Giving up the whole game

In the latest installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson addresses the assertion of CPAC speaker Michael Knowles that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” Richardson points out that Knowles’s statement is not just an attack on transgender people. She makes a connection to Hungarian autocrat’s Victor Orbán’s efforts to end liberal democracy:

Tapping into the anti-LGBTQ sentiment that Orbán and those like him have used to win voters, the statement was a crucial salvo in the attempt to destroy American democracy and replace it with Christian nationalism.

But there is a very simple answer to the radical right’s attack on LGBTQ people that also answers their rejection of democracy. It is an answer that history has proved again and again. Once you give up the principle of equality, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that people are unequal, and that some people are better than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have stamped your approval on the idea of rulers and subjects. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in the lesser group.

A useful supplement, from Samuel Perry, professor of sociology: How can we spot #ChristianNationalism in the wild? And a related post: Mary Miller and trans rights.