Alternate title: Ross Douthat "both sides" the trans/gay panic bullshit to make his liberal readers feel better about being bigoted.
Alternate title: Ross Douthat "both sides" the trans/gay panic bullshit to make his liberal readers feel better about being bigoted.
No one is. This is the same bullshit the same people pulled in the 90s, saying you can't allow gay people to be teachers because they will convince students who aren't gay to be gay.
To understand them, you have to start with their core belief: that no one is really transgender. Most religious conservatives like Douthat (I'd ballpark at least 25% of the US) believe that without external influence, no one would be transgender. Their faith dictates that this must be true. Because if God made someone who was one gender but with the body of another, then that implies that God is ok with being trans. They might concede that maybe you have some thoughts or feelings about gender, but those are "sinful" so just repress them, pray to ask Jesus into your heart, and you won't have those feelings anymore.
So, you and I know the real situation. There are trans kids who want to identify as their correct gender say at school, and there are now some schools and teachers that are encouraging that. All very cool, shouldn't be controversial. But to religious conservatives, they cannot conceive of kids being inherently trans. So they see the same situation and think "someone" is pushing this on the kids. Add to this to the fact that they think the current zeitgeist at schools is that you ain't cool unless you're LGBT, so they think kids are under constant pressure from students, teachers, and society to be trans... and you can start to see the contours of their ridiculous ideologies.
Personally I think this is all leading to both pogroms against LGBT folks, but will also be used to demolish public schools and get the country to adopt vouchers.