More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Conversion therapy is a widely debunked practice that tries to change a person’s sexual orientation.
As justices question Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, decades of research show the practice causes lasting harm and drives suicide risk among LGBTQ+ youth.
When Erika Kirk took the stage at her husband’s memorial, dressed in white and preaching about virtue, guardianship and motherhood as women’s highest calling, it was not just a moment of personal grief. It was also a sermon drawn directly from the playbook of the 19th-century Cult of Domesticity, which elevated piety, purity, domesticity and submission as the cornerstones of “true womanhood.” While Kirk framed these ideals as a source of women’s strength, history shows that they have long functioned as tools of confinement and control.
The irony, of course, is that Kirk is now CEO of Turning Point USA—a position she could never hold without the very feminist progress she disavows. Tradwife rhetoric may promise dignity and purpose, but as the Cult of Domesticity and later social purity movements revealed, these ideals have always come at women’s expense. They strip away autonomy, enshrine patriarchal power and ultimately sacrifice women—even those who embrace the gospel themselves.
Once a fringe warning, the threat to women’s right to vote is now out in the open—and in the halls of power.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video on Aug. 7 with the endorsement “All of Christ for All of Life,” in which a far-right conservative pastor, Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), argued that women should not have the right to vote.
As Wilson told the Associated Press, “He was, in effect, reposting it and saying, ‘Amen,’ at some level.”
But a deeper dive into CREC reveals troubling gender politics where women cannot hold church leadership positions and married women are expected to submit to their husbands.
Disabled couples are still forced to choose between love and survival due to an unjust “marriage penalty” baked into U.S. law that puts their benefits, healthcare and autonomy at risk.
A new quilt commemorating survivors of forced sterilization in California prisons exposes a long, ongoing history of reproductive and medical violence against incarcerated and marginalized women.
For years, women have been fighting for inclusion in male-only spaces within the Catholic Church. These efforts continue as Pope Leo XIV begins his tenure.
Iowa and South Carolina’s attorney generals are leading a coalition composed of representatives of 11 states seeking to overturn Michigan’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. This past Friday, the coalition filed an amicus brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requesting a reversal of a decision issued in January—a decision denying a request to reverse Michigan’s conversion therapy ban.
Conversion therapy originated from medical violence against women who did not conform to gender-based norms, arguably the same reason that Christian conversion therapy practitioners today target LGBTQ+ people who do not conform to heteronormative, cisgender norms. It sets a dangerous precedent for what other kinds of medical violence can be leveraged to reinforce far-right gender normative ideals.
Earlier this week, President Trump shared an article on his Truth Social platform celebrating his elimination of trans and queer people from military advertising. The opinion piece published by reporter Jeremy Hunt of The Washington Times, featured a crossed out upside down pink triangle. The inverted pink triangle was a symbol used by Nazis to identify LGBTQ+ prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. In response, LGBTQ+ Americans and allies are expressing fear surrounding the post—marking the third time that someone within or associated with the Trump administration has used Nazi symbolism.
HB 446 is just one of a new generation of social purity laws being presented across the country, using fears of “social contagion” from over a century ago that still ring true for many Americans.
Understanding this history is vital to unpacking the danger—often connected growing white supremacist movements—of these laws and the social fears they represent.
Trump supporters’ calling for an end to women’s suffrage may be the canary in the coal mine for further drastic changes to the electoral system.