The Supreme Court just handed a defeat to the transgender movement with its United States v. Skrmetti decision. The June 18 ruling allows states to ban sex-change hormones and transition operations for minors.
It was not a total victory. The decision still allows some states to promote these mutilations on children. However, it breaks the momentum of a movement that had hoped to allow its passions to run unbridled. Someone said no and barred the way after so many yeses.
This partial victory and other recent defeats create the impression that the movement has lost its footing. In the words of the Skrmetti case’s lawyer, the decision to bring it to the Supreme Court was “one of the biggest mistakes in the history of trans activism.”
Jeopardizing Everything
The consequences of this decision inevitably spill over into other areas of the “gender” debate. Trans is just a component in the LGBTQ movement. For the general public, all the letters are perceived as a single cause. Thus, when the transgender movement is defeated, the gains of the whole LGBTQ alphabet are jeopardized.
To the Christian opposition, the defeat encourages and provides more incentive to fight against trans tyranny and affirm the need for morality.
What makes these developments so extraordinary is that they were unexpected. All this happened as the LGBTQ movement seemed to be reaching the apex of success in its legal and cultural battle to impose its deviant lifestyles on the general public. Media, Hollywood, academia, government, and even churches were all on board to overcome any obstacles that stood in the path to approval. Poll numbers indicated increasing levels of sympathy for the cause.
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A few years ago, things never looked better for the movement. Now, what was once thought so secure is back on the table—even same-sex “marriage” is facing challenges.
Upsetting the Apple Cart
Most observers agree that the trans radicals suddenly upset the apple cart by insisting upon implementing their extreme agenda. They broke all the rules of social activism by especially targeting children. They would not wait for the incremental changes that others had made before them. Suddenly, a hidden agenda was no longer hidden. The whole picture became painfully clear.
American parents faced off against teachers and garish drag queens, who insisted upon reading pro-LGBTQ books to their children at schools with no possibility of opting out. Schoolgirls were forced to compete and use locker rooms with confused males who won races and received awards due to their unfair admission to the competition.
In the 2024 election, many attributed the extreme focus on transgender rights as a contributing factor to the Democrats’ defeat in the general election. The party no longer seemed to represent the American people but only a they/them demographic.
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Large sectors of the American public resented and rejected the overwhelming trans propaganda that targeted their department stores and branded their beer.
Crisis in the Ranks
The crisis is causing panic and confusion across all ranks in the LGBTQ alphabet. Everyone is trying to explain what happened and assign blame.
Movement promoters like The New York Times are scrambling to make excuses by blaming “right-wing politicians” and even “biased media coverage”(certainly not their own) for the defeat. Many activists rightly feel that this defeat opens the door to more.
Indeed, immediately after its Skrmetti decision, the Supreme Court ruled on Mahmoud v. Taylor. This significant parental rights ruling allows children to opt out of mandatory readings of LGBTQ-themed books in schools, a practice that amounts to indoctrination.
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In 2025, many liberal corporations withdrew their backing for “pride” events, while others feared being “Bud-lited” with boycotts. LGBTQ has become toxic in some quarters, as indicated by greatly diminished June events and parades.
Looking for Causes
Most analysts, even when favorable, are not content with blaming the right for the disaster. Many point inward to the increasing radicalization of trans activists as a reason for the setback.
The New York Times Magazine (June 19, 2025) did an extensive report on the legal debacle with an obvious trans bias. It dutifully referred to the sex-changing mutilations as “gender-affirming care.” Every pronoun was checked to reflect the “gender” confusion of the main characters.
The essay made every effort to portray the Skrmetti case as yet another expansion of basic and irreversible civil rights. However, author Nicholas Confessore titled his essay “How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost” and was thus forced to admit that trans activists were mainly responsible for the court decision that “could set the movement back a generation.”
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Homosexual activist Andrew Sullivan also wrote a long June 26 op-ed in The New York Times titled “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way.” As part of yesterday’s revolution, he decries the avant-garde trans shock tactics, which he says also jeopardize the homosexual movement that he worked so hard to promote.
A Case Study of a Failure
This partial defeat of the trans movement is a case study of what happens when activists seek to impose their radical agenda on an unwilling public—demanding too much.
Such activists made the mistake of clearly stating their goals of changing all society and morality. They affirmed their denial of human nature and the fantasy of a gender-fluid world where each could create their own identity.
They forced the movement, even its more moderate elements, into the uncomfortable position of criticizing not the radical trans goals but only the excessive speed with which they moved toward them and the force with which they imposed them.
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Such declarations helped those fighting against the LGBTQ program because they can claim there is a radical agenda, since trans activists make no effort to hide it. Conservatives can show examples of activists imposing it upon the public, and even vulnerable children. In this case, activists acknowledge that gender identity theory is where the movement and society must go, unpopular though it might be.
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Thus, the radicalism of the trans left reveals its ultimate game plan. Those who defend God’s moral law can use the activists’ own words against them and take the offensive.
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Changing Human Nature
There are three reasons, in the words of activists and sympathizers, why the trans movement has failed.
The first reason was that the trans movement introduced a revolution that changed the understanding of sexuality. Unlike earlier homosexual activists who presented sexuality as a choice, the new revolutionaries challenged the idea of a rigid male-female binary and reimagined sexual identity as an infinite spectrum. Sex became arbitrary and “assigned at birth.”
According to Mr. Confessore, the radicals held that “all people had the right to determine their own gender, regardless of how they dressed or whether they opted for medical transition.” This identity might even change from month to month or day to day, and society would be forced to adapt accordingly.
The activists infused a Marxist notion of the sexual binary of male-female as an oppressive (and even racist) structure that must be abolished. Andrew Sullivan notes that trans revolutionaries claim that the cause of LGBTQIA+70 other genders is one revolution united by “intersectionality.” The trans cause intertwined to include every leftist cause “from Black Lives Matters to Queers for Palestine.” The simple rainbow flag has now expanded to include a confusing spectrum of stripes and triangles that few understand or want.
These same activists insisted that this revolutionary perspective become the narrative for all society, reflected in law, taught in schools and practiced in medical facilities. No exceptions were allowed. Anyone who rejected this view could expect to be labeled a bigot, a racist or some other epithet.
This politicizing and weaponizing of sexual identity attacked human nature and suppressed opposition. It was a major reason why the trans movement failed.
Too Soon
The second reason for the failure was that the trans activists insisted upon abandoning the policy of incremental change that worked for the homosexual movement’s slow march toward same-sex “marriage.” Such tactics can take decades. The trans activists were impatient and wanted liberation now.
Old school homosexual activists criticize the trans movement for failing to take things slowly. Such abrupt positions cause reactions in the public that hurt the whole movement. They claim it is better to enter the debate in a spirit of dialogue rather than confrontation. It is better to talk about bathrooms than ripping up people’s children.
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The fast pace of the revolution backfires when it takes the public in a direction they do not want to go. It is much better to prepare the way gradually.
The End Justifies the Means
Finally, the trans movement followed the policy that the end justifies the means. The New York Times Magazine essay reports that trans activists were presenting the need for sex-change mutilations for minors as a medical dogma that could not be contested.
However, medical evidence against such treatments gradually mounted as country after country in Europe withdrew from them, claiming that they could be harmful to youth. Despite the evidence, the campaign for these treatments continued to present dubious medical findings as facts. The scientific data was skewed to fit a political agenda. Even the Supreme Court Justices could not ignore the lack of scientific rigor.
Such attitudes of wishing something to be true tend to suppress free debate. Mr. Sullivan notes how radical activists “do not seek to engage or persuade opponents; they seek to demonize, bully or cancel them.”
The True Nature of the Fight
All these factors contributed to the defeat of the trans offensive in the recent Supreme Court decisions.
More moderate observers might object that the solution is to persuade the trans radicals to tone down their message to accommodate those who disagree. They must slow down the pace of their program so that all might gradually reach a compromise.
However, such people do not understand the nature of these radicals. The real problem is that the LGBTQ movement cannot slow down. Its dynamism is based upon the satisfaction of the unbridled passions. Its radical vanguard will never be satisfied and will always want more, as its activists are enslaved by their vices and seek paroxysm. There will always be another letter of the alphabet to add that will express a more extreme and immediate form of slavery. The movement will always suppress those who say no to its demands. It will always discard past revolutionaries who get in the way.
Indeed, this is a moral battle based on objective notions of right and wrong, not imagined sexual identity. The only way to win this fight is to defend a moral law that recognizes the limitations of human nature. It is to worship a just, loving and transcendent God Who created an order that sets men free and gives humanity a participation in Grace that helps overcome the effects of fallen human nature. True happiness is never found in unbridled passion but in knowing, loving and serving the God for which all are made.