President Joe Biden’s secular deputies kidnapped Christian theology to champion transgenderism on the holiest weekend for Christianity.
On Sunday afternoon, Biden’s X account tweeted: “Today, on Transgender Day of Visibility, I have a simple message to all trans Americans: I see you. You are made in the image of God, and you’re worthy of respect and dignity.”
The aggressive appropriation of Christian themes for political advantage — on Christianity’s holiest days — suggests Biden’s campaign staffers are trying to provoke a political fight over religion and sex that could rally demoralized progressives to his failing presidential campaign.
However, the Easter Sunday provocation will likely fail — and may backfire.
Christians recognize the need to suppress anger, forgive, and even love their enemies, even as they also fight hard to do good in the world. For example, the Bible reports that Jesus told Christians: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
Moreover, many polls show that transgenderism is losing public support as more people — including many progressives, and gays and lesbians — feel the impact of transgenderism’s civic aggression, personal violence, criminal behavior, intellectual incoherence, medical damage, hostility to parents and women, and danger to pitiable children. women, men, and gay men.
The “made in the image of God” phrase and claim is a theological statement by a government that vigorously enforces secularism outside churches.
For example, author Wayne Grudem says the phrase means:
Every single human being, no matter how … marred by sin, or illness, or weakness, or age, or any other disability, still has the status of being in God’s image and therefore must be treated with the dignity and respect that is due to God’s image-bearer. This has profound implications for our conduct toward others. It means that people of every race deserve equal dignity and rights. It means that elderly people … and children yet unborn deserve full protection and honor as human beings.
Biden’s transgenderism statement was slammed by Christians and critics of transgenderism, including “Billboard Chris“:
To say that humans who block puberty, take cross-sex hormones, and cut off their body parts because they were ‘born in the wrong body’ are “made in the image of God” is quite an insult to God.
Progressives argue that the desire to change sex is legitimate and should be forcibly enabled by government intervention.
That goal has been embraced by millions of Democratic-leaning voters who deeply empathize with people they see as afflicted minorities, such as “transgender kids,” migrant “kids in cages,” blacks, and even criminals. This progressive demographic is critical to Democrats because it is far larger than the tiny population of self-declared transgender people — few of whom even undergo cosmetic surgery on the genitals.
This transgender-focused empathy was expressed in 2020 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in language taken from Christian theology:
There is nothing holy about rejecting medical care of people, no matter who they are, on the grounds of what their identity is … There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital.
The empathy-minded progressive voters are a critical slice of Biden’s political coalition — but they are fracturing from Biden amid the damage caused by mass migration, economic turmoil — such as high rents — and the Israeli response to HAMAS’ October 7 massacre of Jewish civilians.
So multiple Democrats are amping up their portrayal of “transgender” people as bullied victims as they try to spur an emotional conservative backlash and a progressive turnout in the November election.
This weekend, Biden’s staffers touted their political “Transgender Day of Visibility” claim on Easter Friday, which marked the start of Christianity’s holiest days. His deputies and political allies repeated the theme over the weekend and topped it off with the “made in the image of God” tweet on Sunday.
The White House’s weekend messages implement the progressive mobilization strategy, but it also risks further alienating millions of swing-voting Christians, including Latino Christians.
Christianity says that God created men and women as naturally equal, complementary, and distinctly different. The view is matched by science and is recognized by evolved cultural norms, such as marriage, single-sex changing rooms, and different obligations on men and women.
This “different and complementary” understanding of the two sexes is directly opposed by the Biden-backed transgender claim that the two sexes are interchangeable with a bit of makeup, a change of clothing, and perhaps some surgery
Many polls show that transgenderism is unpopular — and is losing support. For example, a Gallup poll in September showed that almost 70 percent of Americans say that athletes born male should not be allowed to play against women, and 55 percent say it is “morally wrong” to claim opposite-sex status.
But Democrats have successfully dodged public opposition by mobilizing progressives with the claim that politicians who oppose transgenderism are mean bullies.
Last November, for example, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear fended off a GOP rival by declaring himself the good-hearted defender of vulnerable kids. He told MSNBC on November 20:
The way these super PACs and my opponent went about their campaign, it was just mean. It was gross. It was cruel. And people don’t like that. That’s not who we are. This ought to be a message that you can’t scapegoat people just to get folks angry. And is wrong think about what some people are doing, trying to dehumanize other human beings.
