Both Sidesing Anti-Trans Repression: the NYT Sinks to Absurd New Depths

The family of a trans boy whose medical care was outlawed and who would have been forced to use girls bathrooms at school is not the same as retirees moving to be close to their grandkids.

by Evan Urquhart

In the New York Times this weekend, a reported feature titled “Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out” does not exactly deliver what it says on the tin. Instead it provides one of the worst examples yet of anti-trans bias in the editorial tone of the most significant news organization in the US today.

It’s certainly true enough that the story is focused on two particular families. One, the Huckins, are a pair of elderly conservative retirees, until recently of Portland, Oregon. They blamed rising homelessness and poverty in that city on the ruling Democratic party’s softness on drugs and crime, as well as a lack of funding for the police. They moved recently from Oregon to Missouri to be nearer their adult daughter and three young grandkids. Here’s how the NYT describes how they saw their former home:

screenshot from the New York Times

The Nobles, in contrast, aren’t retirees, they aren’t moving closer to family; they even told the New York Times they never wanted to move. A family of Iowa natives who expressed their love for their former home and community, it was the passage of specific anti-trans laws that forced the family to seek a state where their son could safely finish high school. Originally willing to stay in Iowa and go out of state for their 16-year-olds testosterone treatment, a second law that would have forced their cis male passing 16-year-old to use girls’ bathrooms at school was too much. Reluctantly, they relocated to Minnesota where their child’s medical treatment is legal, and he’ll be allowed to use school bathrooms that match both his gender identity and his outward appearance.

screenshot from the New York Times

While the story insists these two stories are similar, the families’ differences show up in multitude ways. For one thing, they have vastly different levels of political engagement and political animosity. Steve Huckins is deeply invested in conservative politics, with a daily habit of consuming and contributing to social media that outrages him. His hostility to Democrats and “blue” states seems bottomless. At one point Huckins even brags to the NYT that after he told a police officer in his new red state that he moved there from Oregon, “The officer rolled his eyes and uttered an expletive.” 

There is no such intense political engagement on the side of the Nobles. In contrast Jeff Noble seems dismayed by the political division in the country, and incredulous that it’s gotten to the point where he had to leave home. There are no quotes from either Jeff or Jennie Noble that sound angry or outraged at the anti-trans laws, much less at the culture or residents of their former home state. Apart from the Noble’s support for their trans son, and overarching statements about Republicans and Democrats, there’s no specific indication of what political beliefs the Nobles even hold.

screenshot from the New York Times

Thought the piece makes a big deal about the two moves happening at much the same time, the specifics are very different as well. For the Huckins, the move seems to have been years in the making, and undertaken as much for family reasons as politics. The story explains the Huckins’ adult daughter had lobbied them to join her in Missouri for years. They’re happy with the move and pictures show them surrounded by grandkids. In contrast, the Noble family desperately wanted to stay in a community they loved, surrounded by family and friends. Their son loved his high school and is struggling to adjust to a new school in senior year. Rapid real-world legislation that directly impacted their son’s life that was passed in the past few months is the only reason they give for the move.

Steve Huckins gripes that “In Portland, the American flag was offensive.” The Nobles describe their grief at having to leave Iowa. There is so little similarity between the stories it’s astounding for the NYT to present them as similar, but it does so over and over again. From the headline that describes both as “fed up” over politics to the declaration that “both families used strikingly similar language to describe their main concern: the need for personal safety, the story is committed to a framing that these stories are the same, calling them “mirror images.”

It just isn’t true. When it comes to safety, taking the Huckins gripes at face value, the risk of statewide laws is different from the risk of crime in a high crime neighborhood of a particular city. The Huckins' concerns about safety in Portland could have been addressed by moving to a rural part of Oregon, or to a lower crime part of their own metropolitan area. If they’d had the close bonds of friendship and family described by the Nobles, surely that’s what they’d have done. But for the Nobles, there was nowhere that would have been more safe for their son in the state. They didn’t move for political reasons, they moved out of practical need.

This is not to say that there are no liberal Democrats who have ever moved to be surrounded by people of like minds, merely that the Nobles are not an example of a family who did so. In addition to profiling the Nobles and the Huckins, the NYT offers brief additional anecdotes of people who moved because they’re fed up with the politics of their home state. In those anecdotes, finally, liberals with experiences that more closely resemble the Huckins’ start to emerge.

screenshot from the New York Times

The New York Times didn’t choose to profile two similar families, which they presumably could have done easily enough if the phenomenon is as widespread on both sides as they suggest. Instead, they profiled one family who offered some general political reasons that contributed to their decision to move… and one family who fled anti-trans laws that would have negatively impacted their son.

By presenting these as equivalent the anti-trans editorial agenda of the New York Times reached new levels of absurdity. Claiming these families are similar is an opinion, a statement by the NYT and writer Trip Gabriel, masquerading as reporting the news. The NYT and Gabriel are taking a political stance. They are taking a stance on whether transgender medical care is necessary, like other medical treatments are, or whether it exists in a separate category of politics and choice.

By presenting the Noble’s grief and dismay at leaving their home as equivalent to the Huckins' glee at being nearer their family and surrounded by people of like minds, Gabriel is declaring that, in his opinion, the Nobles’ grief is on the same level as the Huckins’ disgust at seeing homelessness in a particular neighborhood of Portland. Gabriel is entitled to his opinions, and should pitch them to the op-ed section of the NYT. “Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out,” is an opinion piece that has masqueraded as a news story. By printing it in the news section, the NYT is displaying their biases for all to say. The paper has disgraced itself with this story, and all involved should be deeply ashamed at the depths the editorial hostility to trans people’s equality has allowed them to sink.