". . . and having done all . . . stand firm." Eph. 6:13

Commentary

‘Pursuing His Twisted Agenda,’ Biden Puts Progress Flags on Par with Old Glory

June 11, 2023

People visiting Washington, D.C. this weekend probably expected to see a white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead, the president’s residence was plastered in rainbow and transgender colors, an over-the-top display of the current resident’s LGBT fixation. It was a stark contrast to the mood in the rest of America, where the fury over Pride displays has reached a deafening roar.

That all seems lost on Joe Biden, who hosted the largest Pride event in White House history on Saturday. The South Lawn event came just two days after the president savaged the Americans opposed to his wildly irresponsible agenda of transgenderism. In a scripted response to a PBS reporter, the president unloaded on parents who are up in arms about the indoctrination of their sons and daughters, calling the opposition to child mutilation “hysterical” and “cruel.”

In a coordinated exchange, PBS News White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López framed the conversation this way: “All over the country … Republican led states are passing laws — passing anti-LGBT, anti-transgender laws that restrict rights and medical care. Intimidation is on the rise. This week, anti-LGBTQ protesters turned violent in California.” She claimed to have spoken to parents who are considering leaving the U.S., because local governments are cracking down on barbaric child sex change procedures.

“Sir,” she asked Biden, “why do you think this is happening? And what do you say to parents like the ones that I spoke to — to those families who are contemplating leaving the country because they don’t feel safe anymore?”

The president replied by proudly ticking through all of his LGBT activism, like throwing open the military to people who identify as the opposite sex and signing the sweeping same-sex marriage law earlier this year. But, he pivoted, “our fight is far, far from over because we have some hysterical and, I would argue, prejudiced people who are engaged in all that you see going on around the country. It’s an appeal to fear, and it’s an appeal that is totally, thoroughly unjustified, and ugly.”

“It’s wrong,” Biden ranted, “that extreme [GOP] officials are pushing hateful bills, targeting transgender children, terrifying families, and criminalizing doctors. These are our kids. These are our neighbors. It’s cruel and it’s callous. They’re not somebody else’s kids, they’re all our kids. They’re the kids, and our children are the kite strings that hold our national ambitions aloft. It matters a great deal how we treat everyone in this country.”

The “they’re all our kids” line drew a unique kind of scorn, since it marks the third time the administration has tried to claim Americans’ children as their own. Biden himself argued, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child” in April, which was encored by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in May who said the country’s trans-identifying children “belong to all of us.”

Outraged Republicans like Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) fired back that “Contrary to President Biden, the nation’s children do not belong to him, and it’s good to oppose unnecessary and irreversible medical procedures for kids. If Joe Biden wants to see an extremist, there are mirrors all over the White House.”

Other conservatives can’t understand why the president is leaning into an issue that’s sparked such a nationwide uprising. Even last week, polling showed just how far outside the mainstream the Democratic Party is when it comes to this hot-button debate. An astonishing 71% of Americans reject Biden’s suggestion that there are more than two genders in the latest Rasmussen Report — including 67% of his own party. To strategists like Matt Whitlock, the Democrats’ 24/7 Pride parade is a “[h]uge political miscalculation,” because “the overwhelming majority of Americans support banning transgender surgeries for kids. … This is such a bizarre hill for them to fight on,” he told Fox News.

That political divide has never been more obvious than the two camps’ approaches to 2024. While Democrats use drag queens to rally voters, every declared GOP presidential candidate is united in their opposition to harmful, irreversible gender treatments for children. “It’s sad we even have to say this,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said in last week’s tour of Iowa, “but it is wrong for physicians to perform sex change operations on minors. That is mutilation and physicians who commit such acts in Florida not only lose their medical license, they go to jail.”

Meanwhile, at the Biden White House, contestants on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” performed (presumably on the taxpayer dime) and the radical progress flag flies in equal footing with Old Glory. “We need to push back against the hundreds of callous and cynical bills and laws introduced in states, targeting transgender children terrifying families, and criminalizing doctors and nurses,” the president insisted Saturday. “These bills and laws attack the most basic values and freedoms.”

Biden’s backwards logic continues to incense everyday Americans, who are sick of the administration demonizing parents and voters who don’t share his fanatical, unhinged ideology. “The default position for the Left,” Congressman Bob Good (R-Va.) argued on “Washington Watch” Thursday, “… is whenever you disagree with them or you challenge their narrative, you challenge their agenda, you challenge their position, then you’re a racist, you’re a homophobe, you’re a transphobe — and they target you.”

Right now, he argued, people who “dissent or disagree” with the radical agenda of the Biden administration, those who “dare to question the efforts to indoctrinate our children in schools with anti-American ideology, with racist ideology, with transgender ideology … [t]hose are the people that this administration considers to be the greatest threat to the country. [They are] to be threatened, intimidated, harassed, arrested, even imprisoned for standing up for what they believe in, for exercising, frankly, their First Amendment protected rights to petition their government with their grievances, to protest peacefully and just to stand up for the protection of their own children.”

In the meantime, Biden’s flagrant allegiance to the LGBT progress flag is not only putting him at odds with most Americans but potentially, critics argue, with the U.S. Flag code. “The flag of the United States of America should be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags of States or localities or pennants of societies are grouped and displayed from staffs,” Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton said. More than that, he insisted, “To advance revolutionary transgender agenda targeting children, Biden … disrespects every American service member buried under its colors.”

Members of Congress were equally disgusted. “Pursuing his twisted agenda, Biden dishonors the flag and breaks American law,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) posted. “Shameful that our flag is being replaced by leftist imagery at the White House,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) tweeted. “Anyone wondering why drag shows and other woke nonsense dominate our government? Here it is: orders are coming directly from the top.”

“This is a disgrace,” Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) agreed. “Not only is it in breach of US Flag Code, but it’s a glaring example of this White Houses’ incompetence and insistence on putting their social agenda ahead of patriotism.”

If Biden thinks flaunting his obsession with LGBT extremism will help him at the polls, someone in the White House might want to check the value of Bud Light and Target stocks. If people will vote against this agenda with their dollars, how much more will they vote with their ballots?

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.