Deciding to become a woman is the first normal thing Bruce Jenner has done since the decathlon.
I do feel a bit the way I would if Sarah Palin had become the first female American President, back when that bullshit seemed possible: Well, great, but did it have to be her? Jenner has long been your typical ex-jock conservative who never spoke up once when his party consistently sold discrimination in the U.S. to achieve its political ends. But pioneers are pioneers, so good for Caitlyn on her transition. Much happiness to her.
Some un-bylined writer at the Economist has given voice to something that’s true of both parties in the U.S.: They can only move as far Left or Right as the moment will allow. Despite being the standard-bearer of the GOP, President Richard Nixon pursued universal heath care and guaranteed basic income because those things were in the air at the time. Similarly, when it comes to Jenner, even the sweater-vest wing of the GOP has had to be restrained in its comments because the conversation about LGBT issues has so seriously shifted.
“I can only imagine the torment that Bruce Jenner went through,” offered Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina. “I hope he’s—I hope she has found peace.” Though Mr Graham affirmed that he is a “pro-life, traditional marriage kind of guy”, he added that “If Caitlyn Jenner wants to be a Republican, she is welcome in my party.”
“If he says he’s a woman, then he’s a woman,” said Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator not known for his open-mindedness. “My responsibility as a human being is to love and accept everybody. Not to criticise people for who they are.” As an outspoken critic of gay relationships, Mr Santorum has long reserved the right to criticise people for what they do, but he refrained from knocking all that Ms Jenner has done to make herself womanly.
This combination of silence and accommodation has unsettled some conservative commentators. “A surgically damaged man appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, and the applause is mandatory,” writes David French of the National Review. He then argues that the “sexual selfishness and radical personal autonomy” of the transgender movement “shares the same logic as such cultural catastrophes as no-fault divorce and abortion on demand”, which are naturally to blame for “poverty, depression, and increasing inequality between two-parent families and the transient remainder”. Mr French contends that conservatives are being bullied into a dangerous silence by left-leaning cultural arbiters. “By refusing to speak,” he writes, “we contribute to the notion that even conservatives understand that something is wrong—something is shameful—about our own deepest beliefs.”
Steve Deace, a syndicated radio host based in Iowa, offered a similar but more practical warning: “If we’re not going to defend as a party basic principles of male and female, that life is sacred because it comes from God, then you’re going to lose the vast majority of people who’ve joined that party.”
It is surprising that a warning like this needs to be issued at all. Until recently, Republican politicians have been brash culture warriors.•