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And enforce rules he or she does not like anyway even if they occur at their expense, correct?
'Empathy' is not an exception to social regulation. It may be used to claim it, or demand it, or insist that it should, but the fundamental purpose of government is to tell people 'no' and enforce that objection by force if necessary. This includes, and is especially true, for demands by one on the part of others- be it life (no, they do not have to give you their lives), property (no, they do not have to give you their possessions), conscience (no, they do not have to follow your religion), or presence (no, they do not have to let you into their personal spaces).
It is precisely because the government is in the business of allocating resources and punishments that governments are ethically obliged to not do so on the basis of empathy. Empathy is, after all, easiest for those we already care about and in scarce supply for our rivals or opponents. Empathy is, additionally, easy to fake and yet hard to measure- there are any number of performative appeals to empathy, but few metrics to actually identify those who need it (often because they cannot speak for themselves). A society ruled by empathy is an often cruel place, as it is one which takes from those less emapthizable with and gives to those who are most successful in bullying social pressure to claim the profits for themselves.
This is why virtuous governments are ruled by laws, not empathy. Empathy may be a consideration in the laws a just society creates, but only in accordance with any other virtue or favor, and refusing to enforce socially validated laws in the name of empathy for a select groups is a lack of empathy for other groups.
This is the purpose of government under liberalism. You can totally have ‘different people live under different laws and there’s complex rules about who defers to whom’, and have a state, as long as it’s not a liberal society.
I don’t think trans realize that.
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