Biden Believes Opposing His Radical Gender Ideology Is 'Close To Sinful'

Protecting children from premature, harmful exposure to gender ideology and its life-altering consequences is "close to sinful," said President Biden Monday on "The Daily Show." The remark came as Biden searched for language strong enough to describe Florida's recent efforts to protect children -- he also called it "terrible" and "cruel."

President Biden said:

"What's going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, 'close to sinful,' alright? I mean, it's just terrible what they're doing.

"It's not like a kid just wakes up one morning and says, 'You know, I've decided I want to become a man,' or 'I want to become a woman,' or 'I want to change.' I mean, what are they thinking about here? I mean, human beings -- they love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are -- I mean, it just, to me, is, I don't know, it's cruel."

Mainstream media publications like The Hill connected Biden's remarks to the recently introduced Florida House Bill 1421, which states that "a physician may not perform or provide gender clinical interventions to a minor," including "sex reassignment surgeries or any other surgical procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristics" and "puberty blocking, hormone, and hormone antagonistic therapies."

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) responded, "It is not 'sinful' to prohibit the mutilation of minors."

If that was Biden's target, he must have been unaware that the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine already agreed upon professional guidelines prohibiting gender reassignment procedures for minors earlier this year. It's also strange that he would single out this Florida bill at the beginning of the legislative process, when four other states have already passed laws this year restricting gender transition procedures for minors.

Perhaps it was habit that caused President Biden to draw on his Florida talking point. The president has routinely contrasted Florida's conservative success story with his own administration's radical LGBT agenda. Last spring, Biden (along with many national Democrats, celebrities, and the mainstream media) obsessed over Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill (which they absurdly labelled the "Don't Say Gay" bill), calling it "hateful" for providing transparency for parents and restricting age-inappropriate sexual conversations in K-3 classrooms. 

National leftists repeated their false claims of censorship in Florida as the DeSantis administration removed explicit books from school libraries -- so graphic that news stations covering a press conference cut their feeds rather than show the examples.

Whether Biden intended to target Florida HB 1421 or a different action that state has performed to protect children, his comments made news for the mismatch between his undeserved, barely coherent insults and the state's stellar track record. "Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight" (Proverbs 26:2).

First, the theological aspect. "'Close to sinful' is not a biblical category," director of FRC's Center for Biblical Worldview David Closson told The Washington Stand.

Instead, the Bible says sin "clings so closely" to us that we must struggle against it (Hebrews 12:1,4). Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4), failing to do what we know is right (James 4:17), and "whatever does not proceed from faith" (Romans 14:23). In the Bible's accounting, anything that isn't righteous is sinful, and it doesn't make sense to call righteousness "close to sinful." 

Nor is such a buffer category much use to us, as all mankind blows right through it into full-fledged sin. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," and "we make God a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 John 1:8,10).

Nevertheless, Closson said the president's meaning was clear. "From his perspective, support for commonsense legislation like Florida's House Bill 1421 ... is tantamount to a moral wrong that ought to be opposed." Perhaps "close to sinful" was Biden's mother's (and his) shorthand way of saying, "the church doesn't say this is wrong, but I think it is."

"Ironically, the Florida bill, not the president's position, is in line with historic Christian sexual ethics and a biblical understanding of sex and gender," Closson added. "The very first chapter in the Bible makes it clear that God's design for His image bearers is that we are born male and female, and that this design is good and ought to be acknowledged and embraced."

"I'm fascinated by the use of religious language," said Jennifer Bauwens, director of FRC's Center for Family Studies, on "Washington Watch," because "this absolutely has spiritual implications." Bauwens said the spiritual influence is evident from the unnaturally political pressure behind this supposedly medical practice. "Never in my whole time of practice or research have I ever seen the level of political power, political effort and finance to go into something as a treatment. ... In the natural it doesn't make much sense."

Bauwens also called attention to Biden's claim that children don't wake up one morning and decide they identify as transgender. "Not true, that's exactly what's happening," she said. "The way that these kids get pulled into gender ideology is very different than it was, you know, say, 10 years ago. We don't have scientific data on that. But we can see from a spiritual standpoint, there is some kind of wave sweeping over this land, over our nation."

"Here you have someone who's saying protecting children through these bills like Florida is actually missing the mark. But he's the one who's missing the mark here," said Bauwens. Inflicting gender transition procedures on children "actually is cruel."

"The president's own church recognizes this reality," added Closson, "and it is a shame that he continues to push the policies of the moral revolution that will only bring pain and hurt to its victims."

Biden has proven a leading exponent of Western gender ideology to an unreceptive world.

"To further repair our moral leadership, I'm also issuing a presidential memo to agencies to reinvigorate our leadership on the LGBTQI issues and do it internationally," said Biden during his first major foreign policy speech in February 2021. During Biden's first full month in office, he signed a "Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World" and allocated $10 million for a "Global Equality Fund" to promote pro-LGBTQ views, including extreme gender ideology, worldwide. For instance, $300,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds went to increase "social acceptance" of homosexuality and transgenderism in Botswana.

The memo promises to use "the full range of diplomatic and assistance tools," including "financial sanctions," against nations deemed insufficiently pro-LGBT.

More than 30 of Africa's 54 nations have laws against engaging in homosexual relations, according to the Associated Press -- largely due to broadly shared religious convictions. That list includes Nigeria, which the Biden administration removed as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) despite intensifying persecution of Christians.

The State Department held a tense confrontation with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni about his country's LGBTQ laws last December 14, one day after Biden signed the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. But the Biden administration's diplomatic pressure seemed to bear little fruit.

"We are not going to follow people who are lost," said President Museveni, referring to Americans and others in the West, during a rally in Uganda last month. "These Europeans are not normal. They don't listen." He added that Western leaders "don't respect other people's views; and they want to turn the abnormal into normal and force it on others. We shall not agree." 

His remarks came as Uganda's parliament introduced a bill banning the promotion, recruitment, and funding of LGBTQ actions and advocacy. "You are either with us or you're with the Western world," said the Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda, Anita Among.

"We do not support gay and lesbian rights as a country," said Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, who is widely regarded as harboring more positive views of LGBTQ ideology. "Zambia is a Christian nation, it's clear!" he added.

Last Friday, the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops slammed a decision by that nation's Supreme Court to allow LGBTQ groups to register as NGOs, which they called "an effort towards the promotion of the LGBTQ ideology, which seeks to destroy life. It is an attack on humanity."

"This ideology is an attempt to undermine the family and cultural values which are rooted in the very nature of humankind," the Kenyan bishops added.

In Nigeria, constitutional lawyer Dayo Akinlaja said the threat of Western "sanctions should not deter us from abhoring what we consider to be immoral or sinful," because the law should "reflect our culture and values. We cannot repeal our law to reflect the American way of life."

Yet the Biden administration is expected to continue its pressure for the global LGBTQ agenda when Vice President Kamala Harris visits Africa from March 25 to April 2. She is scheduled to meet with the presidents of Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia.

Biden's foreign LGBTQ advocacy also affects everyday Americans. Biden committed the U.S. immigration system "to protecting vulnerable LGBTQI+ refugees and asylum seekers" worldwide, boosting the number of refugees able to resettle in the U.S. from 15,000 to 125,000. 

The Biden administration has also touted the fact that 14% of Biden's appointees identify as LGBTQ+, making them radically overrepresented in U.S. government compared to their numbers in the general population (7%). 

Biden's missionary work on behalf of gender ideology continues even as some European nations have stepped back from transgenderism's most extreme claims. "The knowledge base, especially research-based knowledge for gender-affirming treatment (hormonal and surgical), is deficient and the long-term effects are little known," the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board (NHIB/UKOM) concluded last Thursday. "This is particularly true for the teenage population where the stability of their gender incongruence is also not known."

A February Pew poll found that 50% of respondents expected evangelical Christians to lose influence during the Biden administration, while 60% of Americans expected the LGBT movement to gain power.

Originally published at The Washington Stand - reposted with permission.