Currents

Every spring equinox, we celebrate the time when Jesus emerged from the tomb as Jade, a trans woman handing out free estrogen and mimosas to the people of the world. Wait, that’s not right. Let’s begin again.

On Friday, March 29th, 2024, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation recognizing the “Trans Day of Visibility” that coming Sunday, a day intended to raise awareness about the trans community. This year, that happens to be the same day as Easter, and the sound of right-wing culture warriors’ heads exploding was heard around the globe. Some folks, it seems, need a little help understanding how calendars work. You see, Easter occurs on a different day every year because it falls on the Sunday after the spring equinox. Trans Day of Visibility, by contrast, is not tethered to any seasonal or lunar event. It falls on the same day every year, March 31st, and has since its inception in 2009. Every so often, it might coincide with Easter. As it happens, this year it also coincided with “National Crayon Day.” I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

In response to this proclamation, the Trump campaign demanded that the Biden Administration apologize for daring to call attention to any observance that isn’t strictly centered on the Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson accused the Biden White House of “Banning sacred truth and tradition,” juxtaposed with the spurious claim that Biden went out of his way to ban religious symbols on their easter eggs (they’ve been banned for 45 years now). Former Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy joined in, saying that “Joe Biden declaring the most holy day for Christians as ‘Transgender Visibility Day’ is a slap in the face to every American.” Ben Shapiro piled on, charging that the Biden Admin “paid fealty to its actual religion: left-wing insanity.”

The inferred message from these paroxysms and the millions like them screeched across the web is that Biden is trying to replace Easter with the Trans Day of Visibility, and thereby replace Christianity, or America’s status as a nominally Christian nation with some kind of cult of social justice. Except, this is all just a politically motivated and Internet-poisoned overreaction — and yet another example of how culture wars fry people’s brains.

First, I’d like to point out that the White House did, in fact, release a statement on Easter that directly addresses and commemorates the Christian holiday. The White House acknowledges and celebrates Easter every year, and 2024 is no different. Joe Biden is himself also a practicing Catholic. Whatever objections one might have to Biden’s politics, the notion that he wants to remove, replace, or otherwise denigrate Easter is simply absurd.

A somewhat charitable interpretation of the outrage is that, to some people, Easter is such an important holiday that to recognize anything else would be disrespectful. I won’t dwell on this possibility for too long, because the objurgation against Biden is clearly directed, by extension, at trans advocacy and the concept of trans people themselves. Indeed, the supposed menace of trans people has replaced bra-burning feminists, armed black militants, ripped gay guys, and Jewish Democratic mega-donors as the foremost bogeyman that haunts right-wing nightmares. This isn’t just dishonest political point-scoring; it’s pure transphobia.

Folks on the MAGA right have seized on this Trans Visibility statement as just another opportunity to attack trans people, along with anyone who has a kind word to say about them. Some, including a former archbishop, have gone so far as to claim that Joe Biden should be excommunicated from the Catholic church for such an unforgivable sin!

It strikes me as more than a little counterintuitive to claim the all-importance of Easter, and then use that day as a political prop to bash a particular group of people being acknowledged. If I wanted to celebrate the forgiveness of sin, Christ’s defeat of death, the summum bonum of Christianity, I’d refrain from making it about a manufactured political feud.

I’m no Biblical scholar, but as far as I’m aware, in no gospel rendition does Christ when on the cross in Golgotha, make an addendum to His sacrifice to exclude trans people. No church maxim has added “except x group of people” to “Jesus died for your sins.” “He has risen, but not for you assholes” is a quotation nowhere to be found in Scripture.

What of the notion that Easter and Trans Visibility are diametrically opposed? I’ll show my hand here, I’m both a bisexual man, and someone who’s warm to religion and Christianity. I’ve celebrated Easter with my devoutly Catholic family every year for as long as I can remember. I’m also friendly with many trans people, some of whom are quite religious themselves.

What people on the religious right seem to want is far beyond the acknowledgment of a Christian holiday. They want an exclusive rendition of Christianity. We can imagine a theoretical scenario where another group of self-proclaimed Christians, say the Jehovah’s Witnesses, wanted the government to assert that the triune God as articulated by the Catholic church is itself a fallacious claim, and therefore should not be acknowledged. I think we would all recognize the unreasonableness of that demand.

Easter is celebrated by millions of people in the United States, and most have different interpretations of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Some of them are Catholic, some are Protestant, or something else entirely. Easter is also a secular holiday, something that even entirely non-religious people, and likely some opposed to religion altogether, still celebrate. There are a few times during the year that we are largely brought together by celebrations and observances. It isn’t the small particularities and contrivances that make Easter worth celebrating, but rather the human necessities of forgiveness and life. To bring it back to Christ, there’s something to be gained from His message of forgiveness and redemption, whether you believe it to be literally true or not.

The temptation to devote this essay to thrashing the folks on the right I regard as wrong-headed, hateful, and often fraudulent, is a strong one. And, while I undoubtedly did some of that here, it wouldn’t be in the spirit of Easter to dwell so exclusively on that. Instead, I’ll propose a question. When you imagine Christ dying and coming out of His tomb, whom do you think that was for? The easy answer is “everyone”, but really take a moment to think about it. Is it someone you know, maybe a bitter adversary? The folks that need forgiveness most are the ones who’ve done something wrong. Christ Himself forgave those who mocked, tortured, and killed Him — and He asked God the Father to forgive them as well.

With that in mind, what did you do on Easter? Did you use it as a time to recognize the humanity in others and to forgive those who have trespassed against you, or did you choose to use it as a time for hate and vengeance against the people whom you abhor? There’s no shortage of intolerance, bigotry, and vitriol in this world. What we all could use, and what would truly honor the holiday, is a little more Easter grace.

Published Apr 3, 2024