Trans Rights, Christian Nationalism, and the Power of Hope

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/05/18

Ben Greene, a transgender advocate and educator, shares insights on the evolving landscape for trans rights in the U.S. From his early isolation in Connecticut to national advocacy through TEDx and legislative testimony, Greene emphasizes empathy and storytelling. He critiques fearmongering in politics and media, highlighting Christian nationalism’s influence on anti-trans policies. Greene stresses the importance of hope, state-level victories, and consistent engagement. Through his publication Good Queer News, he amplifies underreported progress. Despite widespread misinformation, he believes universalist ethics and human dignity prevail over reactionary forces driven by fear, control, and declining political influence.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Ben Greene is a transgender advocate, educator, and public speaker who fosters inclusion through empathy and storytelling. After moving to a small town in Connecticut at age 15, Ben gained national attention through a TEDx talk at Brandeis University—I believe that’s how you pronounce it.

Since then, he has spoken internationally for companies, hospitals, schools, and government institutions about what it means to be transgender and how to be an effective ally. A passionate defender of trans youth, Ben has frequently testified at the Missouri State Capitol and offers free guidance to families and support groups across the United States. His motto is, “The only question I won’t answer is the question you don’t ask.”

So, this is an “Ask Me Anything” session—a sort of TEDx after-talk. Thank you very much for joining us today.

This is an interesting one. Comparing Connecticut when you left in 2020 to its current state and the broader national context, how do the micro and macro reflect one another?

Ben Greene: I haven’t lived in Connecticut for a while. I went to school in Boston in 2017, so it’s been some time. I transitioned as a teenager. When I came out, nobody knew what that meant. It was a very unfamiliar concept to the people around me.

I was the first transgender person most people in my life had ever met. On a micro level, that experience was very isolating—and I think that’s where a lot of the country was then. We were just a couple of years past the publication of The Transgender Tipping Point. Some people have started to learn about it. We had just seen marriage equality passed by the Supreme Court here in the U.S.

So it was okay—but there were no structural supports, and culturally, it was pretty neutral. I had to build all my support systems as I realized I needed them.

Now, Connecticut has changed. There are certainly pockets of radicalization—Moms for Liberty chapters, more vocal religious nationalists—but on the whole, the state has taken a structural stance. It’s asking, “What else can we do to support our residents?”

Last year, they launched a significant initiative to attract LGBTQ travellers, essentially saying, “Hey, Florida isn’t a safe vacation destination anymore. Come here instead.” They created a whole LGBTQ travel section on the state’s website highlighting safety and tourism, and they’ve talked about expanding shield laws.

Like many states, Connecticut has found ways to plant its flag and say, “We want to show up for our trans and queer residents,” even in the face of rising national hostility.

The United States, meanwhile, is at a strange inflection point.

Jacobsen: I mean, on the one hand—not all, naturally; no group is a monolith. However, the demographics that statistically lean strongly toward being against trans-supportive policy or healthcare provisions—populations tend to be declining in the United States. At the same time, policy aggression around these issues increases.

What do you make of that sort of apparent paradox—or maybe not a paradox?

Greene: Yes. So, what I’d say is—that it’s true that more people are becoming increasingly supportive of trans and LGBTQ people, if for no other reason than that more people now personally know someone who is transgender. There’s a saying I love: “It’s hard to hate up close.” And many people are learning that truth.

Jacobsen: I like that line.

Greene: I love that line. I didn’t come up with it, but I enjoy it. I do much work with different PFLAG chapters in rural areas, and many times, it’s a farmer saying, “Well, my kid’s using they/them now. I need to learn what that means. Let me figure out how to show up.”

So, on the whole, I think people are becoming more supportive. But the far right—and particularly a network often called a “shadow network” of Christian nationalist organizations—very much wants to use this issue as a foot in the door to push for broader Christian nationalism. So they stir up much anger.

Much misinformation is designed to spark outrage: “Look at what they’re doing in schools” or “Look at what’s happening in sports.” The goal is to manufacture a fear that distracts people from noticing real, tangible issues like grocery prices going up 25% in the last few years, many people’s inability to afford their rent, or wages stagnating.

The party that’s primarily focused on attacking the trans community has so effectively galvanized its base that many of its supporters do not realize the party is doing very little to help them with the things they are struggling with.

Judith Butler’s book Who’s Afraid of Gender? Explores this. She writes about how trans people have become convenient scapegoats—stand-ins for larger anxieties around economic uncertainty, climate change, family roles, religious shifts, and identity in a rapidly changing world.

At this point, it’s almost a running joke: something terrible happens—say a plane crashes—and someone says, “Okay, how long until they blame a transgender person?” Usually, it takes about a day. Someone will say, “Oh, that crash in D.C.? I think the pilot was transgender.” It’s almost always false, often a baseless rumour, but it quickly becomes a narrative: How can we blame trans people for what’s going wrong right now?

Jacobsen: Right. And it is true, generally speaking, that with large corporate media—left, right, or centrist—the old rule still holds: if it bleeds, it leads.

Now, despite all that media coverage and public focus, what areas people may not be paying attention to—places that you might be more attuned to—where you could say, “Hey, this deserves more attention”? This was a win.

Greene: Yes. I spend much time thinking and talking about fearmongering—in all forms of media, as well as in nonprofits and advocacy organizations that love to send panicked headlines like “This emergency is happening right now! If you don’t donate and sign your name on this list, you’re the only one who can save our campaign.”

Fearmongering is everywhere. That’s why I decided to start my publication called Good Queer News, which focuses on stories of hope that people are likely not hearing. I’ll give you an example.

In the U.S., various advocacy organizations and journalists try to report on the number of anti-trans bills proposed each year. Sometimes, it feels like those organizations compete to claim the highest number.

“We’re tracking 850 anti-trans bills!”

“We’re tracking 1,000!”

They want to be cited by as many mainstream sources as possible. Then, I get many calls from parents and transgender people—because of my role in the mental health space—saying, “I’m so afraid. There are so many bills. This is horrifying.”

But those numbers do not always tell the whole story. For example, in Missouri, we had eight identical anti-trans sports bills, each proposed by different lawmakers who just wanted their names on them. Other bills were entirely performative or had no realistic path to becoming law.

This year, Missouri was reported as one of the worst states for anti-trans legislation, with numbers like “50 bills” or “70 bills” being tossed around. But here at the statehouse, we’re focused on about four that are of genuine concern. The problem is, when people hear “50,” they become so demotivated that they don’t have the energy to show up for the four that matter.

There’s good news constantly. In the past week in the U.S., we had three major court victories. For example, Governor Janet Mills of Maine—her administration sued the Trump administration after they cut USDA funding without due process, essentially as retaliation because she embarrassed him at a dinner. She refused to enforce the sports ban and said, “I’m not doing this.”

We also saw the blocking of the military ban and other discriminatory restrictions. These stories rarely make the headlines the way bad news does. But advocates have fought for so many incredible victories—every week, we see legislative and court wins. And it saddens me that people often do not hear about them.

They feel defeated, and that lack of hope keeps them from engaging and being part of the change.

Jacobsen: The older Noam Chomsky has noted that the surest way to guarantee the worst happens is to do nothing.

Greene: Nothing is guaranteed to succeed, but effort is necessary. Doing nothing certainly does not help. Yeah—it can feel like a full-time job sometimes.

Jacobsen: So, I’ll include something relevant here. I’m thinking more about its underlying logic.

The axing of Roe v. Wade in 2022 via the Dobbs decision brought us into a post-Roe, Dobbs world. That decision effectively left the issue to the states.

Now, things are arguably easier when handled at the federal level—especially in terms of legal access to abortion. Yet, there can be strengths if you’re forced to reframe your strategy toward a state-based policy setup. It’s more difficult, obviously, and in many ways heartbreaking—but it also forces creativity.

Are there issues around state autonomy that could be more challenging and present opportunities to draw strength?

Greene: We’re seeing a lot of that right now. Republicans have spent the last four years—and much longer—arguing that abortion should be a states’ rights issue. “States should have the right to choose.” But as soon as they’re in power, they’re saying, “You don’t get to make laws about gender-affirming care or abortion access.”

Now that they hold power, it is no longer about states’ rights but their ability to control. That’s why many state attorneys general are currently suing the Trump administration over its attacks on gender-affirming care and reproductive health.

The federal government is making broad, largely ego-driven attempts to dictate state policy—policy areas they previously insisted should be decided by individual states. So it’s not a consistent or principled framework they’re following. That’s the thing.

What they’re doing is deploying shadow-puppet arguments—narratives funded again by this network of Christian nationalist groups who are willing to say anything to get the public on board with their agenda.

Many people might not even realize the religious component behind it. For example, they’ll say something like, “We just need to talk about charter schools,” without mentioning that this is their best route for funnelling public funds into religious education. Or they’ll say, “We need to protect girls’ sports,” without acknowledging that the real goal is to ban trans people from public life.

So it’s a “say whatever we need to say” strategy.

It’s about states’ rights—until a state does something they do not like.

It’s about freedom—until it means a choice they disagree with.

It’s about parental rights—until a parent wants something they do not support.

It is logically inconsistent. The more time I spend at the Missouri Capitol, the more I have to accept that we are not fighting on a battlefield of logical consistency.

Jacobsen: Side question. As a foreigner, does “Missouri,” as I’m pronouncing it, accurately reflect the local dialect? Is it Missouri or Missourah?

Greene: Some people say Missourah. It depends on where you go. The more rural the area, the more you’ll hear Missourah. In the cities, most people say Missouri. You can say either and get away with it.

Jacobsen: Are there a lot of conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, and Christian nationalists in Missouri?

Greene: Yes—and I can give you a good example.

I was attending a hearing personally. It was a bill proposing a wide range of attacks on transgender people in public life—banning us from bathrooms and locker rooms, segregating prisons by so-called “biological sex,” and redefining sex as assigned at conception—which is not at all how biological sex works.

A transgender doctor was testifying and said, “Hey, I learned a lot in medical school. Here’s how biological sex works. What you’re saying is completely incorrect.”

One of the senators responded: “I don’t like how you’re speaking to me. I don’t care about what you learned in school.”

And then he said, quote: “I don’t care about doctors. I don’t care about science.”

“I care about one thing—the Word. The Word of God says that God created male and female, and that’s it.”

When the doctor pushed back, saying, “I believe in something called the separation of church and state,” the senator laughed at him, turned red, and began shouting. He said, “I need to make laws based on the morals that guide me. We have nothing as a society if I don’t have those morals. We need to follow the standard that God sets and Jesus Christ.” And he went on a five-minute rant—there is a video of it—about how he needs to govern based on the principles of his God.

Which, notably, we are not supposed to do here. We have some big old rules about that.

So yes, Christian nationalism is very much thriving—especially here in Missouri—but also the federal government and several other state governments.

Jacobsen: Wow. I mean, that certainly raises flags across the atheist community, the secular humanist community, the non-theist Satanist community, the Satanic Temple—in other words, the Unitarian Universalists, the Ethical Culturalists. I think these are all part of a kind of philosophical mosaic of groups that primarily focus on the dangers of Christian nationalism.

Even the Unitarians—who tend to get along with everyone—probably take issue with Christian nationalists.

Greene: Yeah. And they’re right to call out these movements’ lack of logical consistency.

You hear arguments like, “We want to put the Bible in schools. We want to start each day in public school with a state-mandated prayer.” And when someone says, “Okay, would we also be allowed to do a Muslim prayer? Or a Jewish prayer?” the response is immediate and dismissive: “Well, no. We can’t indoctrinate kids with that.”

It’s not about freedom of religion—it’s about the freedom to force you to follow my religion.

And that’s a very different thing.

Jacobsen: The arguments are often framed around different sets of values: transcendentalist, traditional religious ethics—as found in the Christian Bible, interpreted selectively and literally—and those that are more universalist and secular because they do not favour any one religion and often fall under the broader heading of human rights.

In simplified terms, the two guiding principles here are particularist ethics on the one hand and universalist ethics on the other. So—which one do you think is winning out in the United States? Universalist frameworks like human rights, or particularist ones, like the gentleman who gave that five-minute rant?

Greene: I think the particularist frameworks have found the ability to lie freely—because they are not trying to win on logic.

They are very open in their appeals: “If you want to be a feminist, you need to protect women with us.”

“To be a good parent, you must protect children with us.”

They have found some very sneaky ways to convince people this is not a religious call—even though it is. And I have seen plenty of examples where they refuse to protect women or children when those very groups are asking for protection.

Take Missouri, for example. We are number three in the country for domestic violence. But that is not their focus. Their focus is on protecting women from an imaginary threat.

So they are very effective at riling people up.

But I do think, at the end of the day, the universalist ethic—like the idea that every human deserves the freedom to exist safely as they are, to be respected as they are—is winning out. More people feel that way, especially if you remove some of the trigger words.

For example, if we say, “Let’s not talk about sports right now because there’s much misinformation there,” or “Can we start with the idea that everyone deserves basic respect?”—most people will agree.

So yes, there is much money, much power, and much intentional deception behind the movement trying to say transgender people should not be allowed in public life. Big flashy lights, emotional baiting. But I think they will ultimately lose.

This is the screed of a cornered animal—a dying class of people afraid of losing the power they once thought they had.

Jacobsen: Ben, it was lovely to meet you. Thank you very much for your time and expertise.

Greene: Yes, it’s great to meet you, too! Let me know if you have any other questions.

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