It’s not working, Mr. President: The White House declaration of Transgender Day of Visibility backfires

You can’t make this up. Late last week the White House released a statement from President Biden proclaiming March 31, Easter Sunday, as the 2024 Transgender Day of Visibility. Biden bragged about his support for LGBTQ political goals and declared to the transgender community: “You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.”

An explosion of controversy quickly ensued, and the White House pointed to the fact that the president had also released an (extremely short) affirmation of Easter. When many Americans were shocked and outraged by the declaration of Transgender Day of Visibility—on Easter Sunday, no less—the White House responded that President Biden had recognized the transgender event every year he has been in the White House and that, though Easter moves on the calendar, the transgender celebration is regularly scheduled on the calendar for March. Just a coincidence, the White House insisted. Spokesperson Andrew Bates told ABC News: “As a Christian who celebrates Easter with family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American.” He continued: “Sadly, it’s unsurprising politicians are seeking to divide and weaken our country with cruel, hateful, and dishonest rhetoric. President Biden will never abuse his faith for political purposes or for profit.”

What Bates was selling is unadulterated nonsense (though he did score a point against former President Trump’s recent Bible promotion). Not even this White House could have missed that the transgender declaration was scheduled to collide with Easter. They don’t care. The Transgender Day of Visibility is more important to their election campaign. As for Biden, he uses his Catholicism as a cloak without acknowledging that he is a living contradiction of many official Catholic teachings—most importantly the Church’s absolute opposition to abortion.

But there is a deeper reality here that Christians must recognize. The White House action was an affront to Christianity and to morality, to be sure. And yet, we should pause for a moment to recognize that, despite best efforts of LGBTQ activists, the White House, and the cultural elites, it’s not working.

Surveys reveal that support for the transgender revolution is not growing, but receding. This is especially true when the question is children and teenagers, but it is extended to all ages. The transgender revolution is losing ground. Medical authorities in Britain, for example, decided to close the infamous Tavistock clinic that had provided some level of trans procedures for teenagers and young people. Country by country, medical authorities and governments are taking a step back from the kind of blank check that the Biden White House was celebrating. While in recent years much of the LGBTQ movement has moved forward without major opposition in the larger culture, LGBTQ authorities express open concern about what appears to be a decline in support for the trans logic.

There are surely many factors behind this recent pattern, but Christians should ponder one important fact with vast worldview significance. Pushing a Transgender Day of Visibility has backfired. It turns out that reality is a hard thing to ignore and that biology has a way of insisting on facts. The more Americans see the reality of the transgender claims, the more they have to decide if they can play the game of delusion and denial. One central lesson of this phenomenon is that a strategy of delusion and denial—even when driven by sexual and gender revolutionaries certain of their inevitable victory—isn’t working.

Or, to put it another way, the more the transgender movement insists on being visible, the more the truth is likely to show itself. Americans tend to be sympathetic to a delusion, but they are not buying into the idea that a transgender “man” is really a man or that a transgender “woman” is really a woman. They may try to play along for a while, but biology trumps ideology and the very real damage done to human beings in the name of the transgender movement is increasingly undeniable. Some of this is due to the “detransitioning” movement’s brave honesty, but the loss of support seems mostly tied to the failure of the transgender ideology to win the battle of the eyes and the battle against reality.

The idea of forcing cultural acceptance and overcoming moral objections by demanding “visibility” is part of the social activism of the LGBTQ revolutionaries. Activists and their ideological friends at intersection of ideology and political theory were certain that making LGBTQ identities more visible in society (on television, in popular culture, in schools, etc.) would lead to an inevitable acceptance of transgender identity claims. It isn’t working. President Biden may declare Transgender Day of Visibility, but he can’t make that visibility work as intended.

To put the matter bluntly, an increasing number of Americans realize that what they are being told isn’t true. You can declare war against anatomy and biology, but it isn’t going to end well. Different forms of cultural and legal coercion may be used to get people to deny what they see with their own eyes, but that is not a long-term strategy for success. The White House can declare this past Sunday (yes, Easter Sunday, insultingly enough) as Transgender Day of Visibility, but they can’t make visibility work for them.

One day soon, all of this—every bit of it—will be visible as the lie that it is. In the meantime, real bodies are being mutilated and real lives are being damaged. We know it’s the truth, and we dare not be complicit in a lie.

This article originally appeared at WORLD Opinions on April 1, 2024.