Why The Right Really Freaked Out Over Trans Day Of Visibility Falling On Easter
There is a dark Christian nationalist ideology underpinning the right's Easter weekend outrage
Another day, another manufactured right-wing controversy.
On Friday, President Biden issued “A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024, setting aside March 31, 2024 as a day for:
…all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity…
Biden issued the same proclamation last year, and each year before that as president, including in 2021 when he became the first president to do so.
But the Day was not Biden’s invention. Rachel Crandall-Crocker, the executive director and co-founder of Transgender Michigan, organized the first Trans Day of Visibility on March 31, 2009.
In addition to wanting to distinguish the day from Transgender Day of Remembrance, which falls in November, Crandall-Crocker felt that “once a person understands us, it’s hard to discriminate against us.”
“I created it because I wanted a time that we don’t have to be so lonely. I wanted a day that we’re all together all over the world as one community. And that’s exactly what we are.”
But 15 years ago, no one could have anticipated the firestorm that would erupt on the far right when Trans Day of Visibility happened to fall on Easter Sunday, as it did this year.
Easter, of course, is the day Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead, making it one of Christianity’s holiest days. And many conservative Christians felt there was something incompatible about these two days coinciding, even though while Trans Day of Visibility has been fixed on March 31 for more than a decade, it’s Easter whose date shifts with the calendar.
But it wasn’t just that rightwingers viewed Biden’s proclamation as somehow undermining their sacred holiday. There was something much more disturbing going on underneath the anger on display.
While many Republicans expressed “disgust” with Biden’s decision, Christian nationalist podcaster Matt Walsh was so triggered that he felt the proclamation was an act of “evil” by a “demon.”
Yes, seriously.
That certainly escalated quickly. But how and why?
In this essay, I’ll not only explore how this controversy provided the right with a perfect opportunity to undermine one of Biden’s great strengths against Trump, e.g. his genuine devout faith, but I’ll also take a look at the roots of the conservative Christian nationalist hatred for the very concept of being transgender, and why the right-wing freakout this weekend is of a piece with the anti-trans legislation propagating around the country.
Two Controversies For The Price Of One
In the wake of the Trans Day of Visibility fake outrage, far-right white Christian Republican after far-right white Christian Republican denounced the proclamation as though it sought to somehow replacing Easter.
There was Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves:
Senator JD Vance:
And yes, even Caitlyn Jenner, who is herself trans and has celebrated the day in the past, weighed in with her “disgust” at Joe Biden’s proclamation.
All this outrage occurred despite the fact Joe Biden in fact did actively celebrate Jesus’s resurrection in his Easter message to the nation.
But as Jay wrote at The Status Kuo, over Easter weekend, Joe Biden’s Trans Day of Visibility proclamation was not the only fake controversy conservative Christians used to play the victim and accuse Joe Biden of undermining Christianity in America.
Shocking exactly no one, ginned up controversy #2 originated with a Fox News article published Friday that announced dramatically:
Religious-themed designs banned from White House Easter egg art contest
Yes, Fox dug up a flyer from months ago that provided guidance for a White House youth Easter egg art contest, which specified that design submissions:
"must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements."
What resulted was an onslaught of opportunistic, overblown accusations from the right accusing Biden of using the administration to undermine Christian faith.
You see, it’s actually white Christians who are truly being persecuted in America.
Cue Speaker Mike Johnson, whose post combining the two controversies was perhaps the gold standard of the genre:
In addition, there was VP hopeful and dental surgery promoter South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, whose post got appropriately fact-checked by X users.
And then there was Donald Trump, whose campaign statement managed to bleed both controversies into one, portraying the devout Biden as an enemy to the faithful.
“It is appalling and insulting that Joe Biden’s White House prohibited children from submitting religious egg designs for their Easter Art Event, and formally proclaimed Easter Sunday as ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ Sadly, these are just two more examples of the Biden Administration’s years-long assault on the Christian faith.
“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.” -Karoline Leavitt, National Press Secretary"
Of course, it’s all based on a complete fiction, this notion that the prohibition on religious themes in the egg decorating contest was a Biden choice. The fact is, these rules have been in place for more than 45 years, across every administration including during Trump’s, as the American Egg Board made clear in a statement.
And as this X community note on the original Fox story highlighted:
But the facts were beside the point. For far-right conservative Christians, it’s always been quite inconvenient that their own presidential standard bearer is such a charlatan and fake believer, even as the Democratic President is a well-known true devout man of faith. What an opportunity these controversies provided to flip that script and portray Biden as someone actually undermining faith in America, despite all evidence to the contrary. Even as Trump used Holy Week to crassly start hawking Bibles.
In this upside-down GOP world, of the two major party presidential candidates, Donald Trump is the true man of faith.
Why Biden’s Support For Trans People Makes Him “Outrageously Evil”
Even as mainstream Republicans used these controversies to try to score some fairly standard political points against Biden, there was a much darker reaction among some of the more radical forces in the conservative movement, which can shed some light on the fetid underbelly of the Christian nationalist movement now taking over the Republican Party.
As I mentioned before, Christian nationalist podcaster and professional shit-stirrer Matt Walsh went so far as to call Joe Biden’s Trans Day of Visibility Proclamation “outrageously evil”, concluding with no sign of sarcasm or irony that:
This man is a demon.
For this X user, Walsh’s use of the term “evil” is not hyperbolic at all:
Nor is Walsh’s use of “demonic” out of bounds to failed Trump-endorsed 2022 Senate candidate Blake Masters.
Sadly, among many on the right, this is pretty standard language when discussing the left’s open acceptance and celebration of transgender people. Christian nationalists genuinely view “wokeness” and the acceptance of “transgenderism” in terms of a religious war between good and evil.
Anti-vax Christian conspiracy theorist Steven Miller calls it a “war on humanity and faith” and suggests that acknowledging the essential humanity of transgender people is against the “divine order of creation.”
Similarly, anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalist influencer James Lindsay posted a screed on X calling on believers to pray for the “evil leaders” who are “caught up in the trans cult.”
And then you have anti-abortion and far-right Christian podcaster Lila Rose, who said the quiet part out loud:
This is the same perspective that drives the anti-trans legislation perpetrated by Republican state legislatures around the country.
While they couch their advocacy against gender-affirming care for minors as concern for children’s well-being, this masks their true intentions: to ban gender-affirming care for everyone, because from their perspective being transgender is illegitimate at its core as an affront to God’s perfect creation of man and woman.
Christian Nationalist Ideology Driving Anti-Trans Legislation
Many people, including some on the left, would have us believe that Republicans are targeting the transgender community, and particularly trans youth, because they are easy marks. As among the most marginalized voices in society, the trans community is viewed by Republicans as a means to appeal to the lowest common denominator in their base by punching down, essentially bullying the weak to score political points.
And while that is certainly true of Republican political strategy, as Sarah Posner laid out in her excellent 2022 exposé of The Statesmen Academy—a Christian nationalist bootcamp for Republican legislators around the country—there is a distinct Christian ideology that fuels this insidious anti-trans movement.
In her piece, Posner follows Robin Lundstrom, a Republican Arkansas state legislator, who authored the SAFE Act, an anti-science bill banning gender-affirming care for minors that served as model legislation for other Republican-dominated state legislatures and has since been struck down by a federal judge as unconstitutional.
Posner quotes Lundstrum as being very clear about her own political ideology, classic Christian nationalism:
Lundstrum, an evangelical Christian and member of an influential Southern Baptist Church, has said that “it’s our duty as Christians to take care of our Christian nation,” and “our Constitution came out of the Bible.”
And accordingly, Lundstrom based her legislation not on science, but on the advocacy work of two Christian nationalist organizations, the Family Research Council and the Arkansas affiliate of the Family Policy Alliance, the political arm of Focus on the Family, which together preach that all evangelical Christians:
should engage politically in order to ensure that that government be guided by a “biblical worldview.”
Posner is clear that this view is not shared by all Christians, and certainly is held by only a minority of Americans. But as Robert P Jones at PRRI has found, support for Christian nationalist beliefs are now held by a majority of Republicans.
As I noted here at The Big Picture last March:
Now, a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution confirms Christian nationalism is a uniquely Republican phenomenon.
54 percent of Republican voters either indicated they are adherents to Christian nationalism (21 percent) or sympathizers (33 percent) of such a movement, as defined by several values-based criteria including:
the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation
U.S. laws should be based on Christian values
God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society
When it comes to their view of transgender Americans, according to Posner:
This religious view…maintains that the law must be consistent with sex and gender strictures ordained by God. It has shaped the decades-long assault on abortion rights, culminating in the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, and a growing backlash against contraception and LGBTQ rights.
The Christian right has targeted trans rights in particular because they contend—contrary to established medical and scientific evidence—that a person cannot deviate from “God’s design” for men and women.
In her piece, Posner makes clear what the Christian nationalist endgame is.
In rejecting the medical establishment in favor of this anti-scientific religious ideology, Lundstrum’s SAFE Act represents an escalation in Republican legislative attacks on trans kids, ramping up from barring them from bathrooms and sports consistent with their gender identity to making the basic health care they need illegal.
It is a template for how Christian nationalist organizations and lawmakers plan to drastically restrict the rights of trans people in states across the country, and one they are increasingly intent on making into law.
And sure enough, over the past two years, that’s precisely what Republican legislatures around the country have done.
As The Independent noted in the wake of this weekend’s manufactured controversies, “as Transgender Visibility Day celebrations take place across the US this weekend, anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ+ policies are on the rise throughout the country.”
In other words, we are witnessing in real-time the Christian nationalist movement succeed in its anti-trans movement.
Specifically:
More than 479 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures during the ongoing 2024 legislative session, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Meanwhile, last year the ACLU tracked 510 anti-LGBTQ+ bills during the 2023 legislative session.
In sum, it’s not really about Easter, or eggs, or what Joe Biden proclaimed. It’s about whose vision of America will prevail. And in the imagined future of the far right, there is no place for trans people.
The good news is that we have people leading our country whose faith actually calls them to embrace transgender people.
Joe Biden is one of those leaders.
As is Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock—who is a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta—who put it quite eloquently in an appearance on CNN on Sunday, ripping Speaker Johnson and his ilk for their attacks over Biden’s Trans Day of Visibility proclamation
“Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that.
"This is just one more instance of folks who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith.
"Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down but as a bridge to bring all of us together.”
Actually, it was Easter that fell on Transgender Day of Visibility not the other way around. Besides next year Easter falls on April 20th or 4/20 (Weed Day). Can't wait for the hues & cries over that one. 😁
I find it confusing how Christian rejection began by focusing on gay men (including brutal chemical castration), but in general, the religious right seemed less worried about lesbians, didn't target women the way they did gay men. Lesbians don't hang out in their locker rooms making them feel skittish, I guess. Or perhaps Christian conservatives figured they could easily 're-educate' those wayward women?
Then, as gay men became much more established, and so many came out of the closet (even Thiel), all that angst fell away, and there was an interesting shift to focus on transgender women and Drag Queens--but once again, not so much transgender men. Are young women less important to the Christian conservative twisted agenda?
Perhaps the revulsion Christian conservatives show against transgender women is so strong because it is a man giving up power, an absolutely unforgiveable betrayal to the male gender. Perhaps in their view transgender men are doing something Christian men see as misguided but natural--reaching for power that as women they are denied.
All of this is tied up in the belief that men should be in charge of women and women are lesser beings. All of it.