Transgender Attorney who argued before Supreme Court explains why it was ‘my nightmare’

In 1967, the Loving v. Virginia case, decided by the Supreme Court was a landmark civil rights decision that struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. And the world grew a tiny bit more tilted toward justice.

in 2021, in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court rules states can ban gender-affirming care for youth, but only those either identified by self or other as transgender. And the world grew much more tilted toward injustice.

Let the juxtaposition sink in for a second.

In this review, some concepts stood out for me quite boldly. I want to take a little time to write about a few of the.

Unpersoning and unprotecting trans people

First was the assertion that

The moment was historic. Strangio became the first out transgender person to argue before the court. But Heightened Scrutiny, directed by Sam Feder and released this summer, makes clear that the argument was never about firsts. It was about fighting for the last remaining space of protection in a country increasingly committed to erasing trans lives from law, medicine, and public imagination.

I believe there is an active and malevolent movement afoot to erase trans people from society, to actively unperson anyone trans. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, here's the three-minute primer:

In George Orwell's 1984, an "unperson" is someone who has been erased from existence, both literally and figuratively, by the Party. Their name is removed from all records, their past actions are rewritten to fit Party ideology, and their existence is denied and forgotten. Essentially, they are completely removed from history and public memory.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

Vaporization:

The process of becoming an unperson is often referred to as "vaporization". This implies a complete and utter erasure, as if they never existed.

Removal from Records:

Not only are they physically removed, but their names are struck from all documents, books, and even public notices. This includes things like membership lists, birth records, and even mentions in historical texts. We are close to this right now in the federal law and executive decree where a person's is not allowed to be reflected on public documentation

Rewriting History:

The Ministry of Truth, where (protagonist) Winston Smith works, is responsible for rewriting history to align with the Party's current narrative. This includes fabricating new histories and backstories for people who have become unpersons.

Forgetting the Unperson:

Other Party members are also expected to forget the unperson, as remembering them could be considered a thoughtcrime. This creates a culture of fear and enforced conformity.

Examples:

In the novel, Syme, a man working on the Newspeak dictionary, becomes an unperson after being deemed too intelligent and dangerous by the Party. Comrade Withers is another example, a former Party official who is purged and erased from history.

Consequences:

Becoming an unperson is a fate worse than death, as it involves not just physical elimination but also the complete obliteration of one's identity and legacy.

So, are we at the same place Orwell posited in his description of the ultimate soul-destroying dystopia? I believe we are.

Bad Media Coverage Sets the Stage for the Defence of Bad Law

Another idea covered is this:

(Documentary Film Maker) Feder’s central argument is that media coverage, especially from centrist or liberal “paper of record” institutions like the New York Times, has laid the foundation for legal attacks on trans people.

“This isn’t just bad coverage,” Feder said. “It’s malpractice. Studies debunked years ago are being cited as fact. Major publications ignore corrections or give equal weight to bigotry. And all of it gets cited by judges.”

Strangio has spent much of his career warning about this phenomenon. “I’ve seen how headlines become briefs,” he told The Advocate. “How quote-unquote legitimate coverage creates a record of doubt. And that record becomes the justification for these laws.” He criticized the pretense of neutrality in mainstream journalism, especially in the selection and framing of stories about trans people. “The suggestion that people are just doing objective journalism is itself in the service of eclipsing the ideology behind it,” he said.

Strangio argued that so-called objectivity is selectively applied, excluding trans journalists for being “ideologically positioned,” while treating “white, rich, straight, cis men” as default neutral voices.

“What I would like people to do is to really question, well, why did we select this story and are we providing the full context?” he said. Coverage of gender-affirming care, he noted, often omits the fact that the population affected is “tiny, tiny, tiny,” while critiques leveraged against trans care would apply to many other forms of treatment that don’t receive the same scrutiny.

This is a powerful and strong indictment. While there are bastions of truth like the Advocate that will argue on behalf of our community, they are considered minor sources of reportage with inherent biases, lacking the mantle of credibility of papers like the New York Times. It is their shaping of the coverage on Trans rights and issues that gives cover to the cockroaches in our society who hate us with a blinding and unreasoned hate.

It is this failure of the media that platforms anti-trans disinformation under the guise of neutrality. Instead, the "popular press" has doubled down, publishing and promoting narratives that erase trans voices while fueling courtroom arguments designed to erase trans rights.

Supreme Court Upholds 21st Century Bigotry

Finally, there is this commentary:

At the Supreme Court in December, Strangio and his team argued that Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1 violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution. The law banned puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries for trans youth, while permitting comparable treatments for cisgender minors. By singling out care needed only by trans youth, the law explicitly discriminated on the basis of sex and gender identity.

It seems obvious that this is an uneven and unequal application of the law aimed specifically at one demographic, aimed as surely as the Dred Scott decision, which unpersoned people with dark pigmented skin and reinforced the conditions that exacerbated the Civil War.

I am saddened and disappointed in the effort put into this decision to distort the real agenda for this decision, and the ability of people of ill intent to create and voice the gymnastically twisted semantics that made this such an easy call for the most blindly biased. It seems to me that a law which witholds puberty blockers and other gender support care only from trans patients while reaffirming their use and legality for every other patient is inherently biased and creates a situation where some citizens receive unequal protection under the law. Can anyone explain to me like I am a fifth grader learning civics, why this is not the case?

I personally do not believe America will survive the current administration, but I do believe that some day historians will look back on this decision and a raft of others and discover in them the roots of our downfall.