BIDEN BANISHES CHRISTIAN IMAGES AND CELEBRATES TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY ON EASTER SUNDAY

Late last week, the Biden administration prohibited children from expressing their Christian faith while redesignating Easter Sunday as the “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Biden literally banished Christianity from a children’s contest celebrating its most joyful holiday while exalting a radical and harmful ideology in its place.

The Biden administration’s revolution began where all revolutions begin: with children. The 2024 “Celebrating National Guard Families” art contest, which is part of the White House Easter Egg Roll, asks children of servicemembers to submit designs for Easter eggs — but not any that highlight the actual content of Easter. The contest’s flyer instructs children they “must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements.” The Biden administration banned religious imagery alongside “bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.”

These rules, overseen by the nation’s “devout Catholic” president, stigmatize the majority of Americans, who believe in God. They also prohibit the families of service members, who stand ready to deploy into combat at a moment’s notice, of the free exercise of their religion. The instructions ask children to depict “a favorite activity, scenery in your state, your military family, a day in your life, etc.” But what if the child’s “favorite activity” is exclaiming, “Christ is risen!” in church on Easter morning? What if a day in this child’s life does not go by without thinking about the empty tomb that gives them eternal life? The Biden administration has deprived them of the opportunity to share their artistic gifts and win a prize, funded by all Americans. (Forget the move’s hypocrisy: Presumably, in signing his Easter proclamation, Biden did not remove the rosary he has worn around his wrist since the tragic death of his son Beau in 2015. Biden told Megyn Kelly in 2017 that rosary “is my connection with him.” For some, such religious items connect them with a Higher Power — a power they also wish to symbolize, in public, on their religion’s holiest day.)

Biden issued the official statement on Friday declaring Easter Sunday, March 31, as the “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Biden actually previewed the shift to America’s new religion in the first of his two statements celebrating the 2023 “Transgender Day of Visibility,” in which Biden declared: “Transgender Americans shape our [n]ation’s soul.”

“Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our [n]ation,” Biden wrote. Since people who identify as transgender “help America thrive,” they deserve the “fundamental freedom to be their true selves,” Biden’s 2024 statement states.

But how can trans-identifying people do for America what they cannot do for themselves? One study found, that the moment someone begins to identify as transgender, “the most common outcomes were worsened mental well-being (47.2%); worsened parent-child relationship (57.3%); unchanged or mixed grades/academic performance (59.1%); and a narrower range of interests and hobbies (58.1%).” A growing list of whistleblowers know what everyone who works in gender clinics quietly admits: Teens who identify as transgender suffer from an array of psychological comorbidities, including autism, depression, and bipolar disorder aside from their “gender dysphoria.”

Democratic politicians continually highlight statistics showing the mental suffering and fragility of trans-identifying Americans, but they, like Biden, chalk up innate depression to “bullying and discrimination.” In the Left’s bipolar world, the LGBTQ lifestyle is both a perfectly well-adjusted path to “trans joy” and a death sentence in an America whose heteronormative and cisgender bias rivals that of Pakistan.

Biden warned darkly that “extremists are proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids.” Extremists? In reality, 71% of Americans agree “there are two genders, male and female”; 64% of Americans support legislation barring talk of gender ideology in elementary school; and 68% believe minors should not be subjected to transgender hormone or surgeries. But in the Left’s Permanent Committee to Repeal Reality, if a same-sex relationship can be a marriage, and a man can become a woman, then 32% can be a majority.

Biden did not speak for his administration alone. Praising the new holiday became, in the Left’s Orwellian-sounding parlance, a “whole-of-government” exercise. Vice President Kamala Harris gushed, “On Transgender Day of Visibility, we celebrate transgender and nonbinary Americans,” adding, “We won’t stop fighting for you.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has seldom missed an opportunity to wage war on America’s allies, vowed to “continue to fight for a world” that aligns with transgender political priorities. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said without proof that “our country’s great transgender, nonbinary, and two-spirit leaders … epitomize resilience, progress, and joy.” Even the secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, praised the “vibrancy of the transgender community” before highlighting “our shared fight for justice.”

Christian politicians, and those not committed to the social revolution, took Biden to task for redefining Easter weekend. “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 [a]dministration’s year-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,” said Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. “This is the left’s new religion. They want people worshiping the trans flag instead of God,” said Donald Trump Jr. Contrasting Biden’s commitment to transgender visibility and Chrisian erasure, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, “The Biden White House has betrayed the central tenet of Easter — which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

The Left attempted to counterpunch, claiming the real offense is not Biden’s banishment of Christian themes from the White House but since “[t]he date of Easter moves each year, while Trans Day of Visibility is always recognized on March 31,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the CEO of the LGBTQ group GLAAD, accused “right-wing politicians and talking heads” of “using the coincidental timing to overshadow the hope and joy that Easter represents.” But Transgender World — which touts itself as a source for “queer news, debate, and resources” — posted on social media that “the Transgender Agenda’s final goal has finally been achieved: holding Trans Day of Visibility on Easter Sunday. That’s right, folks: we got ’em.” 

The Biden White House tried to portray Biden’s endorsement of gender confusion and mutilation as less offensive than President Trump endorsing and encouraging people to read the Bible. “President Biden will never abuse his faith for political purposes or for profit,” lectured White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

By replacing Christianity with a new holiday celebrating transgender ideology (which, one must concede, relies entirely on faith), Biden has become the new Jeroboam. When Israel made a decisive split, Jeroboam made himself king of the northern 10 tribes of Israel. To keep his people from returning to worship at the Jerusalem Temple during annual Jewish feasts, Jeroboam “made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (I [III] Kings 12:25-33). While Israel coasted for some time on the fumes of its former fidelity and God’s mercy, the decision brought destruction to the nation.

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand

In Australia, Netball, NSW Swifts star shooter Sam Wallace-Joseph, a devout Christian has outraged fans. On Easter Sunday, she reposted US President Joe Biden’s announcement of March 31 as Transgender Day of Visibility. This year it coincided with Easter Sunday.

Wallace-Joseph shared the post with the words: “The disrespect is crazy. Don’t play with GOD.”

Despite the post being deleted, Wallace defended her opinion to fans online via X. She responded to one fan who said her “opinion was hateful and wrong” with “I don’t owe people on the internet any explanation”. She told another fan “My opinion still stands”.

Netball Australia insists it is “committed to embracing diversity” as the sport grapples with the fallout to the controversial social media post. It will be interesting to see what they do.

WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION?

Despite 52,000 Deaths, Biden’s State Dept. Leaves Nigeria Off Religious Freedom Watch List for 3rd consecutive year.

The Biden administration’s Department of State has left Nigeria off of its list of “Countries of Particular Concern,” a list that catalogues the countries around the world that have perpetrated or tolerated “particularly severe violations of religious freedom.” The move comes even though Nigeria leads the world in the number of Christians that have been killed for publicly practicing their faith.

The latest in a series of seemingly unending atrocities committed by Islamist terrorists in the most populous nation in Africa happened on Christmas Eve, when gunmen attacked as many as 20 villages in the central Plateau region of Nigeria, killing as many as 160 and wounding hundreds more. Islamist Fulani herdsman carried out the attack, burning whole villages to the ground and executing dozens with machetes.

According to a report from Open Doors, 5,621 Christians were killed around the globe in 2023. Distressingly, 90% of those deaths occurred in Nigeria alone. Since 2009, when the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram began its campaign of violence, approximately 52,250 Nigerians have been murdered for their Christian faith, far and away the largest number of Christians killed in any country in the world.

In 2020, during the Trump administration, in response to the rising anti-Christian violence in Nigeria, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo placed Nigeria on the list of “Countries of Particular Concern” (CPC) for the first time. The CPC list was inaugurated in 1998 as part of the International Religious Freedom Act, which gave the president the ability to declare countries that were egregiously guilty of perpetrating or allowing religious freedom violations as a CPC. This designation was designed to be accompanied by diplomatic and economic penalties. Perennial entries on the list have included countries like North Korea, China, and Iran.

But in 2021, under the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed Nigeria from the CPC list without explanation. Notably, as observed by Family Research Council’s Arielle Del Turco, “the removal of Nigeria’s CPC status came one day before Blinken went to Nigeria to visit with state leaders, including President Muhammadu Buhari.”

The following year, despite the murder of approximately 5,068 Nigerian Christians and the abduction of over 3,000 more, Biden’s State Department again left the country off of the CPC list. The pattern continued for the 2023 list.

“The Biden administration is where religious freedom goes to die,” FRC President and former U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Chair Tony Perkins wrote on January 4 following the release of the list. “Unfortunately, thousands of people are dying too.”

Numerous other religious freedom experts have expressed grave alarm at Nigeria’s removal. Abraham Cooper and Frederick A. Davie, current chair and vice chair of the bipartisan USCIRF, stated, “Days before Christmas, hundreds of Christians were killed in Nigeria, along with their Pastor. This is just the latest example of deadly violence against religious communities in Nigeria that even the State Department has condemned. … USCIRF rejects the State Department’s decision to omit Nigeria … as [a] CPC.”

USCIRF, along with religious freedom advocacy group ADF International, have since called for a congressional investigation of the Biden administration’s State Department for the omission. “The United States should increase pressure on Nigeria for the blatant violations of religious freedom occurring in the country,” Sean Nelson, legal counsel for ADF International, argued. “More Christians are being killed in Nigeria for their faith than in all other countries combined.”

Del Turco, FRC’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty, expressed further outrage at Nigeria’s absence on the CPC list. “It is reprehensible that the State Department refused to name Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern on religious freedom,” she told The Washington Stand. “More innocent Christians are killed in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world. How many more lives have to be lost and how much more suffering has to occur before the Biden administration will condemn religious persecution there? The failure to call Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern is dishonoring to the vulnerable Christians who are suffering there.”

Del Turco continued, “The U.S. is somewhat unique in that Congress legally established a foreign policy apparatus to advance religious freedom around the world, and that includes Country of Particular Concern designations. However, if U.S. leaders are too cowardly to add countries to the list that clearly fit the criteria, then it doesn’t do any good.”

This post is taken from an article by Dan Hart, senior editor at The Washington Stand.

How foolish the Biden Administration is in acting as if God does not exist and does not judge nations. History tells us otherwise. God judged the nation He established for His purposes, Israel, repeatedly and He has judged the nations he has used to judge His own nation many times. They should read Revelation to discover that God is going to pour out His wrath upon the Earth, on a world that has rejected Him and given their worship to the Antichrist.

Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”Revelation 6:15-17