Over the weekend, I argued that transgender activists, who so often claim to speak on behalf of troubled minors, do not deserve the moral high ground. I focused on the form of extortion they have encouraged in young people. According to it, to deny distressed youth puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and even genital surgery is to deny their very beings, thus leading them to suicide.

This notion started to become mainstream ten years ago, in reaction to the suicide of Cincinnati-area teenager Joshua Alcorn. And it was invoked in oral arguments earlier this month in United States v. Skrmetti, a Supreme Court case centering on the constitutionality of a Tennessee law restricting these treatments for minors. It was also handily rebutted there by Justice Samuel Alito, in a telling exchange with ACLU attorney Chase Strangio.

The course of those oral arguments made it seem like the transgender movement has finally encountered genuine obstacles, and perhaps even serious resistance. The weekend brought even more evidence of this apparent reality. The editorial board of the Washington Post published a decidedly unenthusiastic article evincing hesitation about the kinds of treatments Tennessee has banned and about which transgender activists are passionate to the point of zealotry. “The failure to adequately assess these treatments gives Tennessee reason to worry about them — and legal room to restrict them,” the board wrote, citing studies attesting to their ill effects.

Unlike with sensory deprivation earlier this year, the Post did not come fully to National Review‘s side — yet. The editorial calls for more and more rigorous studies, designed to resist activist pressure for favorable results (an unfortunate feature of some research thus far), into these regimens. But for the Post‘s editors to have voiced even this skeptical a view is a welcome sign that transgender activists are finally receiving necessary pushback. Bad news for them is good news for the minors on whose behalf they unjustly purport to speak.