by Mary Elise Cosgray
A new poll finds that by a margin of nearly 3 to 1, respondents don’t think that it should be legal to provide minors with puberty blockers, drugs, and/or surgery to transition from one sex to the other. And by an even bigger margin, better than 7 to 1, respondents said that biological males who “identify” as female should not be permitted to compete in girls’ and women’s sports.
The Rasmussen Survey, conducted March 6 and 7 among 1,000 registered voters, also found that only 10% had ever introduced themselves using “preferred pronouns,” while fewer than half of those polled, 45%, had ever met someone who used their personal preferred pronouns to introduce themselves.
Some 73% of respondents said they disagree with biological males who “identify” as female being allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s sporting events. Only 10% of participants supported permitting biological males to compete in female athletics.
Only 22% of voters support minors having access to so-called gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers, transitioning drugs, and surgeries, with 64% participants against it.
“Transitioning children makes a lot of sense in an ideological world. But citizens and parents with a high degree of contact in the real world largely reject those interventions,” Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us, a Seattle-based nonprofit children’s rights organization, and author of “Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement,” told The Daily Signal in an interview Tuesday.
Commenting on the survey’s findings that more than half of voters oppose legalized gender-affirming services for minors, Faust said, “Whether they are trying to protect their own children, because they’ve seen the harm inflicted on young bodies through the stories of detransitioners, or simply because they have retained the common sense seemingly lost by many elites, ordinary Americans aren’t taken in by the ‘gender-affirming care’ narrative.”, or simply because they have retained the common sense seemingly lost by many elites, ordinary Americans aren’t taken in by the ‘gender-affirming care’ narrative.”
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Mary Elise Cosgray is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
