OPINION:
America’s culture war was on full display Thursday night during a debate featuring Virginia’s gubernatorial candidates: Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the current lieutenant governor.
Both are vying to become the Old Dominion’s first female governor, and in Ms. Earle-Sears’ case, the first Black female governor. Ms. Spanberger, a former congresswoman, was cornered by Ms. Earle-Sears on the hot-button issue of biological males in females’ restrooms, locker rooms and sports teams.
At issue was an executive order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin banning males in female spaces. Despite being pressed repeatedly about having “nude men in [women’s] locker rooms,” Ms. Spanberger refused to say she would uphold the commonsense policy.
The Democrat also refused to call for Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones to leave the race against Republican incumbent Jason Miyares.
In texts from 2022, Mr. Jones fantasized about giving Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican, “two bullets to the head.” He told a colleague that he would like to urinate on Republicans’ graves. He also called the speaker’s children “little fascists” and said having the statehouse leader’s wife witness their deaths might change Mr. Gilbert’s political views. Mr. Jones also allegedly mused that if more police officers were killed, they would shoot fewer people.
Yes, he is running for the top law enforcement job in Virginia.
Pressed repeatedly, Ms. Spanberger refused to call for Mr. Jones’ departure and declined to say whether she still endorsed him.
“Would it take him pulling the trigger? Is that what would do it?” Ms. Earle-Sears asked. “And then you would say he needs to get out of the race, Abigail? You have nothing to say?”
No prominent Democrat at the state or national level has called for Mr. Jones to withdraw from the race, which speaks volumes.
This is not going unnoticed. A breath of fresh air is blowing through America’s zeitgeist — its intellectual, moral and cultural climate. Wokeness is under siege, in no small measure because of the left’s transgender overreach. It’s sort of the 1960s in reverse. During that turbulent, drug-infused decade and into the 1970s, entire professions fell to Marxist-inspired rebels. They seized the universities and media, turned liberal Jewish and Christian denominations into pawns of darkness and took over the guilds representing legal, medical and psychological professionals.
Feminism gave way to radical feminism and the LGBTQ movement, which redefined tolerance as “agree with us or else.” In 1973, activists bullied the American Psychiatric Association into removing homosexuality as a mental disorder. The psychological guild endorsed that action in 1975. Then came medical groups such as the American Medical Association and even the American Academy of Pediatrics, both of which endorse transgender treatments for minors.
More than 20 states enacted laws criminalizing counseling that does not affirm homosexual, bisexual or transgender behavior. You can take your child to a licensed counselor only to reinforce sexual confusion, not to steer them away from it.
For years, this tyrannical system faced no serious challenge until some states began banning what is euphemistically called “gender-affirming care.” It’s part of an overall recovery of common sense and sanity. So far, 25 states — all governed by Republicans — have moved to protect minors from chemical and hormonal experimentation and the surgical mutilation of body parts.
On June 18, the Supreme Court in the United States v. Skrmetti upheld Tennessee’s law prohibiting transgender treatments on minors, including “surgically removing, modifying, altering, or entering into tissues, cavities, or organs.”
One might have thought that the Hippocratic oath, which binds doctors to the concept of “first, do no harm,” would have been enough to stop these Mengele-like experiments, but not in our crazy times. So Republican lawmakers stepped in.
By contrast, 18 Democratic-run states and the District of Columbia shield access to such treatments. A total of 22 states plus the District also ban “conversion therapy,” the left’s negative term for restorative talk therapy.
As mentioned, a new breeze is blowing. The transgender train, which had looked unstoppable with its drag queen story hours mushrooming across the nation, has gone off the tracks. It’s now a millstone around the Democratic Party’s neck, as evidenced by Ms. Spanberger’s discomfort during the debate.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard Chiles v. Salazar, in which a Colorado Christian counselor, Kaley Chiles, challenged her state’s “conversion therapy” ban. That law specifies a $5,000 fine and potential loss of license for any counselor who dares to help someone recover his or her natural sexuality.
Most of the justices except Ketanji “I’m not a biologist” Brown Jackson seemed to agree with Ms. Chiles’ attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom that Colorado’s law violates freedom of speech and constitutes viewpoint discrimination.
This bodes well for a 7-2 or 6-3 ruling in the spring to restore freedom of counseling in the Rocky Mountain State and perhaps in the other Democratic-run states where client choice is illegal.
Virginia is the one Republican-run state that has one of these odious laws, enacted when Democrats controlled all three branches of the state government. It would take retaining the governor’s office and winning both houses in November to overturn the “conversion therapy” ban.
An Earle-Sears win looked implausible a few weeks ago, especially with the lockdown affecting more than 300,000 federal employees in Virginia, but Ms. Spanberger’s unwillingness to cut Mr. Jones loose and her fealty to the radical transgender agenda could be a game changer.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.