Poll Finds Most Americans Support GOP's Curbs on Transgender Issues

Ben Kew reporting for RedState 

A majority of Americans support laws passed by Republican Party legislators curbing the rise of gender reassignment surgeries and other excesses of the transgender movement, according to the latest poll carried out by Washington Post-KFF.

The survey found that around 57 percent of adults do not accept the notion that gender can deviate from biological sex, while 43 percent believe it could differ.

The poll also found significant resistance toward child sex changes. Almost 70 percent of adults expressed disapproval of permitting medication that halts puberty for children aged 10 to 14, while nearly 60 percent opposed providing hormone treatments to 15- to 17-year-olds. However, a majority of respondents supported gender-affirming counseling or therapy, with over 60 percent in favor of it for both age groups.

Similarly, over 60 percent of adults believe that transgender girls and women should not be permitted to participate in sports designated for females, such as those in the professional, college, high school, and youth levels.

There is also widespread support for restrictions on classroom discussions about gender identity with younger students. Over 75 percent of adults believe that it is inappropriate to talk about transgender identity with students in kindergarten through third grade, and almost the same number of respondents think the same for fourth and fifth grades.

However, the findings were different for older students. The opinions were divided when it came to middle school students, but almost two-thirds of respondents supported the discussion of transgender identity in high school.

Over recent months, dozens of Republican-controlled states have passed legislation restriction the sexual mutiliation of children via gender reassignment surgery, outlawing the discussion of transgender matters among young children, and banning biological men from competing in female sports.

The Post noted that the poll gives Republicans “wind at their backs” as they implement these policies across the country, but expressed hope that public opinion may shift toward transgenderism in a similar way to gay rights:

One of the big unanswerable questions is whether public opinion around transgender issues will shift over time as it did around gay and lesbian rights. Some experts see parallels between the two issues, particularly as conservatives center their efforts on children and schools. Early backlash against gay people also focused on allegations that children would be harmed.

But certainly for now, the new Post-KFF poll finds, Republican lawmakers have the wind at their backs on much of their anti-transgender legislative agenda.

The crackdown by various Republican states comes as conservatives seek to halt the explosion of transgenderism and transgender related issues across the United States. In an analysis released late last year, Reuters found that the number of children identifying as transgender has tripled since 2017.

“In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to data Komodo compiled for Reuters,” the reports notes, adding that

[g]ender dysphoria is defined as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth. Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021.