The debate on the American right isn’t about classified documents. It’s about fear of transgender rights

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While much of the country spent the week fixated on a former president and his indictment related to alleged mishandling of classified documents, parts of the American right were more consumed by fear of transgender rights.

The latest example stems from the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptists, some of whom apparently fear a slide toward acceptance of LGBTQ rights – would rather expel one of their largest and most successful congregations, Saddleback Church in Southern California, than accept women as pastors.

If it seems like a stretch to tie the Southern Baptist effort to eliminate women pastors with LGBTQ rights, look at this video prepared in favor of an amendment to more broadly prohibit churches from having women hold any pastoral title. It was recorded by Mike Law, pastor at Arlington Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia.

He refers to a “a culture that is seeking to undermine the good and God-given distinctions between men and women” and argues it will be a slippery slope from allowing women to allowing gay and lesbian pastors.

“Here’s the trajectory of doing nothing,” Law says in the video. “Soon, Southern Baptist churches will start supporting homosexual clergy, same-sex marriage and eventually, transgenderism.”

Anyone who has been paying attention to Fox News or the Republican political conversation already knows that backlash to transgender rights, at the state and corporate level, is a key platform to appeal to the party’s grassroots.

But the discomfort and disdain exhibited by some Americans toward transgender rights is infecting much of American society in ways that should have nothing to do with gender identity.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the millennial…