Is the right more passionate about the positions they hold than the left? In his book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt identified six moral passions of our species. His perspective might provide an answer to my question. The six moral passions he describes are, Care versus Harm, Fairness versus Cheating, Liberty versus Oppression, Loyalty versus Betrayal, Authority versus Subversion, and Sanctity versus Degradation

The first moral passion is care versus harm. When we see a child being mistreated, we all experience moral revulsion and are driven to intervene. We want to see children being cared for, not harmed. That is the strongest moral passion for most people.

The second is fairness versus unfairness. We all know life is unfair, but nevertheless, it bothers us. In the United States women earn 84 cents on the dollar of what men earn.. African-American women earn 67 cents on the dollar, Native American women 64 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic-American women 57 cents on the dollar. That is not fair, and we want to bring about change.

The third moral passion is freedom versus oppression. The desire to be free birthed the US as a nation. The fight against oppression continues today, as people of color, the LGBTQ+ population, and others fight for the right to be free from oppression.

All three of these moral passions are held by all Americans in fairly equal measure. But while we all want care versus harm, fairness versus unfairness, and freedom versus oppression, how we define care, fairness, and freedom and for whom differs greatly from one group to another.

The remaining three moral passions are more often held by the right than the left. The fourth is loyalty versus betrayal. To understand this passion, we need to shift for a moment from moral passions to moral standards. While there are six moral passions, there are three moral standards for our species.

The first and oldest moral standard is that there is no greater moral good than to protect the integrity of the tribe. The second, common to all forms of religious fundamentalism, is that there is no greater moral good than to obey the teachings of the gods. Those on the right often hold to one or both of those moral standards.

Those who lean politically left hold to the third moral standard, that there is no greater moral good than to protect the freedom of the individual. This is the youngest of the three, though it is the most common standard in Europe and the secular US. It is in the very core of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,, that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

Those who hold to this third moral standard, that there is no greater good than to protect the freedom of the individual, speak often of a person living their truth, which is an indication that we believe, all things being equal, that the locus of control should be within the individual..

If you hold one of the first two moral standards, then the moral passion of loyalty versus betrayal is in the warp and woof of your moral standard. Loyalty to the tribe and/or the gods is paramount.

If your moral standard is the freedom of the individual, then you are more likely to accept the likelihood that individuals will change their loyalties as they grow and develop. A switched loyalty may have nothing to do with betrayal. It may be moving from one stage of faith to the next, or one hierarchy of need to the next. It’s nothing personal, just an outcome of personal growth.

A fifth moral passion is similar to the fourth. It is authority versus subversion. Growing up as an evangelical Christian, my insatiable curiosity was not seen as a positive trait. The Bill and Gloria Gaither tune, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me” was the mantra of college and seminary classmates and professors.

If you hold to the third moral standard, that there is no greater good than to protect the freedom of the individual, then subversion is a way of life. Disrupting systems is in your DNA. Calling out injustice is imperative.

For those on the right, questioning authority is anathema. You decide which tribe is yours, which god is yours, and you unquestionably follow them.

Derek Flood in his book Disarming Scripture says that in the Judeo-Christian tradition there were always two different kinds of religious followers. One group was unquestionably obedient and comfortable letting someone else do their thinking for them. The other group could be called faithful questioners, understanding there is a trajectory to religion that will bring about changes in understanding and practice over time, based on the growth and development of the species over time. It is interesting to note that when he quoted Hebrew scripture texts, Jesus quoted the faithful questioners, not those who were unquestionably obedient.

The current cultural wars have been initiated by those who are unquestionably obedient.  They are not interested in the conclusions of science or common human understanding. They are not open to questioning, because that would be subverting authority.

The sixth moral passion, also the realm of the religious right, is sanctity versus degradation. This is the logical outcome of viewing scripture as sacrosanct and set in stone. Any adjustment of views is not due to accumulated knowledge leading to new conclusions. It is degrading the perfection of the original.

This view of scripture did not come into being until the Modern age arrived with the Renaissance and carried through the Enlightenment. After 1500 years of Western civilization’s focus being on God, the focus shifted to science. As science became more respected and religion less respected, religious leaders sought respectability according to the scientific method popularized during the Modern age. Scripture went from being seen as a narrative history of God’s people to being seen as a book of facts, rules, and regulations.

This led to woefully inadequate attempts to prove the world was created in seven twenty-four hour days, that the earth is six thousand years old, and that every species was saved on Noah’s Ark. It also led to the very unfortunate doctrine of inerrancy, the belief that the original copies of scripture were without error in every jot and tittle. Never mind that we don’t have the original copies of scripture. The closest we have are fragments of copies of copies. Nevertheless, the Southern Baptist Convention purged its seminaries of “liberals” who did not believe in inerrancy.

The truth is that scripture never claimed to be inerrant. The notion of inerrancy hadn’t been invented yet. It was a Modern age adaptation of the wrongly understood scientific method  toward a Christian end. To accept anything other than the conviction that the original copies of the Bible were without error was a degradation of the Christian message.

Unfortunately, what that entire Modern age Christian agenda accomplished was not to make Christianity respectable. It was to take the focus off of Jesus and place it on the inerrant Bible. We moved from worshipping Jesus to worshipping the Bible, from Christology to bibliolatry.

These last three moral passions do help us understand why the religious right is more dedicated to their platform and ideology than the religious left. One group works from all six moral passions, while the other only works from the first three.

What is the solution to this dilemma. Yeah, I’m not sure. I keep waiting for Jonathan Haidt to write a new book that lays out a path forward for the left, but so far that hasn’t happened, though his book, The Coddling of the American Mind did give us a starting point. His newest book, focused on the damage smartphones are doing to our young people, looks promising, but not within this realm.

If you know if someone addressing this issue, let me know. I’d be happy to bring that information to all of you.

I was in a situation recently in which people chastised a group of us for making a decision we had not, in fact, made. Some were soft-spoken and thoughtful. Others were angry and accusatory. Most had already reached a conclusion not supported by all of the facts. Decisions were made on partial information, taken out of context.

When partial information is taken out of context, you can assume almost anything. If I told you I was freezing as I write this, you might accurately assume I am not actually freezing, I’m just cold. That would be correct. You might also assume it must be a very cold day. That is not correct. It’s a relatively warm late winter day, but when I got dressed this morning I somehow thought it was much warmer than it is, and I’ve not yet gone to get a sweater. I am cold, but not cold enough to go get the sweater. As I write this, it occurs to me that I am, in fact, cold enough to get that sweater. Hang on a minute.

Okay, now I’m back and much warmer. The sweater is crew neck, blue and white horizontal stripes. I got it at PacSun when I was in Soho with my granddaughters last winter. Now where was I? Oh yeah.

In my counseling practice, I often recommend the little book, The Four Agreements. One of the agreements is, Do Not Make Assumptions. The human mind is inclined to make assumptions, particularly in a left-brain oriented world. For eons, our species received information in the right brain, sent it to the left brain for analysis, and then returned it to the right brain to place the information in context. That works quite well. Unfortunately, since the modern age arrived about 500 years ago, we have been fixated with the left brain. From Descartes to John Locke to the present day, the left hemisphere of the brain has been valued over the more wholistic right brain.

The problem is that purely left brain thinking leads to premature conclusions not placed in context. The right hemisphere is able to hold competing ideas without jumping to premature conclusions. The left is not.

All of this gets worse when there is no arbiter of truth trusted by the majority of people. As an analogy in a recent article in The Atlantic states, once we no longer trust metallurgists or jewelers or any other group of experts that can tell us if that ring on our finger is truly made of gold, we begin to question whether or not real gold even exists. Is everything fake gold? Is the social media influencer who writes about gold the person I want to trust on the matter, even if he is a college dropout who has never read a book on metallurgy?

You see the problem. I do not know where the folks in the meeting got their information, but I have a hunch it was not by contacting those who actually had the information necessary to draw a fact-based conclusion. As one who was in a position to have that information, I find it interesting that no one bothered to come to me before drawing their conclusions.

It is easy to point fingers, but I have been guilty of the same behavior. I recently had a delightful conversation with a person with whom I disagree about many things. It was interesting how subtly my perspective changed when I moved from viewing him as a right wing “other” to a person with whom I have a lot in common.

Maybe it’s a good time to remind myself of the Four Agreements. First, use impeccable words. Second, do not take it personally. Third, do not make assumptions. Fourth, do your best.

I always say the truth will set you free, but it will make you miserable first. Maybe I should add another sentence to that. The truth will set you free, but you have to do the work to discern it first. The truth matters, and it always will.

And so it goes.

Last month I wrote about Yascha Mounk’s book, The Identity Trap. He writes about the origins and problem of standpoint theory, cultural appropriation, limits on free speech, progressive separatism and identity sensitive public policy.

Given the current political environment, with anti-woke attacks from the right and cancel culture from the left, Mounk was pretty brave to tiptoe into these controversial waters. As a professor at Johns Hopkins and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, Mounk comes from a supportive environment. Nevertheless, I have no doubt he will be attacked from both the right and the left.

My longtime friend David and I have a phrase we have been using for years – The Radical Middle. Mounk speaks from the radical middle. The radical middle is radical because it is a hard position to hold. Humans have a tendency to think in binary categories. You are either with me or against me. And if you are in the middle, well then, you are against me.

I have been receiving attacks from the far right for a decade. There are over 13,000 comments on my first TED Talk. I’ve never looked at any of them. I’m told it’s not a pretty sight. Over the last year, for the first time, I have been attacked from the left. All of it has come from one stance I have taken.

If from a very early age a child has consistently and persistently claimed to be the gender not on their birth certificate, I believe it is all right to consider medical intervention for that child as soon as they reach puberty. These adolescents are transgender, and every indication is that they will always identify as such.

On the other hand, studies done in Europe and elsewhere are consistently showing that adolescents who first identify as transgender or nonbinary during their teen years are often no longer identifying that way when they are older. The majority of these individuals were identified female at birth. According to the 2022 US Transgender Survey, those identified female at birth are almost four times as likely to identify as nonbinary as those identified male at birth. All of these studies lead me to the same conclusion.

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care previously said no medical treatment should begin before age 16. Their new standards have removed any specific age, but state that no medical treatment should be started before natal puberty has begun, and in all cases, comprehensive multidisciplinary evaluation must be completed before treatment begins. I believe that evaluation should be informed by the latest peer reviewed studies regarding the medical treatment of transgender adolescents.

I have always been cautious in what I do and do not say on this subject, not only because it is controversial, but because not enough research has been done to draw ironclad conclusions. However, I have not been cautious enough.

I will no longer publicly comment on the issue. I am accustomed to being attacked from the right. I am not accustomed to being attacked from the left. Being attacked from either direction for sharing legitimate concerns is troubling.

Cancel culture says if you are not with us in every jot and tittle, you are not with us at all. I am a transgender woman, but if I do not agree with the currently popular positions regarding transgender medical treatment in every way, then I must be cancelled, no opportunity for rebuttal or continuing discourse. That is similar to what I have experienced from the far right, where attacks do not come with an opportunity for response or rebuttal. Whether from the right or the left, these attacks accumulate, and I no longer have the energy to fight back. I am weary.

It is not easy being transgender and Christian. It is even harder when you are prepared for a frontal attack, and receive one from the flank.

And so it goes.