150 Days?

That's how many days the LGBTQ++ community claims on the calendar to "honor" their "orientations." Including Transgender Visibility Day, on Easter Sunday this year

When I heard last week that Virginia’s largest county, Fairfax (with over 1.14 million residents and dropping), alongside Washington, DC’s infamous I-495 beltway, declared March 31st—Easter Sunday this year—as “Transgender Visibility Day,” I was shocked. How tin-earned do politicians have to be? As the senior pastor at my church said yesterday, it was “Jesus Visibility Day,” and no government proclamation can trump that.

To which the Biden Administration responded, “Hold my beer.”

A Transgender Pride Flag flying over the British Foreign Office in 2018, courtesy of Wikipedia

Yes, I know that “World Transgender Visibility Day” has been “designated” (by what authority, I’m not sure) on the calendar for March 31 since 2009. On the other hand, Easter falls on different Sundays in early Spring through a complicated algorithm involving Julian and Gregorian calendars that goes back a few centuries. Eastern Orthodox Christians usually honor Easter a week later.

“Transgender Visibility Day,” on the other hand, is credited to the inspiration of one LGTBQ++ activist who, according to Wikipedia, expressed “frustration that the only well-known transgender-centered day was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which mourned the murders of transgender people (on November 20), but did not acknowledge and celebrate living members of the transgender community.”

As it has done every March of its presidency, the Biden White House issued yet another “Transgender Visibility Awareness Day” proclamation on the day Christians know as “Good Friday.” It’s fair to ask if the thought that it fell on a Holy day on the Christian calendar—especially with a professed Catholic as President—entered into their thinking. Not that Catholic teachings or precepts undergird any aspect of the Biden Administration policies. Was it too much - or the demands to bend the knee to our new cultural overlords too great - to think about how this commemoration might be rolled out differently?

The President and Mrs. Biden issued a short statement for Christians on Easter. There’s a difference between a long proclamation, a very long “fact sheet,” and a brief presidential statement.

Regardless, governments from New York State and Fairfax County to the White House have poked the cultural bear. My social media feeds, at least on the platform known as X, are full of fury this weekend from Christians, pastors, and others upset that God is being mocked with the timing of the declaration (see Galatians 6:7) with this “in your face” woke theology.

I want to think that the White House proclamation could at least separate transgendered adults with transgender ideology, the kind that believes kids and kids alone, at almost any age, can pick their gender and have their bodies mutilated by malevolent medical professionals without parental involvement. Gender dysphoria is real, and people who suffer from it deserve compassion, respect, and counseling. Then I read the first sentence of a “fact sheet” accompanying the White House’s proclamation:

“Today, in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility, the Biden-Harris Administration is uplifting transgender communities—and especially transgender kids and their families—by celebrating their resilience in the face of hateful anti-transgender laws being advanced across the country.”

To these people, it is about ideology. The laws that the Biden Administration decries are designed to protect children's and parental rights. That’s genuine love, not “hate.” It is also another example of the Biden White House's logical fallacy of projection.

It’s an ideology - a religion - that professes that you can establish your truth and create your own identity, and everyone else must honor it. And if they don’t—if they’re “misgendered”—they can and should be punished, especially in our schools. The battle started with bathroom access in places like Texas, North Carolina, and, most recently, Loudoun County Schools in Virginia. The Washington Examiner:

“In Virginia, the Fairfax County School Board has decided that suspension is the appropriate punishment for “malicious misgendering” and “malicious deadnaming.” In classrooms as early as the fourth grade, if students use the wrong pronoun or wrong name when referring to a classmate, they will be forced to miss valuable school days by a school board that thinks it has the right to control what students say.”

It is anathema to the fundamental tenets of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and probably other faiths. It is at the core of our current cultural wars. You will note that “Transgender Visibility Day” isn’t being honored in the Middle East, outside the US, and maybe a few other Western national embassies. Not on Easter Sunday, not during Ramadan (this month, by the way).

It is spiritual warfare, and we ought to carefully consider whose side we’re on.

But as I thought through the political insanity of proclaiming “Transgender Visibility Day” during the most important event in Christendom - the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ - I asked, “How many days are dedicated to LGBTQ++ ideology on the calendar?

I counted up all the days, weeks, and months.

There are about 150 days dedicated to everything from “Trans Awareness Month” in November to “Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness Day” on May 25th.

Yes, I know that most, if any, are not commemorated through congressional legislation. They’re not “official,” but good luck with that argument. You can subscribe to websites that collect everything commemorated daily by an entity, usually for marketing purposes. March 31 is also “National Tater Day,” along with “National Clams on the Half Shell Day.” But since no governments commemorate those with proclamations (that I’m aware of), there’s no controversy. And those commemorations aren’t tied to ideologies that threaten the health, safety, and lives of children and families. They’re not political.

One of the issues that I wrestle with is how my faith should influence my politics and the supreme importance of making sure it’s not the other way around. Many Christians and churches profess a total separation of faith and politics, often misreading important passages in the New Testament book of Romans (chapter 13 in particular) and elsewhere. The same people also confuse “the separation of church as state,” which the Constitution states nowhere.

I remember attending church in northern Virginia right after our election in November 2021. It was a church along the beltway started in large part by our then-new Governor-elect, Glenn Youngkin. I have many friends there, and we contemplated joining after moving to the region from Pennsylvania. Sure enough, Youngkin and his family attended worship that morning. Many churches I know would have invited the newly elected official - especially one who had until recently been its warden - to the front of the church and prayed for him, completely consistent with the Christian admonition to pray for those in authority.

But that’s not what happened. After asserting, “We don’t do politics here,” the pastor quickly acknowledged and congratulated its parishioner and newly-elected Governor and moved on. Other churches routinely pray for political candidates and, without being partisan, invite them to share their faith. Gov. Youngkin has done that more than once at the church I associate with and support near where I now live.

I have heard from many Christians that they don’t do politics, period; some even refuse to register to vote. Churches and their pastors frequently eschew entreaties and efforts to register their flock. They find politics distasteful, even evil, and believe it discredits and even conflicts with their mission to profess the Gospel and “make disciples of all nations.” What these same Christians don’t realize, ignoring history, is how the same people who peddle transgender ideology are forcing churches to either bend the knee or see their faith and ability to practice it marginalized or worse. Reading about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lost his life challenging the evil ideologies of Nazi Germany and its subjugation of churches, is highly advised.

This is no time for people of faith to remain on the sidelines. Our ability to profess our faith is under attack, and the proclamations that bend the knee are issued for you to do the same. Or else. The marginalization will come in many forms, from workplace intimidation and threats to losing your job to being branded a “Christian Nationalist” or worse. Or government proclamations that accuse you of supporting “hate.” In other words, religious persecution. This is more to “render therefore unto Caesar” than what belongs to him. Read on. When there’s conflict, you have a choice to make. Of course, not all agree where the lines of “conflict” exist. The lines can be blurry.

Perhaps you don’t see a problem with wearing a button with your “preferred pronouns” on “International Preferred Pronoun Day” (October 19), attending that corporate headquarters “Transgender Awareness” flag-raising ceremony, or wearing a pin on your lapel. Many people of faith wrestle with these questions or think they're “no big deal,” thus bending the knee to buy peace. Appeasement never works.

Perhaps you should consult the growth rates of churches and congregations that have bowed to cultural pressure versus those that have stood firm against these winds of change. My church is bursting at the seams with nine Easter services this weekend. Yours?

As Vladimir Lenin famously said, “You probe with bayonets. If you find mush, you push. If you find steel, withdraw.”

Let me leave you with a sermon by Dr. Voddie Baucham. He is the founding dean and currently serves as a senior lecturer at the School of Divinity at the African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia. The author of several books, Baucham is also a founding faculty member of the Institute of Public Theology. An American, Baucham frequently lectures at various venues across the United States. His book, Fault Lines, is a favorite, which I reviewed in 2021.

A few days before Easter, he delivered a talk at Ark Encounter in Kentucky. He discussed Christians remaining “neutral” on the political sidelines. It’s worth your time.