While the man in charge of the most powerful military in world history threatened to blow an entire civilization into oblivion, “never to be brought back again,” many of us wondered how his Christian followers would respond.
Back in 2016, when white evangelicals refused to hold then candidate Donald Trump accountable for bragging about sexually assaulting women, he joked, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Ten years later, when he threatened, “A whole civilization will die tonight,” that theory seemed to be put to the test. Maybe murder on the streets of New York City would be OK, just like it ended up being OK in Minneapolis multiple times. But surely they would draw the line at genocide. Right?
Some right-wing influencers such as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones called Trump out. It’s a sign of the times for the Republicans when Alex Jones becomes the voice of reason in the room.
“It’s a sign of the times for the Republicans when Alex Jones becomes the voice of reason in the room.”
Others on social media defended Trump’s threats, calling for Iran to be “turned into a parking lot.” Some said his threat of genocide was taken out of context because he closed his post by adding, “God bless the great people of Iran.” Most conservatives seemed to ignore it.
But then another scapegoat began to appear — transgender people.
A false dichotomy
“Look, I don’t think it’s appropriate. Wish he hadn’t,” wrote Christian broadcaster Erick Erickson to his 266,000 followers on X in response to Trump’s declaration of Tuesday being “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one.” Then Erickson added, “But if I have to choose between this and Trans Recognition Day or whatever on Easter, OK.”
Erick Erickson (Photo: Wikipedia)
While Erickson may not be a household name to many, he has long been popular on right-wing talk radio. After being a guest host for Rush Limbaugh, Erickson went on to host his own show, became a contributor for CNN and Fox News, and was named by The Atlantic in 2015 as “the most influential conservative in America.”
So of course, the pivot to transgender people was bound to catch on as his post garnered more than 1.5 million views.
Conservative Christian blogger Jackie Chea chimed in: “It’s not just a choice between two inappropriate Easter messages (Biden or Trump). It’s a choice between an assault on our own culture (Biden’s trans agenda) & an assault on an enemy culture that vows to destroy us (Trump’s attack on Iran).”
Besides the fact that whatever Biden celebrated on Easter is completely irrelevant to Trump’s threat of civilizational annihilation, the two aren’t at all comparable. Nobody dies from Transgender Visibility Day.
And for the umpteenth time, Biden didn’t choose to make Transgender Day of Visibility fall on Easter. An odd calendar confluence made that happen.
And yes, transgender visibility is a matter of life and death.
In a recent episode of “Highest Power: Church + State,” I discussed this with Baptist News Global contributor Cody Sanders.
Sanders cited research showing “people who had undergone conversion therapy were twice as likely to report having attempted suicide.” And he added, “We know from the Trevor Project that if an LGBTQ teen has just one trusted adult in their life who is affirming of them as an LGBTQ person, it reduces their suicidality by a potential of 40%.”
“Imagine the lives that could be saved if transgender people felt their humanity was being recognized.”
Imagine the lives that could be saved if transgender people felt their humanity was being recognized.
The Trans Panic Revival
At the heart of Easter is a story of resurrection, of life being renewed, of a body that died being given breath once again, but in a transformed way. Perhaps one might call it a revival, a term that is being co-opted by the Right.
While white evangelicals and the Trump administration plan U.S. government-sponsored revival services and dream of resurrecting the white patriarchy of old, one of the threats to their revival is the questioning of gender binaries, on which their gender hierarchies depend.
Chrissy Stroop told me in an interview for my upcoming book: “People who believe strongly in a patriarchal social hierarchy are severely threatened of what they see as men abdicating their rightful place in authority. They will also, of course, discipline and punish women for stepping outside their biblically prescribed roles. But that’s not quite as scary as people they see as men saying they aren’t men at all. … Queerness has always subverted those hierarchies.”
And when right-wing power is subverted, they react in fear. One of the most common themes of the right-wing revival is the resurrection of the 1980s “Satanic Panic,” only this time they’re demonizing transgender people rather than Cabbage Patch dolls.
This Trans Panic Revival is appearing everywhere.
A few examples of recent years include The Gospel Coalition claiming the new live-action Little Mermaid was a promotion of “the transgender revolution” due to her transition from a mermaid to a human.
The worship warfare events I’ve covered all have featured pink and blue “Don’t Mess With Our Kids” signs, banners and T-shirts and have included altar calls for transgender people to come forward and have their true gender identity declared over them by straight people. At the Million Women March in October 2024, a quarter million evangelicals gathered in front of the U.S. Capitol to sing, scream, blow shofars and use mallets to beat down a literal altar that they claimed was “the altar of transitioning of children, of mutilating them.”
They’ve spread lies about the number of transgender athletes in college sports.
They lied about Olympian Imane Khelif’s gender.
Trump’s climactic final strategy to win the 2024 election was a series of anti-trans ads.
When Joan Rivers died, her daughter and others on the right conjured up a conspiracy that the Obamas had her killed due to Rivers participating in the right-wing conspiracy theory that Michelle Obama is transgender.
Erika Kirk as Miss Arizona (Wikipedia)
There’s also a group called the transvestigators who have gone so far as to accuse Erika Kirk and many other famous people of being transgender.
Speaking of the Kirks, when the ammo investigators believed killed Kirk featured the letters “TRN,” right-wing influencers began blaming Kirk’s murder on “transgender ideology,” when in reality the letters were simply the name of the manufacturer, Turan Ammunition.
Ironically, the final question posed to Kirk before he was shot had to do with conservatives falsely blaming transgender people for mass shootings.
And the connections haven’t stopped. At a TPUSA event in December, right-wing commentator Benny Johnson claimed, “Transgenderism killed Charlie Kirk,” and referred to an “epidemic of transgender violence running rampant in our country.”
Then in the same way Trump threatened to end Iran, Johnson threatened, “What has made me so angry about this moment is that it should’ve been a unifying moment for us to all say, ‘What a horrid and wretched ideology.’ Now it’s time to kick in doors. Right? Come on, FBI! Do some door kicking. Round ’em up. The violent Antifa members. The Trantifa members.”
While the Republicans have become completely unhinged in their demonization of transgender people, their strategy unfortunately has worked to consolidate power.
While the Republicans have become completely unhinged in their demonization of transgender people, their strategy unfortunately has worked to consolidate power. Those of us who affirm transgender people are labeled as crazy, as denying basic reality, as not knowing what a woman is, or as having the “woke mind virus.” And a big reason why is that people don’t understand the transgender experience.
Only about 1% of the population identify as transgender. So unless those people feel welcomed to share their perspective, the other 99% aren’t going to know what they’re experiencing. And given the current climate, it’s no surprise that many of them suffer in silence.
How the Democrats will respond
Because the Republicans so effectively drummed up fear through their Trans Panic Revival to the point of closing out the 2024 election for Trump, many Democrats have been second-guessing the degree to which they want to support transgender people.
On his “Club Random” podcast, Bill Maher often establishes common ground with conservatives and pushes back against liberals about transgender people. He said unless the Democrats change their position on transgender people, they will “lose every election.”
Many people consider California Gov. Gavin Newsom to be the front runner for Democrats in the 2028 presidential election. But in his first podcast episode, he agreed with Charlie Kirk that transgender people participating in sports is “deeply unfair.” Kirk told Newsom, “You guys are giving us an 80-20 issue that is just permeating the country. It’s such an affront to our senses.”
When Kirk asked Newsom to name Trump’s most devastating 2024 election ad, Newsom replied, “Trump’s for you. She’s for They/Them.” Then he added, “Devastating. Devastating. Devastating. And she didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating.”
‘The least of these’
Whether or not you have all your questions answered about transgender people is irrelevant at this point. Transgender people are very vulnerable, especially right now, due to Republicans lying about them and due to Democrats being too afraid to speak up out of fear of losing more elections if they do.
Because they hold virtually no power and are so deeply misunderstood even by many on the Left, trans folk are an easy target for the Right to make fun of or use as a convenient excuse to harm others or to overlook the harm they’re causing.
Kirk told Newsom Democrats view the world through an oppressor-oppressed lens, while Republicans view the world through a lens of what is right and wrong. Not only was Kirk creating yet another right-wing false dichotomy, he also was denying the heart of the gospel.
According to Matthew 25, the right thing for Jesus’ followers to do is to work for the liberation of the empire’s “least of these.” And given how the U.S. empire is responding to every issue, including their own president’s threats of genocide, by demonizing transgender people, our transgender neighbors are our empire’s least of these.
As one reader told me this week, “Whatever one thinks about transgender people is entirely relevant at this point.” She concluded that the people trying to drag our transgender neighbors into Trump’s tirades are clearly showing they think “they aren’t humans worthy of respect.”
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.