Brainwashed by the Cult of Transgenderism: Religious and Secular Narratives Against Childhood Transition

The transgender child is a highly contested figure in the politics and culture of the United States today. This paper demonstrates how both religious and secular narratives are deployed against childhood transition, analyzes their shared political theological commitments, and proposes an alternative framework. Religious arguments against childhood transition frame trans adults as both a sexual threat and religious outsiders, imagining them as an anti-Christian “cult” that preys on vulnerable youths. Secular arguments against childhood transition, meanwhile, presume the existence of a rational self buffered against undue outside influence. Both narratives share a commitment to cisness, as a structuring fantasy of normative development and repetition, as well as an understanding of transness as “bad religion” beyond the acceptable bounds of religious pluralism. We urgently need alternative theological and political narratives that affirmatively promote transition as a good for all who seek it, including children.