Trans Catholic Refutes Skrmetti Decision and Those Who Support It

In a column for the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), a transgender Catholic man examines the role pseudoscience plays in anti-trans sentiment, using another article published in that paper as a case study.

Writing in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in United States vs. Skrmetti, trans Catholic writer Maxwell Kuzma responded to a column by NCR’s Michael Sean Winters defending the high court’s decision to ban gender affirming care for youth in Tennessee, thereby setting a dangerous national precedent. 

The Court’s majority opinion itself, notes Kuzma, skirted the full constitutional ramifications of the case, opting instead to characterize gender-affirming care as a contested intervention to treat ‘gender dysphoria’. He writes:

“The case raised foundational constitutional questions — whether transgender people are a protected class, whether such bans violate equal protection, and whether the Constitution guarantees access to necessary medical care — but the Court avoided answering them. Instead, it carved out a narrow exception permitting medical discrimination based on ‘gender dysphoria,’ effectively greenlighting care bans nationwide and paving the way for broader restrictions.”

As Kuzma notes, such political actions pose real-life threats to transgender people, especially youth who are no longer able to make decisions regarding their care along with their parents and medical providers:

“The cruelty is not abstract. As the Supreme Court was ruling in favor of Tennessee’s ban on care for trans youth, the federal government removed LGBTQ suicide hotline resources. At a time when trans youth are losing access to affirming care, support and now even visibility in federal crisis intervention tools, this ruling amounts to further violence against this marginalized community. These decisions are not happening in a vacuum. They are coordinated acts of erasure, and they are causing people emotional trauma.”

Beyond policy, transgender people must contend with the transphobic sentiments that make political developments like Skrmetti possible. Pseudoscience exacerbates anti-trans sentiment, argues Kuzma, using Winters’ column as an example. Winters states that he is “suspicious of gender ideology, of the ideologues who promote it” while invoking the Cass Review, a series of anti-transition policy recommendations specific to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service for the treatment of ‘gender dysphoria’ in children and teens. While Winters characterizes the study as a “comprehensive scientific assessment,” Kuzma surveys the widespread scholarly repudiation of the Cass Review, outlining how Winters’ position rests on pseudoscientific mischaracterizations of gender-affirming care. 

Despite supporters of the Skrmetti decision like Winters, Kuzma has hope in the Catholic community. The writer expressed his confidence in the Catholic tradition’s capacity for trans affirmation, and ends his piece with a challenge to cisgender Catholics:

“Catholicism has the resources — spiritual, intellectual, communal — to confront injustice with clarity and compassion. I still believe that. But that belief requires accountability. It requires us to call things what they are. And it requires the courage to say, without qualification: Trans people are not a threat to be managed. We are not a controversy to be explained away. We are beloved, we are sacred, and we deserve better than this… 

“The invitation has been extended. The only question now is who will dare to answer it — not with conditions or caveats, but with open doors, open hearts, and the conviction that inclusion and justice are not optional in a faith rooted in love.”

—Sarah Cassidy and Jeromiah Taylor, New Ways Ministry, July 11, 2025