For some time now, we’ve been watching an ever-growing rift on the Left — a rift in which Democrats are beginning to distance themselves from the transgender cultists.

All during “Pride” month, we’ve seen this rift pick up steam. And we think it’s only a matter of time before it forces a reckoning. Recent Gallup polling highlights the Democrats’ dilemma: “A larger majority of Americans now (69%) than in 2021 (62%) say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender. Likewise, fewer endorse transgender athletes being able to play on teams that match their current gender identity, 26%, down from 34%.”

The problem for the Democrats, whose ultimate aim is always political power, is that they’ve tethered themselves to a political loser. Because that’s what the cult of transgenderism is: a political loser.

The Democrats aren’t used to losing — at least not on this particular battlefront of the culture wars. Where gay rights are concerned, the Rainbow Mafia’s long and smartly executed PR campaign has persuaded a majority of Americans to their side and has even resulted in some wrongly decided legal victories. (Marriage, for example, is a compact between one man and one woman, regardless of what nine black-robed justices might decree.)

But the same can’t be said for its efforts on the transgender front. There, just the opposite is occurring: The tide of public opinion is turning against them.

Why? The participation of men against women in sports is certainly one part of it, and the polling is beginning to turn against this awful idea, especially as brave truth-tellers like Riley Gaines are stepping into the fray. (Women, generally, have been targeted by the transgender movement, as our Emmy Griffin reported recently.)

But the big issue is children — whether they’re being brainwashed in the classroom or exploited by our perverse popular culture. Because whereas the former issue, gay rights, mostly involves consenting adults (gay adoption being a deeply disturbing exception), the latter issue almost invariably involves vulnerable and unsuspecting children, many of whom haven’t even reached the age of consent.

Bridget Phetasy hits this point head-on in The Spectator, and she employs some prominent gay thinkers to make her case.

“The core reason for the backlash is pretty simple: children.” So says one of the thinkers, Andrew Sullivan, who adds: “The attempt to indoctrinate children in gender ideology and to trans them on the verge of puberty has changed the debate. Start indoctrinating and transing children … and you will re-energize one of the oldest homophobic tropes there is: ‘gays are child molesters.’”

A trope? Not exactly. Back in January, our Nate Jackson, himself an adoptive father, reported on the unspeakable crimes committed by two gay Georgia men — prominent activists who’d been put up by a complicit media as picture-book adoptive parents. As it turns out, they were monsters, and they’ve been indicted by a grand jury for incest, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation, felony sexual exploitation of children, and felony prostitution of a minor. Their victims? Two elementary-aged brothers.

Intrepid independent journalist Glenn Greenwald largely agrees that when it tried to co-opt children, the transgender movement went for a bridge too far: “What destroyed the culture war consensus was their cynical and self-interested decision to transform the LGBT cause into one that no longer focused on the autonomy of adult Americans to live freely — which most people support — but instead to demand the right to influence and indoctrinate other people’s children.”

On a related topic: Last week, our Mark Alexander suggested that the Episcopal Church may be collapsing in large part due to its support of transgenderism and other immoralities.

Clearly, something is happening out there. And if Social Security is indeed the third rail of American politics, then we might look back one day to note that children were the third rail of gender-identity politics. And if so, then the Democrat Party might one day be forced to cut bait or be punished at the polls. Joe Biden appears willing to go down with the transgender ship. If he does, will the next Democrat up be equally as willing?

Either way, the transgender cult won’t go down without a fight. As Sullivan rightly noted, “It was once ‘live-and-let-live.’ Now it’s ‘embrace the ideology — or else.’”

As Phetasy concludes: “Herein lies the problem with Pride. You can no longer opt out of the ideology. The trans activism changed everything. It is coercive. It is everywhere. Big Tech acts as an enforcer, in conjunction with the state, policing language, pronouns, exacting punishments for refusing to repeat the mantras ‘trans women are women’ and ‘gender-affirming care is reproductive freedom.’”

Somehow, though, despite these institutional advantages, the transgender cult appears to have hit a wall. And that’s a good thing to take away as Pride Month draws to a close.

Updated with the latest Gallup polling on trans issues, the related hemorrhage of Episcopal Church congregants, and an additional thought on the Democrats’ precarious political position.