I often quote the last several lines of David Whyte’s poem, Sweet Darkness. Since last week I’ve been at the front of the poem, quoting its first few lines:

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also

When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you

Time to go into the dark, where the night has eyes to recognize its own

I’ve been lost for the last week with no map or working compass. I was blindsided in 2016 and I immediately determined to fight back. This time I’m not yet ready to fight back. I am weary. While I am greatly concerned for our democracy as a whole, much of my current weariness is self-referential, related to transgender rights.

The focused attack on transgender rights is about eight years old, with many victories celebrated by the right in state legislatures over the last three years. Almost 600 bills were introduced and 90 signed into law in 2023 alone. Now I fear there will not just be state laws, but federal laws or executive orders eliminating medical care for transgender people. The anti-trans rhetoric is on the increase and it is frightening.

Republicans made transgender rights a major issue in this campaign. Focus groups showed the anti-trans commercials that aired in swing states were more effective than others at getting out the Republican vote.

It is also concerning that the extreme left has played a part in creating such a perilous environment for transgender people. My greatest fears are for the very small percentage of children who are transgender, children no longer able to get the medical care they so desperately need. These children knew they were trans at a very early age and made it known at an early age. There was no mistaking their gender identity.

With the exception of these children, who are fairly easily identified, I question the appropriateness of medical treatment of teenagers who do not present with gender dysphoria before their teen years. An inordinate number of them were identified female at birth, and a significant number are no longer identifying as transgender once they are in their twenties. We should be looking at the data, as European nations have been doing. Many of those nations have become more cautious about providing teen medical treatment of gender dysphoria until we understand the trends.

I also understand why many feel that a transgender woman whose body developed as a male should not be playing women’s sports. Anti-androgens and estrogen do diminish one’s physical strength, but if your body developed as a male, not all sports advantages have been lost. I have felt that in my own body.

For having those opinions I have been castigated by the left, sometimes with the same level of vitriol with which I have been castigated by the right. I am nervous about publishing this post because of the power of cancel culture. Strategic essentialism and standpoint theory have created an environment that threatens freedom of speech. Just look at how easy it has become to lose your status as a tenured professor at a university, or how Jewish students are being treated on many campuses. Put that together with the newly empowered right and no wonder I do not know how to proceed. I want to be involved in the birth of something new, but I cannot find purchase. I do not see where to take the first step.

At the moment I will serve where I am comfortable, working within the church and writing about its effect on American culture. I have a sixty-five page book proposal with my agent tentatively titled, Can Religion Be Good – Creating Change and Finding Hope in a Polarized World. I’m eager to see which publishing company picks it up.

These are trying times, but life goes on. I will live with more caution, because I must. I will also live fully, because as I say so often, the call toward authenticity is sacred, and holy, and for the greater good.

And so it goes.