What do you think of when you read about these two moments in the political life of Joe Biden?
“President Biden memorably jumped the gun on Barack Obama in endorsing same-sex marriage more than a decade ago, but at a June fund-raiser near San Francisco, he couldn’t recall the letters L.G.B.T.Q.”
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You might think something like this: Joe Biden has never had good control over what comes out of his mouth, and these days his intellect is fading. Plus, LGBTIA+2S-whatever is a ridiculous wokesoup of letters that is always shifting in the way that jargon always shifts, so as to make it hard to stay current.
That’s what I get out of it. Reid Epstein of the New York Times sees these facts as proof that in the current culture wars, Biden “is staying out of the fray.”
“Biden has largely avoided becoming enmeshed in contemporary battles over gender, abortion and other hotly contested social issues," Epstein argued in his recent column. "Mr. Biden has kept himself at arm’s length from elements of his party that could pose him political problems.”
The strongest piece of evidence in the New York Times column is this: “In June, the White House said it had barred a transgender activist who went topless at its Pride event.”
That was a good thing the White House did. I was happy to see that the White House held basic decency as more important than currying favor with every single radical culture warrior. But that shows that the White House has bare (pardon, the minimum) standards of decency.
The rest of the evidence Epstein lays out for his opinion of Biden is pretty thin.
Biden saying “There are at least three” genders hardly seems like proof he’s not a woke culture warrior — quite the opposite, actually.
Likewise, Biden saying he’s “not big on abortion” but that he 100% supports Roe v. Wade’s findings is hardly proof he’s not an abortion extremist.
For starters, Roe held that abortion was a constitutional right up until the moment of birth. That’s an extreme position. (Most people do not believe second- or third-trimester abortions should be legal, but they say they support Roe, largely because they don’t understand what Roe did.)
In truth, Biden has been a fierce culture warrior on abortion.
His Justice Department made a special task force to go after pro-lifers. Their first big arrest was on obviously flimsy charges that had already been dismissed, and which the DOJ lost in trial. Weaponizing the Justice Department to harass and arrest people for being pro-lifers is hardly staying out of the culture wars.
He has put taxpayers in the position of subsidizing abortion clinics, which also isn’t staying out of the culture war.
Biden’s famous September 2022 tirade against “MAGA Republicans” who are trying to destroy democracy, people he called “semi-fascists,” slapped this label on pro-lifers and opponents of gay marriage, declaring them not merely political opponents but enemies of America.
That’s not staying out of the fray.
Biden has been a relentless culture warrior on the gender and sexuality issues. First of all, flying the transgender flag on the White House lawn is taking a side in the culture war. It’s declaring, on behalf of the nation, that men can become women and girls can become boys. This is, in essence, a religious belief, and it’s not a religious belief held by most people.
Gene Healy at the Cato Institute also lays out the case that Biden is the “culture-warrior-in-chief,” saying:
- The president’s proposed Title IX edicts would give him the power to make national rules about which kid gets to use which bathroom and who gets to play on the girls’ team for every K‑12 public school and practically every college in America
- A rulemaking put forward by Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services would require doctors and hospitals to provide “gender‐affirming care”— puberty blockers, cross‐sex hormones, and “top” and “bottom” sex‐change surgeries—including for minor children. Private insurers—and the taxpayer, via Medicaid—will be required to foot the bill
- And in the president’s June 2022 “Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals,” he proposes sending the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after doctors practicing “conversion therapy,” which may be defined broadly enough to include psychologists who resist immediately forking over puberty blockers.
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I would add that Biden is waging culture wars when he puts the government on the side of the two-full-time-paid-jobs-plus-day-care model over the stay-at-home model.
Biden uses the bully pulpit and the executive branch to advance gender ideology and attack pro-lifers. That's the mark of a culture warrior, even if he can't always remember his LGBs and Qs.