Joe Biden, the “devout” Catholic who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, issued a proclamation on Good Friday, the day Christians remember Jesus’ death on the cross before his Resurrection three days later on Easter Sunday.
Biden chose Good Friday to publicly announce that he would designate the following Sunday as an important day in American life. The day would commemorate the dying of an old self and the beginning of a new kind of identity.
Yet this religious quasi-resurrection did not involve Jesus, but people who claim that their “gender identity” overrides their biological sex. Biden did not mark Good Friday or Easter Sunday in his proclamation, rather he marked “Transgender Day of Visibility.“
“Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation,” Biden declared. “They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.”
Of course, Biden did not admit that this freedom for transgender people “to be their true selves” amounts to stifling everyone else’s freedom to call a spade a spade, along with parents’ freedom to protect their children from an ideology that will leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile.
Indeed, Biden took the opportunity to condemn those who dare dissent from the orthodoxy of his new state religion.
“But extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families—silencing teachers; banning books; and even threatening parents, doctors, and nurses with prison for helping parents get care for their children,” the president said in the proclamation.
Note the subversion: Parents are not trying to silence teachers or ban books; they’re fighting to get pornographic materials out of school libraries and to protect their children from the lie that a boy can become a girl and vice versa. Biden calls these efforts “hateful,” but he describes life-altering drugs that put kids on a path to permanently mutilating their bodies as “care.”
It’s no accident that Biden—or whoever drafted this proclamation for him—left any mention of Good Friday or Easter out of the proclamation. His statements in that document operate out of an entirely different worldview than that of traditional Christianity.
Christianity preaches the gospel: that all of us are sinful and need redemption, that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty and reconcile us to God, and that he rose from the dead to show his divinity and to give us hope for our ultimate resurrection. The Catholic Church to which Biden belongs preaches this gospel.
Yet gender ideology promises its own weaker version of the gospel: that society is sinful and needs to repent of hating transgender people, that people who identify as transgender can reject their biological sex and be accepted for “who they are” in the gender identity opposite their sex, and that “gender-affirming care” and societal acceptance will give transgender people the well-being they deserve.
Demonizing and silencing opponents is a fundamental part of this project, because the transgender gospel calls on all society not just to accept transgender identity but to celebrate it.
Traditional Christianity poses a problem for this because the Bible teaches that God made humans male and female, and neither the scriptures nor Catholic tradition condones the idea that a person can reject his or her biological sex and become a member of the opposite sex.
For these and other reasons, Republicans attacked Biden’s proclamation on Good Friday. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the White House “betrayed the central tenet of Easter—which is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
“Banning sacred truth and tradition—while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day’—is outrageous and abhorrent,” Johnson said, referring to a ban on religious art during the traditional White House Easter Egg Roll. (Both the White House and an organization involved in the Easter event that banned religious imagery said the rules prohibiting religious imagery at the White House Easter Egg Roll go back decades.)
“This is what Biden cares about and who he caters to,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, posted on X with a screenshot of the president’s proclamation. “He is devaluing Easter and elevating trans recognition. Downright shameful and despicable.”
“We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only—the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a written statement Saturday.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sought to dispel “misinformation” about the proclamation. She noted that Easter Sunday “happened to coincide with Transgender Visibility Day.” Biden has commemorated Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31 since 2021, Jean-Pierre said, while the date of Easter Sunday varies each year according to a lunar calendar.
“As a Christian who celebrates Easter with family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American,” she added.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Biden appeared to deny marking Easter Sunday as Transgender Day of Visibility, however.
According to Jacqui Heinrich, a White House correspondent for Fox News, another reporter asked Biden: “Speaker Johnson called it outrageous that Easter Sunday was Transgender Day of Visibility, what do you say to Speaker Johnson?”
“He’s thoroughly uninformed,” Biden responded.
“Uninformed how?” the reporter asked.
“I didn’t do that,” Biden replied.
Johnson responded by posting a screenshot of Biden’s proclamation and asking, “This you, Joe Biden?”
Biden has marked Transgender Day of Visibility each year since 2021, but that doesn’t excuse his decision to issue his proclamation for it on Good Friday without noting either Good Friday or Easter Sunday in the proclamation.
Despite Jean-Pierre’s insistence that Biden can celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility and Easter on the same day, the unfortunate timing of Biden’s proclamation only highlighted the inherent tension between transgender orthodoxy and traditional Christianity. The president’s own proclamation also included condemnations of the Christians who refuse to celebrate transgender identity, as if their opposition were rooted in “hate.”
The true scandal isn’t that the transgender holiday happened to line up with Easter, but that the White House is trumpeting the pseudo-religious holiday in the first place and using it as an excuse to demonize those who disagree.
The coincidental timing only emphasizes how Biden is dividing Americans on this issue, drawing attention to something Christians should have been following for years.