2024's Hottest Religion: Transphobia?

Christian, Jewish, Muslim… Anti-Trans? 

The National Records of Scotland just unveiled their most recent census results, revealing a faith demographic portrait unlike any other. For the religion category, the census offered a number of check boxes for common faiths like Roman Catholic or the Church of Scotland. It also allowed respondents to write in their own faiths.

The results? Some 2,883 individuals recorded their faith as "believer in biology" – a phrase used by activists who oppose expanding transgender rights and who push back against the notion of changing genders. Notably, amongst those write-in voters was one of the world’s most famous writers.

Is there a new anti-transgender faith in town?

The Biology Believers

The nearly 3,000 "believers in biology" didn’t come by their newfound faith by happenstance. 

The campaign for women to record their religion as "believer in biology" was largely organized by the group For Women Scotland, a gender-critical feminist group well known for its women's rights activism – and its narrow definition of the word "woman."

The census campaign was reportedly led in protest of a new government policy allowing respondents to self-report their sex on their census form and removing the requirement to match the sex on their birth certificate.

Supposedly inspired by the suffragette movement’s mass census boycott in 1911, For Women Scotland asked Scottish census takers to write in their faith as "believer in biology" in protest of self-reporting. They say that only verifiable biological sex, as seen on one’s birth certificate, should be recorded on the census, because that data is used to determine the funding for social services impacting women.

“This means the data collected will be a mix of sex and ‘gender identity,’” they wrote, “and we will lose important information about the sex of our population – information that is vital in planning for services.”

Amongst those who wrote in their faith? Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. 

“I was one of those people, [who responded ‘believer in biology’ on the census]” declared Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh. 

Rowling is one of the most vocal critics of the transgender movement, often causing controversy online for her incendiary comments about trans people. This stance has often put her at odds with the film series’ young stars, many of whom have repeatedly spoken out against her comments.

Rowling has called the transgender movement everything from misguided to misogynistic, culminating in a 2023 interview where she compared transgender activists to Death Eaters, the soul-sucking villains of the Harry Potter series. 

But is she the most famous face of the world’s newest religion? Well... hard to say.

Like the other respondents, ticking ‘believer in biology’ on her census form seems to be Rowling’s way of expressing her dissatisfaction with the transgender movement and its growing acceptance, rather than a sincere religious belief.

Yet this does open up an interesting question: when exactly does political ideology turn into a religious-like zealotry? 

Some may argue when one documents it as their faith on a census form.

What do you think?

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