If There Was a Cure For Conservatism, Would They Take It?

If they support conversion therapy so much, why not?

4 min read

Just now

Photo by Karollyne Videira Hubert on Unsplash

Okay, for context here, Chase Strangio appeared recently on a podcast with Ross Douthat, a conservative commentator and columnist for the New York Times who recently started a podcast series called “Interesting Times.”

For this specific podcast, Douthat started talking with transgender lawyer and advocate Chase Strangio about the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, which allowed Tennessee (and other states, by extension) to criminalize medical transition care for transgender adolescents. As one of the lawyers arguing the case, Chase lost. Ross asked him if he’d learned anything from that loss.

After a while, though, Ross shifted the topic a bit, giving this “hypothetical” to Chase:

[I]f tomorrow the state of Tennessee presented…an alternative treatment for the experience of gender dysphoria that reconciled the person’s psychology to their natal sex…. Well, I’m curious what you would say, but I’m very skeptical that you or any other transgender activist group would say, O.K, that’s great.

This is a cowardly defense of conversion therapy given to Chase Strangio, a hero for the trans rights movement — a transgender man and a prominent…