If you're Jewish, it's correct (but weird and misleading in context) to say that God is nonbinary. But if you buy that God was incarnated as a man, which most Texas voters do, it's obviously ridiculous. If you're a liberal Presbyterian, a tribe with which I'm extremely familiar, you are leaning heavily on the idea that Holy Spirit=Shekhinah=feminine, none of which is going to fit into a political soundbite.
A liberal Presbyterian seminarian sounds like the worst possible candidate for Texas Democrats, who start at a huge disadvantage. Don't nominate a liberal intellectual for God's sake!
It’s a little weird to apply the concept of non-binary gender to God but weirder to apply any concept of gender to God, unless you are referring specifically to Jesus.
That’s my point. God has no gender other than that we assign to God. You can consider it a convention but it doesn’t make God male anymore than saying God created Man makes all human beings male.
I came to comment “how is that a controversial claim”, only to read this and remember that Christians have that whole thing with Jesus who, whatever you want to say about him, was definitely male.
I think there's also the fact that we have "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit", which implicitly adds a gender to 2/3 of the Trinity, while spirit is neuter.
I appreciate Josh's deconstruction of how Dems got themselves into this strange place they find themselves in today. A place where they cannot bring themselves to just state the obvious position that than 85% of Americans find themselves in agreement with. That position is that sports should be sex-segregated as they are today and men should not be competing against women in sex-segregated sports. Again, not very complicated and eminently reasonable, yet something the Democratic Party (and its candidates) seems to struggle with endlessly.
The problem with gender ideology is that adherents really do believe. They're not kidding when they insist that sex is a spectrum, or that there is a mysterious gender identity, or that "there is no such thing as a male body." (Thanks for that one, Chase Strangio.) Those who believe are completely oblivious to just how obscure, off-putting, and downright weird this stuff is, but they are sure willing to defend it. They'll end relationships, destroy careers and sully reputations to make sure that "trans women are women" is not just their belief, but a doctrine every Democrat reveres.
I swear, more damage is done by those who are *sure* they are right than by those who do not care if they are wrong.
Eh, my experience is that they "believe" it in the same sense that cosmologists "believe" that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. It's what their understanding of the evidence leads them to; it's not something they came to via intuition. How could it be? As Josh points out, this line of argumentation is explicitly counterintuitive and has a veneer of being too complex for the unenlightened to understand. Catnip for a certain type of liberal.
Now of course in the former case, there is a political reason why they don't interrogate the evidence further and understand that they're basically overfitting, i.e. classic motivated reasoning, but I think people who ascribe this to a "belief" akin to a religion are misunderstanding the motivations of this type of person.
It's often argued that liberals lack a "theory of mind" for conservatives and that's why our arguments fall so flat with them. I think this is a perfect example of the opposite.
TIL, as a Jew, that “God is non-binary” is a controversial claim for Christians. Didn’t think of the Jesus angle! We’re so saturated in Maimonides that I forgot there’s a whole world of non-Maimonidean theists out there.
There is no such thing as non-binary sex. Saying something like “I don’t believe in binary sex” is like saying “I don’t believe in the decimal numbering system.” That’s cool but both decimal numbers and binary human sex exist whether you might believe it or not.
Serious times demand serious leaders. A Democratic Party that keeps nominating such people needs when Trump and the GOP are systematically destroying our governing capability and civic society needs to be launched into orbit. Enough with these fools!
That’s the wrong way to look at it and actually makes *their* point. Decimal numbering is completely arbitrary, as seen by the fact that other societies have used other systems successfully. Binary sex is not arbitrary, but analogizing it to our number base implies that it is.
My point is that the validity of the decimal number system does not depend on whether someone believes it or not. Similarly what someone who claims to be NB doesn’t alter the reality of binary sex.
Decimal numbers exist because the species bearing the Image of God on this planet has five fingers on each hand and two hands. On another world, if intelligent life bearing God’s image exists, they might use a very different base number system.
Take the article as you will, but it does express a viewpoint consistent with my perception as a Texan: Talarico is not that well known here. I find that the interest in him is largely national, but not nearly as much local.
I could call 2018 a flash-in-the-pan, but I would consider that a disingenuous on my part. Beto ran an impressive campaign that took into account his unknown credentials, canvasing the state to introduce himself to the many who had no clue about him. Neither Hegar (2020) nor Allred (2024) matched it. Calling their result a product of a Presidential election year would be laziness in my opinion, as they hoped they could ride anti-Trump sentiment to victory and they found themselves unable to match Beto’s momentum. Right now, 2026 is shaping up to be a continuation of those failures.
The current candidate landscape is a product of the Texas Democratic party’s lackluster political machine from the past 5+ years. They got their asses handed to them from 2020 through 2024 and they still don’t have the bench or the leadership to line up toe-to-toe with the Republicans right now. They might as well run a long shot. At worst, see if he can encourage better voter participation amongst the constituents that are bored with the existing options.
ETA: Beto's "Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15" line didn't come until his governor's race a few years later. In 2018 he wanted to ban the sale of AR-15s but didn't threaten to take them from anybody.
Abbott is a really formidable party leader. I do think Allred performed well given fundamentals, and had Beto not said things like "yes we're gonna take your guns" he could have won. But I agree the state party is pretty beat-down.
We need to purge the party of the rhetoric that Talarico gives. He is not what will reach the moderates and conservatives needed to win at all. Heck, being Presbyterian is enough for many of them to disqualify him, at least in my experience. To win, we are going to have to try and put the Pandora’s box of trans sports away and vow to never touch it again. It’s too effective of an attack, and, honestly, not worth the effort with the vast majority of people being against it. Plus, I don’t want to jeopardize gains in other LGBT rights for a handful of people to play sports.
It strikes me that the Democrats are suffering from several "over-learning" mistaken lessons (plus being far far far too influenced by the college educated segment especially coming from the elite Ivy-type universities [having two such degrees, I recognize the doulble-edged sword there])
1. Gay rights to Gay Marriage: mistaking their rapid perceived win on gay marriage as broadly transferable
2. Race: a lot of what the activist fringe writes on sex strikes me as extrapolated from race - and transferred with poor understanding of the biology of 'race' (where indeed the genetic reality of the four big races is not there, but that's superficial phenotypes [see e.g. the entirely genetically Asian but 100% out-of-Congo African looking Negritos in S.E. Asia], not fundamental mammelian sex... which is hard coded chromosonal and deeply fundamental to mammels-as-mammels).
For the 2nd it strikes me a lot of Lefties with English etc degrees got ideas that they willy-nilly transferred to other areas (e.g. sex and gender) w/o any real actual science understanding (not certainly genetics). Sloganeering about science but not actual understanding - the kind of excessively clever non-obviousness as Josh writes.
-- of course if you didn't really get the genetics on race, it looks very similar or the same although it's not at all.
First I think a lot of people have flagged as mistaken analogy, mistaken framing (of which gay marriage didn't really impact non-participants whereas bathroom, lockerroom, and competitive sports, does).
Of course probably a significant fraction of the Progressive Left are non/anti-Sports nerds in background and thus regard competitive sports with disdain anyway (in fact myself am in personal opinion indifferent to sports - but can recongise I'm an outlier weirdo and it's hugely not politically wise to put my preferences into political agenda).
"Democrats’ excessive interest in counterintuitive arguments that only impress people who start from strongly liberal preconceptions."
This to me is the great insight of this column by Josh. Why do the progressives gravitate toward this type of thinking? I think it stems from wanting to support, and find a way to accommodate, every minority group. Bleeding heart liberals can't help it, and the progressive activists have learned to take advantage of it by coming up with two-clever-by-half arguments for the liberals. Previously, the Democratic party was dominated by the working class who had no such inclinations, and ensured the party positions continue to be mainstream. Since 2008 though, as the party gained more college educated voters, and working class voters started leaving since 2016, the party has ended up being dominated by liberals and that is how we end up where democrats end up taking unpopular stances on issues they’d rather not discuss, like crime, immigration, and what gender even is. Remember, taking a popular position would require them to ignore the feelings of the minority groups being impacted.
Another writer suggested Beto O'Rourke run in Maine; I think Talarico should do something similar. They can talk about Texas like it's Mordor (parts of it are!) and that they're the only thing standing between them and doom.
If you're Jewish, it's correct (but weird and misleading in context) to say that God is nonbinary. But if you buy that God was incarnated as a man, which most Texas voters do, it's obviously ridiculous. If you're a liberal Presbyterian, a tribe with which I'm extremely familiar, you are leaning heavily on the idea that Holy Spirit=Shekhinah=feminine, none of which is going to fit into a political soundbite.
A liberal Presbyterian seminarian sounds like the worst possible candidate for Texas Democrats, who start at a huge disadvantage. Don't nominate a liberal intellectual for God's sake!
It’s a little weird to apply the concept of non-binary gender to God but weirder to apply any concept of gender to God, unless you are referring specifically to Jesus.
Every Christian sect, AFAIK, genders God (the Father)
That’s my point. God has no gender other than that we assign to God. You can consider it a convention but it doesn’t make God male anymore than saying God created Man makes all human beings male.
Talk about gender as a social construct:-)
Most Christians would disagree with you.
Do they believe God has a penis or a Y chromosome?
There’s more ways to construct gender than just biology. But push come to shove, most would say yes.
I came to comment “how is that a controversial claim”, only to read this and remember that Christians have that whole thing with Jesus who, whatever you want to say about him, was definitely male.
I think there's also the fact that we have "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit", which implicitly adds a gender to 2/3 of the Trinity, while spirit is neuter.
I appreciate Josh's deconstruction of how Dems got themselves into this strange place they find themselves in today. A place where they cannot bring themselves to just state the obvious position that than 85% of Americans find themselves in agreement with. That position is that sports should be sex-segregated as they are today and men should not be competing against women in sex-segregated sports. Again, not very complicated and eminently reasonable, yet something the Democratic Party (and its candidates) seems to struggle with endlessly.
The problem with gender ideology is that adherents really do believe. They're not kidding when they insist that sex is a spectrum, or that there is a mysterious gender identity, or that "there is no such thing as a male body." (Thanks for that one, Chase Strangio.) Those who believe are completely oblivious to just how obscure, off-putting, and downright weird this stuff is, but they are sure willing to defend it. They'll end relationships, destroy careers and sully reputations to make sure that "trans women are women" is not just their belief, but a doctrine every Democrat reveres.
I swear, more damage is done by those who are *sure* they are right than by those who do not care if they are wrong.
Eh, my experience is that they "believe" it in the same sense that cosmologists "believe" that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. It's what their understanding of the evidence leads them to; it's not something they came to via intuition. How could it be? As Josh points out, this line of argumentation is explicitly counterintuitive and has a veneer of being too complex for the unenlightened to understand. Catnip for a certain type of liberal.
Now of course in the former case, there is a political reason why they don't interrogate the evidence further and understand that they're basically overfitting, i.e. classic motivated reasoning, but I think people who ascribe this to a "belief" akin to a religion are misunderstanding the motivations of this type of person.
It's often argued that liberals lack a "theory of mind" for conservatives and that's why our arguments fall so flat with them. I think this is a perfect example of the opposite.
Democrats need to get back to common sense. It’s really that simple, especially on cultural issues. Great piece, Josh.
TIL, as a Jew, that “God is non-binary” is a controversial claim for Christians. Didn’t think of the Jesus angle! We’re so saturated in Maimonides that I forgot there’s a whole world of non-Maimonidean theists out there.
There is no such thing as non-binary sex. Saying something like “I don’t believe in binary sex” is like saying “I don’t believe in the decimal numbering system.” That’s cool but both decimal numbers and binary human sex exist whether you might believe it or not.
Serious times demand serious leaders. A Democratic Party that keeps nominating such people needs when Trump and the GOP are systematically destroying our governing capability and civic society needs to be launched into orbit. Enough with these fools!
That’s the wrong way to look at it and actually makes *their* point. Decimal numbering is completely arbitrary, as seen by the fact that other societies have used other systems successfully. Binary sex is not arbitrary, but analogizing it to our number base implies that it is.
My point is that the validity of the decimal number system does not depend on whether someone believes it or not. Similarly what someone who claims to be NB doesn’t alter the reality of binary sex.
Decimal numbers exist because the species bearing the Image of God on this planet has five fingers on each hand and two hands. On another world, if intelligent life bearing God’s image exists, they might use a very different base number system.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/12/texas-senate-democratic-republican-primaries-poll/
Take the article as you will, but it does express a viewpoint consistent with my perception as a Texan: Talarico is not that well known here. I find that the interest in him is largely national, but not nearly as much local.
I could call 2018 a flash-in-the-pan, but I would consider that a disingenuous on my part. Beto ran an impressive campaign that took into account his unknown credentials, canvasing the state to introduce himself to the many who had no clue about him. Neither Hegar (2020) nor Allred (2024) matched it. Calling their result a product of a Presidential election year would be laziness in my opinion, as they hoped they could ride anti-Trump sentiment to victory and they found themselves unable to match Beto’s momentum. Right now, 2026 is shaping up to be a continuation of those failures.
The current candidate landscape is a product of the Texas Democratic party’s lackluster political machine from the past 5+ years. They got their asses handed to them from 2020 through 2024 and they still don’t have the bench or the leadership to line up toe-to-toe with the Republicans right now. They might as well run a long shot. At worst, see if he can encourage better voter participation amongst the constituents that are bored with the existing options.
ETA: Beto's "Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15" line didn't come until his governor's race a few years later. In 2018 he wanted to ban the sale of AR-15s but didn't threaten to take them from anybody.
Abbott is a really formidable party leader. I do think Allred performed well given fundamentals, and had Beto not said things like "yes we're gonna take your guns" he could have won. But I agree the state party is pretty beat-down.
We need to purge the party of the rhetoric that Talarico gives. He is not what will reach the moderates and conservatives needed to win at all. Heck, being Presbyterian is enough for many of them to disqualify him, at least in my experience. To win, we are going to have to try and put the Pandora’s box of trans sports away and vow to never touch it again. It’s too effective of an attack, and, honestly, not worth the effort with the vast majority of people being against it. Plus, I don’t want to jeopardize gains in other LGBT rights for a handful of people to play sports.
Very useful comment.
It strikes me that the Democrats are suffering from several "over-learning" mistaken lessons (plus being far far far too influenced by the college educated segment especially coming from the elite Ivy-type universities [having two such degrees, I recognize the doulble-edged sword there])
1. Gay rights to Gay Marriage: mistaking their rapid perceived win on gay marriage as broadly transferable
2. Race: a lot of what the activist fringe writes on sex strikes me as extrapolated from race - and transferred with poor understanding of the biology of 'race' (where indeed the genetic reality of the four big races is not there, but that's superficial phenotypes [see e.g. the entirely genetically Asian but 100% out-of-Congo African looking Negritos in S.E. Asia], not fundamental mammelian sex... which is hard coded chromosonal and deeply fundamental to mammels-as-mammels).
For the 2nd it strikes me a lot of Lefties with English etc degrees got ideas that they willy-nilly transferred to other areas (e.g. sex and gender) w/o any real actual science understanding (not certainly genetics). Sloganeering about science but not actual understanding - the kind of excessively clever non-obviousness as Josh writes.
-- of course if you didn't really get the genetics on race, it looks very similar or the same although it's not at all.
First I think a lot of people have flagged as mistaken analogy, mistaken framing (of which gay marriage didn't really impact non-participants whereas bathroom, lockerroom, and competitive sports, does).
Of course probably a significant fraction of the Progressive Left are non/anti-Sports nerds in background and thus regard competitive sports with disdain anyway (in fact myself am in personal opinion indifferent to sports - but can recongise I'm an outlier weirdo and it's hugely not politically wise to put my preferences into political agenda).
"Democrats’ excessive interest in counterintuitive arguments that only impress people who start from strongly liberal preconceptions."
This to me is the great insight of this column by Josh. Why do the progressives gravitate toward this type of thinking? I think it stems from wanting to support, and find a way to accommodate, every minority group. Bleeding heart liberals can't help it, and the progressive activists have learned to take advantage of it by coming up with two-clever-by-half arguments for the liberals. Previously, the Democratic party was dominated by the working class who had no such inclinations, and ensured the party positions continue to be mainstream. Since 2008 though, as the party gained more college educated voters, and working class voters started leaving since 2016, the party has ended up being dominated by liberals and that is how we end up where democrats end up taking unpopular stances on issues they’d rather not discuss, like crime, immigration, and what gender even is. Remember, taking a popular position would require them to ignore the feelings of the minority groups being impacted.
Not that he’d take the job, but Joe Manchun as DNC chair/head of candidate recruitment would help
A standard for D nominees in States KH lost, what issues are you to the left of Joe Manchin on and why? They better have good answers.
So, if we say that God has a penis, that will get us votes? This country is over.
No, the point is that talking about God's genitalia at all, as Talarico has done, is a political loser.
People need to grow up.
This is great!
Another writer suggested Beto O'Rourke run in Maine; I think Talarico should do something similar. They can talk about Texas like it's Mordor (parts of it are!) and that they're the only thing standing between them and doom.
Both male and female humans reflect God’s nature (and no other animal does) but God has chosen “His” pronouns.