Why is it so hard to debate with adherents of transgender ideology? Rational arguments are disparaged as hateful. Biological realities are denied. Even definitions seem impossible to pin down. Is this a side effect of a broken society, or a feature of the ideology itself? I propose it is a feature of transgender ideology to deflect debate because it builds on a worldview that reveres power and rejects truth.

As soon as Obergefell legalized same-sex marriage by judicial fiat in 2015, left-wing activists launched for the next waypoint on their odyssey to sexual anarchy: legitimizing a category of so-called transgender rights. Their straightforward legislative approach has run aground, as the (in)Equality Act fails year after year to win congressional approval. But transgender ideologues had a back-up plan: weasel the rights they wanted into existing law by redefining the concept of “sex.” After all, redefining “sex” was the whole object of the movement.

On May 13, 2016, the Obama administration Departments of Justice and Education distributed a “dear colleague” letter to every public school district in America, cajoling schools to radically reinterpret civil rights law, based on nothing more than bureaucratic assertion.

“Title IX … and its implementing regulations prohibit sex discrimination in educational programs and activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance,” the letter began, truthfully. But then came the twist: “This prohibition encompasses discrimination based on a student’s gender identity, including discrimination based on a student’s transgender status.”

At that point, the lame-duck Obama administration lacked the time needed to hammer this unsubstantiated interpretation into anything with the force of law, or even federal regulation. But the bad idea lingered on in left-wing lawsuits and progressive states throughout the first Trump administration. Then, in 2020, the Supreme Court swallowed the toxic argument in the infamous Bostock decision, opening a well of legal chaos into which the Biden administration jumped with both feet.

“Under Bostock’s reasoning, laws that prohibit sex discrimination also prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation,” argued a May 6, 2024 final rule officially expanding the poison to Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The Biden administration also tried to rewrite Title IX, along the lines of the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter — by changing the definitions — but courts have fortunately blocked that policy for now.

Three points are worth noting. First, the pressure for so-called transgender rights did not develop organically from logic, common sense, or natural law. Rather, it appeared overnight, promoted by activists who believe it is morally right to grant special rights to an endless number of minority groups. After the Supreme Court imposed same-sex marriage on all 50 states, effectively ending the struggle over gay rights for a time, the activists turned to gender identity as the next cause of the hour in an inevitable chain of expansion.

This belief is based on a particular corollary to critical theory called intersectionality. Critical theory is a philosophical outlook that classifies all people according to group identities and reduces interactions between those groups down to power dynamics. It thus erases individual responsibility and judges them whether they belong to a group that is considered “oppressed” or “oppressor.” Marxism applied critical theory to economic classes. Critical race theory applies to racial identities.

Intersectionality is an attempt to apply any number of critical theory grids at once, holding that different ways of classifying people as “oppressor” or “oppressed” interact in overlapping and compounding ways. (Hence, the least favored people are those who fall into the most “oppressor” categories, such as “straight white male,” and vice versa.)

It bears repeating that the intersectional, critical-theorist worldview of transgender ideology views all relationships in terms of power dynamics. Power is how they view the world, and power is how they believe everyone else views the world.

A second, related point is that those pushing transgender ideology seek not only to reject truth but to destroy it. If everything is about power, then truth is irrelevant. Thus, they feel justified to throw out the biological reality that there are only two, immutable sexes. Once that reality is discarded, one may as well redefine the term “sex” as well. For that matter, many courts have struggled with the reality that there is not even a consistent, workable way to define the term “transgender.”

Third, the brief history of the transgender movement illustrates the danger this outlook poses to the rule of law. Because they care only about power, transgender activists do not mind evading the normal legislative process to effect sweeping policy change by reinterpreting long-established laws. Nor do they care about the effect on the truth by torturing definitions beyond recognition.

In summary, transgender ideology — like any application of critical theory — discards both truth and law in pursuit of power.

Thus, it becomes clear that this philosophy is not a new one devised in this century, but the reappearance of an old philosophy, wearing a new face. The craving for power is as old as humanity, and humans have found many ways to justify their craving. As far back as the fourth century B.C., the character Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic expresses a contemporary view, which Plato sought to counter, that “justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.”

A similar attitude can be found in the pages of Scripture, when the Apostle John presents Pontius Pilate as a figure more interested in power than in truth or law.

Perhaps most infamously, Pilate asked Jesus skeptically, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). But this comment only scratches the surface. Pilate’s disinterest in truth informed his disinterest in upholding the law, as seen in two parallel comments. At first, Pilate disdains to judge Jesus, telling the Jewish leaders, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law” (John 18:31). Then, after questioning him, Pilate refuses to enforce his exoneration of Jesus. “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him” (John 19:6). These are the statements of a man who cared nothing for upholding justice in law.

Instead of truth or justice, John’s account suggests that Pilate was interested primarily in power. When questioning Jesus, Pilate repeatedly asked him whether he was a king (John 18:33, 37) — that is, whether he claimed a power that could challenge Rome. Pilate eventually concluded Jesus was not a king with earthly power and therefore not a threat.

However, just as he sought to rid his corrupt hands of Jesus, Pilate was in for a shock. “The Jews answered him, ‘… He has made himself the Son of God.’ When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid” (John 19:7-8). For a superstitious pagan, this was a credible possibility; perhaps Jesus really did have power — unearthly power — after all.

In response, Pilate questioned Jesus once more and, frustrated by Jesus’s silence, invoked his own earthly power. “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” (John 19:10). Again and again through the narrative, what Pilate seems to really care about is not law or truth, but power.

Given the similarities between Pontius Pilate and the gender ideologues (and other critical theorists) of our own day, Jesus’s example gives us a pattern for how to respond.

John records two significant statements Jesus makes, and both appealed to transcendent truth. In response to Pilate’s boast of authority, Jesus replied, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above” (John 19:11). An obsession with power is pointless when we realize that all power is given by God, the most powerful being of all.

Jesus’s other response redirected Pilate’s attention from power to truth. “You say that I am a king,” Jesus responded, but “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). If all power belongs to God, we should not focus so much on accruing power as on pleasing God, and what pleases God is truth.

Thus, Jesus’s responses to Pontius Pilate provide a framework for answering the transgender ideologues of our own day. In response to those who care not for truth but for power, we should assert God’s sovereignty, and so redirect their attention from power to truth.