The Pulpit is Political
Democrats think the entire country is their congregation.
By now, you may have heard about the sermon that Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde delivered during the inaugural prayer service on Tuesday. However you feel about Trump, “MAGA”, and the GOP, you’ve got to admit, Budde’s 15-minute-long lecture was the epitome of Democratic sanctimony.
“Unity is not partisan,” she told the congregation, which included President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and their wives. “Those across our country who dedicate our lives or who volunteer to help others in times of natural disaster, often at great risk to themselves, never ask those they are helping for whom they voted in a past election or what positions they hold on a particular issue.”
And here I thought lying was a sin. Or maybe Bishop Budde just doesn’t read the news.
Only three months ago, after two hurricanes slammed the state of Florida, a FEMA whistleblower revealed that supervisor Marn'i Washington had instructed members of her survivor assistance team to bypass homes displaying Trump signs. A tracking system used by federal relief workers showed homes being marked as “not able to access property,” followed with explanations like “Trump sign no entry per leadership” and “Per leadership no stop Trump flag.” After she was fired, Washington admitted in an interview that this type of political discrimination by FEMA occurs across the country.
From her pulpit, Budde continued, “When we know what is true, it’s incumbent upon us to speak the truth, even when—especially when—it costs us.”
The truth. Oh, you mean like, “sex is binary and immutable in humans”? Empirical truths that, until very recently, were verboten to utter?
Near the end of her sermon, Budde addressed President Trump directly. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said. “There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
She also asked him to have mercy on the migrants who “pick our crops,” “clean our office buildings,” and “wash our dishes.”
Yikes.
The next day, Rachel Maddow, surprising no one, invited Budde to appear on her show. Budde told Maddow that she had wanted to challenge Trump’s narrative about pressing issues, which, in public discourse, is the dominant one.
When Budde said this—that the Trump narrative is the one that “dominates” our discourse—I believe she meant it. And I found her conviction fascinating.
It’s fascinating to think there are people out there who actually believe it’s the Democrat’s narrative that fails to get any airtime. As if the mainstream media hasn’t been an extension of the DNC—and the special interest groups that fund it—for decades. As if the Biden Administration itself didn’t violate the First Amendment by enforcing the censorship of American citizens on social media.
But they do believe it. And it’s easy to understand why. Now that their iron grip on national discourse has finally loosened, for the first time in many years Democrats are being bombarded with opinions and beliefs that differ from their own. For years, if a woman dared to “misgender” someone on Twitter, they could count on content moderators to swiftly ban the evil TERF from the platform, and they could go on pretending that transwomen really are women. And if someone said the coronavirus probably originated in a lab, they knew the powers that be would boot that racist asshole into oblivion.
They’ve lost control, and it’s overwhelming. Hardly any of their arguments hold up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny. Thus, the only thing they can do—besides plug their ears and flee to friendlier (i.e., censored) social media platforms—is what they’ve always done: moralize. I’m not even going to argue with you, because what I believe is good and what you believe is bad. You should be ashamed of yourself. You need to “have mercy.” Trans kids are dying.
I hadn’t planned to write about this topic until I came across a New York Times headline on Wednesday, which appeared to take a page right out of a Democratic strategist’s playbook.
“Bishop Asks Trump to ‘Have Mercy’ on Immigrants and Gay Children,” the headline read.
Yes, Budde did mention gay and lesbian kids as well as trans kids. But let’s not pretend that that’s the population the Democrats, the mainstream media, and LGBTQ activist organizations are constantly fretting about “protecting”: gay kids. (See the images below for a Google Trends comparison of “protect gay kids” and “protect trans kids” from 2004 to today.)
It’s an effective tactic, to throw “gay” in a news headline or campaign slogan whenever there’s a need to garner more public support for a radical cause, and polling indicates that “gay” might sound more palatable to the American public than “trans” or “queer.” Before this, it was Florida’s 2022 Parental Rights in Education Act, which banned classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools from kindergarten through third grade. Back then, pundits cleverly dubbed the legislation the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
We need to be very clear: President Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology extremism,” just like the Florida legislation before it, is a direct result of the total capture of our institutions by the pseudoscientific religious belief of gender ideology. If blue-haired radicals hadn’t entered schools and told kids that sex is “assigned” rather than simply observed, that the sex they feel like inside supersedes the material reality of their bodies, and that some kids don’t have a sex at all, then these measures wouldn’t even be a figment in the GOP’s imagination. And if in the long run gay youth suffer because of them—if they are further alienated from their peers or if they are outed by teachers to disapproving parents—it is mostly if not entirely the fault of the radical activists that made so many Americans on both sides of the aisle agree that these measures were necessary in the first place.
I don’t doubt that Bishop Budde meant what she said on Tuesday—that children who are different deserve our compassion, and that many are afraid of what the future holds for them. But before she lectures the nation from her pulpit, she should educate herself on what it is that these children actually have to fear.
For years now, gay people like me have been pleading with Democrats, mainstream news outlets, and activist organizations to consider the implications of affirming feminine boys and masculine girls as “transgender,” when the research (not to mention our own experiences) tells us that nearly all of these gender-dysphoric/gender-nonconforming/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-them kids, if not socially transitioned, will grow up to be gay and choose not to medically transition. We’re the ones who’ve begged them to consider whether it might not be all that progressive for clinicians to stunt these kids’ natural development and chemically and surgically modify their secondary sex traits, all so that they might be able to “pass” as “normal,” straight adults. We’re the ones who’ve alerted them to the well-documented history of these medical practices, which reveals that, out of the 70 kids who participated in the original Dutch experiment in pediatric transition, only one was heterosexual—and that one of those kids died.1
We’re the ones who’ve been begging people to “have mercy” on “gay kids,” only to be smeared by our own communities as transphobic bigots. And it’s the Biden Administration that zealously backed this mad science. It’s the Democrats, not the Republicans, who lobby for therapists and clinicians to essentially “trans away the gay.”
Do I think the efforts of Trump and his fellow Republicans are motivated by a desire to protect potentially-gay kids from an antigay ideology? No, I don’t. Am I concerned about what else the newly empowered GOP might try to pull all off over the next four years? Sure. But, as a gay, married man who in 2016 agonized over what a Trump presidency would mean for the future of gay rights, today I’m breathing a sigh of relief that the crazy activists who derailed our entire movement might finally face defeat. I only hope they don’t succeed in dragging the rest of us down with them.
The male was 18 when he died from an infection following a laparoscopic intestinal vaginoplasty. An adult male’s genital tissue is what is traditionally used to construct a neovagina, but in this case, suppression of the boy’s puberty prevented his genitals from fully developing. The surgeons chose to use part of his intestine, which became infected with E-Coli. He developed septic shock and multiple organ failure.
And as a parent of a young woman, (my daughter was a lesbian until she heard about "trans"), I'm with you.
"...consider the implications of affirming feminine boys and masculine girls as “transgender...
if not socially transitioned, will grow up to be gay and choose not to medically transition."
My daughter was in her late 20s and still got nabbed by activists to denounce her underlying comorbidities and stop saying she was a lesbian. I begged her to treat her trauma and other deep issues and to stay the beautiful lesbian she had grown into. I lost on every front.
And yes, "It’s the Democrats, not the Republicans, who lobby for therapists and clinicians to essentially “trans away the gay.”" Some "friends" don't believe me when I tell them that. They actually believe I made it up. And after they say that, they drop me, "unfriend" me on social media and turn their backs on me. The people who behaved that way were Democrats.
As you know, I support you Ben. Please keep writing, and I will do the same. I may have lost my daughter to gender ideology and medicalization, but I will advocate that no other parent or family endures that loss. It is not okay to "trans away the gay" or trans gender non-conforming, vulnerable kids or adults.
As a mother of a lesbian child, Ben is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers. I frequently share his articles with my liberal friends and family in an effort to explain why, although I worry a lot about the Trump administration, I am simultaneously optimistic about some of the things he has done.