Left-wing authoritarian views and transgender ideology are both correlated with the belief that political violence is justified, according to a commissioned study released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Despite limitations, the study represents an early attempt to put numbers behind what should be an obvious conclusion.

HHS commissioned the study to be conducted by researchers at Rutgers University, the Manhattan Institute, and the Network Contagion Research Institute. These administered a “Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale (CGAS)” to 1,208 U.S. adults, as well questions screening for “Left-wing authoritarianism (LWA)” and asking respondents whether political violence was appropriate in six different contexts.

To derive the CGAS scale, they asked respondents to agree or disagree (on a seven-point sliding scale) with five statements “derived directly from the clinical guidance language” of the American Psychological Association (APA), APA Psychiatry, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, and the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP). These questions are:

1. “Failure to affirm a transgender person’s gender identity increases the risk of serious psychological distress to the trans person.”
2. “People should be supported in expressing their transgender identity.”
3. “Using the name a person chooses as part of their gender transition is a necessary form of support.”
4. “Using a transgender person’s preferred pronouns (e.g., he/him, she/her, they/them) is a necessary form of support.”
5. “Parents should support their children’s transgender exploration.”

The LWA measure borrowed a set of 13 questions developed by other researchers in 2022. Those questions include statements like, “The rich should be stripped of their belongings and status,” “We need to replace the established order by any means necessary,” “Anyone who opposes gay marriage must be homophobic,” and “University authorities are right to ban hateful speech from campus,” among other similar sentiments, according to the study’s Appendix B.

Likely at HHS guidance, the researchers organized their study around three central questions:

“1. How strongly do CGAS and other gender ideology-related beliefs correlate with LWA?
“2. Does LWA predict CGAS and other gender ideology-related beliefs over and above political identity, or is LWA just a proxy for being liberal?
“3. Do CGAS and LWA predict support for political violence?”

The answer to the third question is the one which grabs headlines, so the hurried reader may wish to skip to that section below. However, the study’s treatment of the first two questions provides important context that clarifies the nature of the research and its potential persuasive power.

In answer to the first question, researchers found a strong connection between left-wing authoritarian views and transgender ideology. Answers to the left-wing authoritarian views (LWA) index correlated 54% with the CGAS. They also correlated 59% with support for “coercive behavioral intentions tied specifically to ‘gender affirmation,’” including legally requiring the use of preferred names and pronouns, taking down YouTube videos for deadnaming, and ignoring the Supreme Court decision protecting girls’ sports. The LWA answers even correlated 44% with the mere belief that “transgender people are facing genocide in the United States.”

These correlation figures represent substantial overlap between the variables. Correlations do not merely show an overlap in answers. If the answers were merely random and not connected, there would be a bit of overlap, but the correlation score would be nearer to zero than to one. If a correlation score is higher than 70%, variables are considered to be so alike that it skews the statistical results. While these correlations are not quite so high, they are substantial.

In a different model, the researchers assessed that “CGAS alone accounted for approximately 31.5% of the variance in LWA.” If this regression were valid, it would suggest that fully a third of left-wing authoritarianism is caused by gender ideology.

However, the researchers later admitted that they could not establish causality in any direction. “The cross-sectional design permits no conclusions about the direction of effects: CGAS may arm LWA, LWA may selectively draw individuals toward CGAS-consistent content, or a common third factor may drive both,” they said. “The present data is consistent with all three accounts and cannot adjudicate between them.”

In any event, the strong correlation between left-wing authoritarianism and support for clinical guidelines affirming transgender procedures “raise a question of scientific responsibility,” the researchers argued. “Clinical recommendations are expected to rest on evidence rather than ideology, yet the positions distilled in CGAS are disproportionately endorsed by individuals high in a form of political extremism that is corrosive to liberal democracy. At minimum, this suggests the institutions advancing these recommendations failed to test whether their guidance encodes ideology rather than medicine, a confusion of activism with clinical science.’

“Whether that failure reflects bias, institutional capture, or inattention is an empirical question the present correlational data cannot answer, and one future research should address directly,” the researchers added.

Regarding the second question, the researchers concluded that left-wing authoritarian (LWA) views were not just a proxy for being “liberal” politically, but that such views had a correlation with transgender affirmation over and above a liberal political identity. They found that a liberal “political identity was the strongest predictor” of transgender affirmation, but that left-wing authoritarianism “remained a strong independent predictor … even after political identity was included in the model.”

(For those who want numbers, the study reported that the coefficient (?) for political identity was 0.512, while the coefficient for LWA was 0.326. But the published report did not provide enough information about the variables, and particularly about political identity, to turn these numbers into meaningful English.)

One factor that softens this finding is high correlation between the variables. The data showed 50% correlation between left-wing authoritarianism and a liberal political identity, and 69% correlation between transgender affirmation (CGAS) and a liberal political identity. Recall that correlation above 70% is considered too high, as it means the variables are so similar as to be virtually interchangeable. But statistics is a science of estimates, not hard-and-fast numbers. If 70% correlation is too high to run a regression, 69% correlation is hardly less so.

At the very least, these data show that left-wing political identity, transgender affirmation, and authoritarian views all exist together in an ecosystem with substantial overlap, but the precise extent of this overlap or relationship between the different aspects is difficult to pinpoint. The fact that the researchers included this indeterminate analysis in their published product strongly suggests that investigating the question was part of their commission from HHS, and they simply did their best.

The third question is most significant, as it brings in the un-American theme of political violence. The survey asked respondents whether they supported six specific crimes of political violence, three against persons and three against property. The list included: “killing Charlie Kirk, killing Donald Trump, killing [United Healthcare CEO] Brian Thompson, arson of ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people’s property, and violence against police.”

The researchers found fairly consistent opinions across the different types of political violence. Approval of the different forms of political violence correlated between 54% and 47% with left-wing authoritarian views and between 35% and 23% for transgender affirming views. For adherents of both viewpoints, killing Donald Trump and arson of ICE buildings found the greatest support, while violence against the police found the lowest support.

The only noticeable discrepancy in priorities was that left-wing authoritarians were more interested in killing Brian Thompson, while those who supported transgender affirmation were more interested in killing Charlie Kirk.

When the researchers attempted to distinguish these two ideological types from a generic liberal political identity, they found that left-wing authoritarianism and transgender affirmation were stronger predictors of favoring political violence than simply a liberal political identity. However, the substantial overlap between the categories makes it hard to place much weight on that finding, as detailed above.

The study consciously saw itself as pioneering a new avenue of research. “For decades, psychological research on attitudes toward individuals who identify as transgender has focused almost exclusively on prejudice,” the researchers noted, while “little research has examined the characteristics associated with strong endorsement of ‘gender-affirming’ norms.”

It came to the unsurprising conclusion (to anyone with a newspaper) that pro-transgender views and pro-left-wing authoritarian views are associated with people who also favor political violence of various forms. The study’s primary achievement was to start the conversation, but even the authors themselves acknowledged that much further research is needed to determine exactly how these views fit together.

In fact, this seems to be the conclusion reached by HHS leadership as well. “This study raises important questions about what happens when ideology is given the authority of medicine,” said Admiral Brian Christine, Assistant Secretary for Health. “The association between sex-rejecting clinical beliefs, authoritarian attitudes, and the justification of political violence warrant serious scientific scrutiny. HHS will continue to pursue rigorous research that examines these relationships and gives the American people the evidence they deserve.”