The Episcopal Conference of the United States, transfobia and failure of solidarity

Reflections by Nicolete Burbach* published on the New Ways Ministry website (USA) on February 15, 2025, freely translated by Diego de La Tenda di Gionata

Donald Trump began to declare war on transgender people. Through a series of executive orders, he seeks nothing more than the elimination of transsexuality and, by extension, of transgender people from public life.

In fact, we are even eliminated by history: the day I sat down to write this article, it was reported that the references to transgender people were removed from the national monument of Stonewall and its website.

The intention, of course, is to eliminate us also from the future: make it impossible today, so that there are no more transgender people tomorrow.

They will fail. Transgender people have always existed and there will always be.

These orders have been joined by a series of other directives that attack a series of minorities rights.

The response of the Episcopal Conference of the United States to this aggression was, at the best of the hypotheses, lukewarm, condemning Trump's policies towards immigrants and welcoming his transfobic policies in the same declaration and responding in a decidedly positive way in other cases.

The adhesion of the bishops to Trump's transphobia is not simple intolerance. It is a more complex form of bigotry, which revolves around the protection and celebration of what they believe to be human nature.

They see human nature as attacked by transsexuality, so they think that protecting it means fighting transsexuality. They also believe that this is ultimately positive for transgender people, because it means protecting our nature from our alleged attempts to endanger it.

And they believe to protect others (especially young and fertile girls) from corruption through those who imagine being our contagious and self -destructive illusions. These - not the trans marginalization, poverty or exclusion - are their political priorities for our lives.

They are very wrong.

First of all, there are many different interpretations of human nature. You can find many sophisticated reports in gender and transgender studies, not to mention trans theology and, more generally, of theology that questioned both anthropology (highly simplistic) imagined by the Conference of the Catholic Bishops of the United States, and their analysis of transsexuality, and their responses to the ethical issues associated with it.

The existence of this literature shows that the question if human nature is protected by the suppression of transsexuality in society is very complex and difficult to resolve.

As a result, the position of the United States's episcopal conference on these issues is very weak: there are many ways in which it could be wrong. Nor do they seem to have the skills necessary to establish with rigor what the good policy is.

In fact, the official Catholic rhetoric on transsexuality not only ignores, but actively contributes to obscuring the entire literary corpus. I still have to find a document of the Church that illustrates this competence among the decision makers.

The question if a policy damages trans people in more trivial ways is much simpler. As I supported elsewhere on this blog, initiatives aimed at eliminating transsexuality from public life also serve to eliminate transgender people.

In the same way, the alleged "protection of human nature" towards us goes to the detriment of the well -being of transgender people. In this perspective, transgender people are, at the best of hypotheses, poor individuals and patients unable to cope with our sexual nature, which must be accepted with mercy on an interpersonal basis and suppressed in the social and political sphere. The result is that we are increasingly controlled and marginalized for trying to live a trans life.

Of course, these most concrete questions are still difficult to solve in some respects. A large amount of disinformation and ideological panic confuse the waters.

This situation masks the fact that much of what has become transfobia of "common sense" is actually more doubtful than it seems, that it is health care for trans children, safety in the spaces reserved for a single sex (not mixed?) Or of the alleged universal advantages of trans women compared to cis women in sport.

The media also make transfobia seem something respectable and act in the minds of people through a process that resembles political radicalization. But these concrete questions are even more obvious than the questions about human nature. In many cases, simply look.

In this context, it is frustrating that the Episcopal Conference of the United States seems more interested in supporting policies that arise from its weak opinions than to protect transgender people from obvious and incontrovertible damage that these policies cause.

The material and concrete solidarity with the poor and marginalized has gone into the background compared to the astrusal metaphysics of the cultural war.

Considering transfobic policy in this more concrete, material and rooted way also highlights a second inadequacy in the approach of the Episcopal Conference of the United States, which I consider even more serious.

During his presidential campaign, Trump used transphobia as part of a wider rhetoric "We and them" (or "they/them") who made various minority groups goat, including both immigrants and transgender people.

In addition, its transsexual attacks are an expression of its wider political authoritarianism, which tries to justify using this scapegoat, to build a threat image.

His attacks on trans people's rights are also part of a wider attack on equality legislation. Finally, its attacks on transsexuality (and in fact Catholic attacks on homosexuality) are an old tradition of the nationalist policy more generally.

In short, Donald Trump has a wider political project - a project of violence, exploitation and repression - and its transfobia is an integral part of it. This means that when you embrace transfobia, you also embrace an aspect of Trump's policy.

When you promote transphobia, promote your policy. And it doesn't matter if you criticize other aspects of his policy, such as his immigration policy, because you are still supporting a fundamental part of his program. His policy is a cohesive set; You can't separate the pieces.

Nor is it important why people support anti-identde policies so that they can help Trump's broadest project in this way. It can be said to have "reasonable concerns" regarding health care, or feminist concerns about toilets and changing rooms.

You can also support, like the bishops, that your Catholic commitment for human dignity contrasts with the rights of transgender people. None of this imports. All we need is your support.

In this context, the Episcopal Conference of the United States has simply allied with Trump. Their partial support is still a support, and not only to its transfobia, but to its wider project, including its actions towards the minorities that do not want to be eliminated by the company.

Trump's cohesive political project requires an equally cohesive opposition. The warm condemnation of the Episcopal Conference of the United States raises the question: what about the other half of the heart? What is he doing?

The answer: collaborate.

*Nicolete Burtbach is responsible for social and environmental justice at the London Jesuit Center, United Kingdom, which focuses his research on the use of Pope Francis' teachings to face the difficulties in the encounter of the Church with transsexuality.

Original text: The Other Half of the Heart: The USCCB, Transphobia, and The Failure of Solidarity