What ‘60 Minutes’ could learn from the Supreme Court

Let’s stop and praise a moment of sanity in Washington last week, brought to us by the Supreme Court and the Biden administration. 

Both are to be applauded for stepping away from culture wars and making a surprise showing of heart for children struggling with sexual identity — young people often shamed and subject to bullying, violence or suicidal thoughts. Those children need every chance to play, to make friends and feel normal.  

But there is obvious concern over unfair competition when it comes to having people born with male physiology enter competitive sports against people born as female. 

Many polls show that most Americans think it is unfair for young athletes making the transition from male to female to play in girls’ sports, possibly dominating or even setting records in female sports competitions. 

But a complete ban on transgender females from playing on school teams is a very different issue. 

With King Solomon-like thought and heart, the U.S. Department of Education last week proposed new rules that give school administrators “the flexibility to develop their own participation policies.”

The new policy will allow for bans on trans athletes in competitive sports but require that school officials lay out their justifications before kicking trans children off intramural teams, cheering squads and the like. 

Currently, school leaders are governed by a 50-year-old law, Title IX, that allows no discrimination based on sex without addressing trans athletes. 

Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled with restraint in a case involving an 12-year-old West Virginia transgender girl. The high court allowed a temporary injunction to stand and enable the child to join a middle school track team.  

Her lawyers’ brief said the students’ teammates and coaches want her on the team and poignantly noted: “Despite regularly finishing near the back of the pack, she loves to play, have fun with her friends, and try her best.”

This rational approach to a debate involving sexual identity and loaded with culture-war baggage is a rare moment in a time of polarized politics. 

The partisan war on compassionate thinking was on display when the highly rated CBS news magazine program “60 Minutes” opened its primetime platform for baseless attacks on people showing concern for trans children. 

During an interview with the program’s Lesley Stahl, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.) labeled Democrats as “pedophiles” for showing empathy for children — and their parents and school leaders — dealing with issues of sexual identity in children. 

Stahl asked Greene about her “name-calling,” and Greene predictably hit that softball a long way: “I’m not calling anyone names. I’m calling out the truth basically,” she said. “They support grooming children.” 

Say what? Stahl did not demand evidence for Greene’s accusation, so Greene waded farther into the muck. 

“Democrats support — even Joe Biden the president himself — supports children being sexualized, having transgender surgeries,” she said. “Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children.”  

Again, there was no challenge to that baseless accusation against Americans with the strength to reach out to help school children dealing with the long history of anti-gay bias and violence. 

Even more troubling, there was no explanation to the large “60 Minutes” audience as to why Greene was telling such lies. The sad reason behind Greene’s assault is to gain political support for the GOP’s far right agenda by generating hostility to transgender people and gay people. 

That kind of hatred is ripe for political exploitation. 

There is a sad record of conspiracy theories, some associated with the QAnon cult, that claim Democrats and other elites are involved in trafficking children and grooming children for sexual abuse. Greene appeared to be tapping into that mindset when she was allowed to speak to a national television audience and lie about President Biden supporting “children being sexualized.” 

There is a lot of history available for comparison. 

A similarly bigoted lie arose during the civil rights movement of the mid-20^th century. Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss.), a white supremacist, libeled Americans working for racial equality by saying they were promoting interracial sex. As Bilbo explained it, he refused to go along with civil rights legislation because it was an effort to have the “blood of our white race … mingled with the blood of Africa.”

He trashed the civil rights movement as advancing an agenda “of socialism and communism and Mongrelization” that “would destroy the white race and white civilization and … the greatest nation of the freest people in all the world.” 

I wrote a book, “Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate,” more than a decade ago which vociferously argued in defense of the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections against myriad threats — including what is now commonly referred to as “cancel culture,” employed by conservatives and liberals alike.  

Today, Greene is trying to cancel efforts by good people trying to face a difficult issue. And the far-right is cheering her on.  

Those absolutists are not cheering last week’s decisions by the Biden administration and the Supreme Court. So let the cheering begin here, among Americans who cherish fairness, concern for others, and all children.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.