Guilt by association?
We should judge policies by their merits not their backers
This is my final article on the withdrawn Amnesty UK report. I’m looking here at the nature and impact of the limited cooperation, between some American Christian and feminist groups, on the balance of rights between women and transgender people.
The Amnesty report attributed guilt by association to people making arguments that should be addressed on their merits. So did some of the social media responses to my articles. But a policy is good or bad regardless of who else supports it while disagreeing on other issues.
Amnesty itself recognises this principle in related areas. It has welcomed moves by the Pakistan and Cuban governments to advance LGBT rights. But Amnesty also condemns Pakistan for laws against blasphemy, and Cuba for suppressing political dissent.
Bad allies don’t make a good argument bad, just as good allies don’t make a bad argument good. We should examine every issue on its merits.
That said, the cooperation does raise important practical questions. What impact did it have? Did it strengthen either side’s wider programme?
It’s hard to isolate the impact, as it began around the time Trump replaced Obama as president, during the evolving wider ‘culture wars’. But to oversimplify, it seems that:
Different groups came to the same conclusion on this one issue for different ideological reasons, and there has been limited but real cooperation between a small number of groups on either side.
Gender-critical feminists provided secular arguments that some Christian groups amplified through their infrastructure, while the secular groups did not similarly amplify religious arguments.
Neither side has moved towards the positions of the other on wider issues like abortion, gay rights, or women’s place in society. They did not form a single movement, let alone an ‘anti-rights’ movement.
In terms of shifts in American public opinion on issues broadly related to religion and sex, there is no neat pattern between issues where there is or isn’t such cooperation.
One relevant difference is that secular opinion itself is more divided on transgender-related policies than it is on abortion or same-sex marriage. So, while everything interacts, the political cooperation may be as much a result of public opinion as a cause of it.
How did the cooperation start?
In 2016, Alliance Defending Freedom was a major conservative Christian legal organisation. It took legal challenges supporting freedom of religion and opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. The Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, was a radical feminist group supporting abortion, and opposing pornography, prostitution and surrogacy.
ADF gave WoLF a $15,000 grant towards a legal challenge to the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX concerning transgender pupils and school facilities. WoLF voluntarily withdrew its lawsuit when the incoming Trump administration reversed the Obama guidance.
In 2017, the conservative Christian Family Research Council held a Values Voter Summit. This came two years after a major political defeat, when the Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage nationwide. A new lobby group, Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County, had just failed to block gender identity from public schools’ nondiscrimination policies and sex education material.
Meg Kilgannon, executive director of Concerned Parents, advised Christian campaigners to seek allies outside their own movement. She said secular arguments based on biology and reason have a broader appeal than religious ones. She cited the recently founded Hands Across the Aisle, which brought conservative Christians and radical feminists together, as a useful model.
Also in 2017, Family Policy Alliance had evolved from the lobbying of Focus on the Family. It opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, sex education, and the Equal Rights Amendment. FPA and WoLF filed a joint amicus brief supporting the school board in the Gavin Grimm case. Grimm, who was suing for the right to use school toilets based on gender identity, eventually won the case.
WoLF made its position clear on FPA’s other positions:
‘As radical feminists, we disagree with FPA on many issues including women’s right to full reproductive sovereignty and LGB liberation. But WoLF and FPA agree that women and girls are at disproportionate risk of harm due to our sexed bodies, and we agree on our opposition to the abuse of women and children through pornography and prostitution.’
What has changed since 2017?
Whatever your ideological motivations, the substantive issue remains the same: how do we fairly balance the rights of women and transgender people?
Some American Christian groups are increasingly using secular arguments, while secular groups are not similarly using religious arguments. So one effect of the cooperation has been to secularise part of the conservative Christian case.
Neither set of groups have moved towards the other groups’ positions on wider issues regarding abortion, gay rights, or women’s role in society. Indeed they still campaign on opposite sides of these and related issues.
Also, some well-funded American conservative Christian groups have extended their wider campaigns into Europe. They also use secular language, but typically seek different allies, including secular conservatives and populist parties.
How has public opinion changed?
In 2017, Pew found that 54% of Americans said gender is determined by sex at birth. That had risen to 60% five years later in 2022, and to 65% in 2024.
In 2025, Pew found 56% of Americans supported laws protecting transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces. Most also now support single-sex sports, and opinion is split on single-sex toilets.
On wider related issues, American public opinion on abortion has shifted from 48% pro-choice in 2017 to 53% pro-choice in 2026. And on same-sex marriage, it has shifted from 62% support in 2017 to 71% in 2023, and 65% in 2026.
So if we take abortion, same-sex marriage, and specific disagreements about sex and gender, there is no neat pattern between issues where there is or isn’t cooperation between some conservative Christian and secular feminist groups.
It’s therefore unlikely that the cooperation has directly caused the changes on this one set of issues.
One relevant difference is that secular opinion itself is more divided on transgender-related policies.
On abortion and same-sex marriage, secular feminists and social liberals are overwhelmingly opposed to the conservative Christian position, so such cooperation is less likely to happen.
On single-sex spaces and sports, many reach the same conclusions as conservative Christians for entirely secular reasons.
So, while everything interacts, the political cooperation may be as much a result of public opinion as a cause of it.