teachers communicating to young students a nonmetaphysical interpretation of sex, namely that it is not a synonym for gender and vice versa. Alito writes, “The upshot [of how Alito [over]reads Born Ready, written by Jodie Patterson and illustrated by Charnelle Barlow] is that it is hurtful, perhaps even hateful, to hold the view that gender is inextricably bound with biological sex” (25, emphasis mine).

The Court affirms the right of conservative religious parents to direct the public education of their children in Mahmoud v. Taylor. In U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case in which the Court’s majority allows states to ban gender-affirming care (while permitting the same treatments for minors not seeking gender-affirming care), the majority declines to resolve the legal question about the right of parents to direct the healthcare of their (trans) children. In this case, the Court neutralizes the authority of parents who are not (religiously) conservative or religious to care for their children, trusting the (conservative) Government to “parent” them.

IV.

Sullivan goes a step further than the Court’s majority in Skrmetti. Sullivan wants us to believe that no one is looking out for trans kids (except him and his fellow compassionate conservatives, of course). Even the supportive parents of trans children cannot be trusted to direct their healthcare.

Sullivan provides three reasons to remove the power to provide healthcare to children from the hands of their parents:

First, supportive parents trust their children’s testimony. Though young Sullivan was very clear with his female classmate about his sex, he questions whether or not trans children “know who they are.” He even contradicts himself, asserting that during the period between the ages of 9 and 13, he was unsure whether he was a boy or not.

Next, Sullivan argues supportive parents are the cucks of a fascistic queer ideology (i.e., of Big Trans). Specifically, they are illiberal cucks. They do as Big Trans tells them to do (i.e., force our kids to transition) for fear of being canceled—and they cancel others, like Sullivan, who refuse to obey the will of Big Trans.

Finally, Sullivan also believes supportive parents are reactionary cucks of a fascistic queer ideology. Sullivan asserts that if Trump (i.e., an election denier, encourager of insurrection against the U.S. government, Project 2025 supporter, and, according to one judge, a rapist) is for, say, the biological truth of gender, the cucks of a fascistic queer ideology are necessarily, unthinkingly against it.

What critics of the majority’s decision in Skrmetti (e.g., the 5-4 podcast) miss is that Trump’s conservative theological assertion of the “biological truth of gender” is underlying their reasoning.

State laws denying gender-affirming care to a teen male who desires to become a female is not, to the majority, discrimination based on sex. Healthcare providers may not deny gender-affirming treatment to a male because he is male. In many states, they must deny said treatment because he is a male who desires to become a female.

Recall that in Taylor, the Court’s majority similarly empowers parents to affirm a conservative theology, namely that sex and gender are inseparable. The rest of us must live with it—or else.

V.

Sullivan’s opinion piece for the New York Times is gross—and not principally because it is a conservative theological argument. It is also problematic because it is an example of the homophobic literary genre (e.g., queers are victims of queers; conservatives = persecuted; healthcare may be denied to women/queers; states should be allowed to decide the legality of queer life, etc.).

There is one aspect of Sullivan’s anti-trans/queer rhetoric that I find especially problematic: his deployment of the heuristics of fear. Echoing the logic of the late Cardinal Ratzinger (see, e.g., §10), Sullivan wants us to believe that we have only ourselves to blame for violence perpetrated against us as a consequence of our insistence on our difference from the (virtually) normal.

In The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks At Our Political Crisis (2018), a book inspired by Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss to Donald Trump in 2016, Martha C. Nussbaum draws on psychological research to describe two “heuristics” of fear. The first is the “availability heuristic,” and the second is the “cascade heuristic,” which has two aspects: reputational and informational (47-51). These heuristics can function to overwhelm our ability to carefully consider whether or not fear is warranted in a given situation, instead activating our instinctual impulses.

In his opinion piece, Sullivan employs the availability heuristic, creating an immediately recognizable image of imminent, life-threatening danger. He argues that the radicalization of the gay movement by trans/queer ideology is collapsing public support for gay and lesbian civil rights.

Sullivan combines the availability heuristic with the cascade heuristic, motivating people to come together to overcome an imminent, life-threatening danger: trans/queer ideology. If we don’t act, gay and lesbian civil rights, our rights, will be erased—and we will be subject to violent acts (the reputational aspect of the cascade heuristic).

Sullivan also offers us new information. He contends that advocates of trans/queer ideology are essentially raping children, forcing them to transition. Moreover, by forcing trans kids to transition, trans/queer advocates are ending the lives of gay and lesbian kids, as Sullivan believes a lot of trans kids are just confused gay and lesbian kids (the informational aspect of the cascade heuristic)

The heuristics of fear are highly motivating. They compel us to act together to avoid immediate danger.

The problem arises when the fear they amplify is not based on a sober assessment of evidence, facts, data, or our experiences. For example, there are good reasons to avoid the path of a tornado. However, when our fear is unwarranted, as it is in the public’s assessment of trans lives and experiences, it can destabilize democracy.

Unwarranted fear, especially combined with disgust, can destabilize democracy by motivating violence. Trans/queer ideology, Sullivan imagines, inspires “a sane backlash” against trans/queer people—and not only them, but virtually normal gay and lesbian people, too. As many trans people and queer gay men and lesbians already know: the threat of violence for being misaligned with (virtually) normative straight (male) society is not an idle one.

VI.

Queer gay men and lesbians stand in solidarity with their trans comrades (a word I use intentionally to enflame conservative passions) for many reasons, not least of which is our shared experience of the violence of (virtually) normative gendered politics. David M. Halperin observes, 

If homophobia sometimes functions less to oppress homosexuals than to police the behavior of heterosexuals and to strong-arm them into keeping one another strictly in line with the requirements of proper sex and gender norms, for fear of appearing queer it may be that one of the functions of transphobia is to police the behavior of lesbians and gay men and to terrorize them into conforming to the gender style deemed appropriate to their respective sexes (How To Be Gay [2012], 307, emphasis mine).

Yet, Sullivan believes that the radicalized gay movement is the real threat to a liberal or reasonably pluralistic society (see John Rawls). He asserts that the ever-expanding alphabet of queer welcome (e.g., L.G.B.T.Q.I.A+), and the new colors added to the pride flag to incarnate it, nowadays “demarcates a place not simply friendly to all types of people . . . but a place where anyone who does not subscribe to intersectional left ideology is unwelcome.”

Youth are the worst offenders of Sullivan’s law of welcome. The “young queer generation” are contemptuous, according to Sullivan, of “those who came before them.”

Dear Andrew,

It’s true. Trans/queer youth and adults don’t want to hang with you.

It’s not us. It’s your habit of villainizing, demeaning, and disparaging our lives and loves.

I don’t doubt that you believe you care about trans/queer youth and adults. However, if you take a moment to listen, you’ll likely gain a better understanding of why hanging out with us just isn’t currently working out for you.

As they say in Chicago, “He only had himself to blame.”

Smooches,

Tony (he/him).