The Conservative Case for LGBT Rights
The case for LGBT rights usually is made by liberals, arguing that the government has limited place in what goes on in the private lives of people and this applies as much to who people sleep with and how they present.
For LGBT people trying to secure basic freedoms, this usually means that liberals are the only game in town when it comes to voting.
What may surprise many to know is that LGBT activists are also making the conservative case for LGBT rights and that, paradoxically, transgender academics are at the cutting edge of it.
The reason for transgender academics' surprising lead on this relies more on their place in LGBT history. The general transgender activists sound bite, that sex is in the body, while gender is in the brain is a simple slogan designed for media consumption and to fight against other simple slogans attempting to limit trans rights.
As with all simple slogans, it’s oversimplification means it’s misleading and behind the scenes, transgender academics have been trying to synthesise transgender views with feminist ideology and LGB rights, along with newer non-binary theory, to create the most advanced and inclusive models yet.
The culmination of that work has been the intrinsic inclinations model by Julia Serrano, which at over a decade old, remains flexible and extensible enough that it has survived and flourished.
The intrinsic inclinations model takes inspiration from sexual orientation, where we have generally accepted that sexual orientation is intrinsic in the brain and can’t be changed and that attempting to do so involves a mental health cost.
These intrinsic inclinations are extended to gender too to explain the various diversity found there, with a similar mental health cost to acting outside of intrinsic gender behaviour.
Where the intrinsic inclinations model shines is when it’s applied back to society. Unlike liberal ideas, the mental health cost associated with departing from a person’s intrinsic inclinations suggests that people would be happier if they fulfilled their intrinsic inclinations, and that paradoxically, absolute freedom might actually make people less happy if it encourages them to deviate from them. This leaves an interventionist place for society and also for the state in managing people’s lives and promoting stability.
In general that interventionist place in society has been taken, until the last few hundred years, by religion, and it shows the importance of protecting religious freedom. And if we assume that most people will be binary, cis, heterosexual and gender conforming, then we start to develop systems to safeguard people that look a lot like religion and the conservative ethos.
However, where religion and conservatism currently falls down is that it tends to support only one set of intrinsic inclinations over others. Frequently religion goes from protecting the intrinsic inclinations of all to being a supremacist project to privilege one set of intrinsic inclinations, that of cis, heterosexual and gender conforming people, over all others.
Conservatives have embraced that fight without thinking through all the implications, namely that victory means repression, and absolute victory means continual mass murder of minority intrinsic inclinations and LGBT people. Obviously LGBT people can’t get behind such a project.
Intrinsic inclinations provides a way out of this problem because it both protects conservative values and LGBT rights together. If you are binary, cis, heterosexual and gender conforming, then religion and past practise are your moral guide.
But it you are gay, for example, then you must be brought up to be the best gay person your local gay community understands that to be, and the same for transgender people, and other non-conforming and non-binary people. Communities exist for each that can guide and shape the next generation without the chaos and confusion of the liberal free-for-all.
For conservatives who have the moral courage, this vision presents a better opportunity to support LGBT rights without sacrificing their own values and allows both religious people and LGBT people to unite around a common goal.
