There is only one libertarian position on gender-affirming health care, and that's to let it be a private decision of doctors, patients, and parents if a minor is involved. Worries that some people might regret it are no more a case for criminalization than the fact that lots of people regret taking drugs is a case against drug decriminalization. And if your worry is that we need to protect kids from bad choices, you need *much* weightier evidence of harm than anti-trans people can point to.
@arossp How many libs does that own?
Also that seems classic libertarian. Current Libertarian Party thought seems to be you have a God-given right for the government to protect you from disfavored groups they don't like.
@junecasagrande @Popehat No, it's not. That's a comfortable caricature that makes it easy to dismiss arguments against one's policy preferences without having to critically engage them, but we should always strive to resist such traps and instead cultivate an informed and robust understanding of the range of political thought.
@junecasagrande @Popehat You haven't been looking very hard. The majority of self-described libertarians are pro-choice. There is a contingent that is anti-abortion, typically on grounds of believing that a fetus has a full set of rights which disallow its killing, but that view is in the minority, with most libertarians arguing either that a fetus is not the kind of thing with such rights, or a Judith Thomson-style "the mother's bodily autonomy trumps any fetus rights" position.
@arossp @junecasagrande @Popehat my best guess is that you’re in an echo chamber and only see “libertarian” content when one of the paleos tweets something so horrifyingly bad that it gets noticed and dragged by “Occupy Democrats” or whatever vanilla progressive meme pages you follow. Do you know anything about Cato Institute or Institute for Justice?
@elfprince13 The issue is not even what CATO or Reason write about. A bit part of the issue is that the average person who calls themselves a libertarian is not the Reason writers but rather their comment section or the Misses Caucus. If it were just a vocal minority it would show in the libertarian candidates who run for office and have success but instead for years now its the crazies. The debate where a candidate got booed for suggesting Drivers licenses maybe aren't the worst thing became a meme for a reason.
For every Justin Amash there are 3 Matt Gaetz. As much as Reason and CATO want to be the face of the Libertarians they've lost that battle a long time ago. All they do is give cover for people who care more about their Tax bill than those around them cover for voting for Republicans who couldn't care less about actual libertarian values. Yes CATO is Left of the mainstream Dems on some issues but on those same issues the Republicans are even worse and yet most people who claim to be libertarians will still vote for those same Republicans.
I give Reason credit for mostly not pandering to their readership by turning to the worst like so many right wing publications have with the rise of Trump but that doesn't change the fact that the majority of Americans hear the term libertarian they think Misses Caucus.
@Jonimus ideological typology polling suggests a pretty consistent ~20% of US adults are some flavor of libertarian. in the year since the MC hostile takeover of the LP, membership and donations and #s of elected libertarians have tanked to almost record lows (from record highs in the 4 years preceding) - so it’s clear that overwhelming majority of libertarians out there want nothing to do with MC style alt-right bullshit
@Jonimus it’s also pretty clear to anyone paying attention that the MC takeover was externally funded specifically to achieve this end of rendering the party useless by destroying it from within