December 5, 2024
On the Supreme Court hearing over Tennessee's law banning hormone therapy and puberty blockers for transgender teens...
That subheading will likely be the longest I ever write, but I feel the need to be especially detailed right now because the column I almost picked for today was not. At first, it seemed like a reasonable choice — it wasn’t strident, it didn’t assign undue motivations to individuals. As I thought about it, though, I realized it had omitted an extremely salient fact from its headline and first twelve paragraphs. I don’t know if it was intentional. I do know it was sloppy. I also know it’s how we come to think the worst of the other side.
I’m being intentionally vague about the omission and columnist because I don’t want to give away whom he supported — one poorly made argument shouldn’t disqualify an entire position. Specificity matters, though. Nuance matters. And the refusal or, put charitably, inability to employ it is detrimental not just to one’s argument, but to our overall discourse.
So here is a rundown of yesterday’s hearing from SCOTUSblog, which is exponentially more clear-eyed and helpful than my initial choice for a link would have been. I’m glad I dodged that mistake. If its columnist continues in the same vein, I’m going to start dodging him, too.