Kristan HawkinsU.S. Senate candidate for Texas James Talarico had just begun voicing regret over his past statements that there are six genders, that men should play in women’s sports, and that “God is nonbinary.” Then Talarico’s lesbian “minister” was caught on camera with an entirely different spin, telling an undercover journalist that his newfound moderation is all a lie to get more votes.
Texas voters are right to be concerned that his campaign’s “Christian” packaging is false advertising. So, let’s check his record.
Talarico made his name as the progressive “Christian” alternative to Republican Ken Paxton, the current Texas attorney general, who has been endorsed by President Donald Trump.
As a member of the Texas House of Representatives, Talarico voted against SB 14, the law protecting minors from mutilating gender surgeries and sterilizing puberty blockers. Now he claims he only opposed certain parts of the bill and wanted to see amendments before he could vote for it.
His record on women’s sports tells the same story. In 2021, Talarico voted against HB 25, the Texas law requiring student athletes in public schools to compete on teams that match their biological sex. Back then, he didn’t talk about amendments. He told his colleagues, “You can’t compromise with hate,” and argued that “some things are more important than perfectly fair competition in sports.”
Now that he’s running statewide, Talarico says he will oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports “if it risks safety or fairness.” That little word “if” is doing a lot of work. It means Talarico reserves the right to decide when it’s “fair” and “safe” for a boy to compete against girls and share their locker room, and in those cases, he’s fine with it.
But here’s the truth: it is always unfair for men to play against women, and men in women’s sports always endanger women.
God made us male and female, equally loved, differently formed. No amount of political denial of that reality changes the reality God created, nor the level of hurt women will face because of transgender ideology. To deny our natural state, made in God’s image, is to deny God Himself.
Talarico’s disconnection from reality — and from Biblical principles — goes beyond the gender issue to the most basic right we all have: life.
Talarico has claimed that abortion and gay marriage are mentioned nowhere in the Bible. This is an embarrassingly debunkable statement, one that we at Students for Life Action (SFLAction) exposed months ago with the copious Bible verses defining humans as male and female, husband and wife, and revealing God’s intention for our lives before we are even in the womb.
While Talarico does not seem committed to what Scripture actually says, many who attend church do care.
That’s why our student leaders went to Talarico’s own church, stood outside, and left flyers on the cars of the worshippers inside. It was the first stop in our campaign to reach more than 100 churches, reminding the faithful of Biblical truth: Life begins at conception, God abhors murder, and He made every one of us in His image, male and female.
Certainly, Talarico’s radical theology is an effort to cut into the pro-life, pro-faith voters who consistently vote Republican. As ABC News noted, many Democrats are trying to reclaim the faith conversation for their political ambitions.
But we’ve seen this before. After values voters helped decide the 2004 election, Democrats turned to progressive activist Rev. Jim Wallis. He wrote a bestselling book, God’s Politics, took it on a national tour, and went to Capitol Hill teaching Democrats how to talk to Christians and campaign for their votes.
More than 20 years later, Democrats still can’t figure it out, because they aren’t true believers. Even Wallis admitted at the time, “It’s so transparent when somebody is being inauthentic about religion.” Talarico is just the 2026 version of a decades-old Democratic problem. And it’s hard to reclaim the faith conversation when your apologetics are about explaining why the Bible doesn’t mean what it says.
The race is tight. And as Talarico has struggled under the weight of his past lunacy, notice where he went to clean it up. He didn’t go to MSNOW or The Nation, the Leftist outlets his base trusts. He went to Fox News to tell conservative voters not to believe what they have heard him say in interview clips.
Meanwhile, in far-Left circles, he is actively working to appeal to radical pro-abortion, pro-child-mutilation socialists by repeating their messaging. He recently went viral talking about his favorite drag queen. And in a private Zoom call with the far-Left Austin Sierra Club, Talarico spoke of dismantling capitalism, climate change doomerism, and our country being one of white supremacy and billionaire-contrived class warfare, reports Townhall.
This is not a genuine change of heart; it’s voter-segmented packaging, built on the hope that liberals won’t watch Fox and conservatives will believe he doesn’t really mean what he says.
Jesus cares about truth. In John 14:6, we read: “Jesus said…, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
Talarico can’t even agree on that, saying all faiths are “equal pathways to truth.”
So, to answer the New York Times question, “Can James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left?” the answer is no. Telling people that God doesn’t mean what He says is the oldest trick in Scripture. It started in the Garden, with a serpent asking Eve, “Did God really say…?”
Christian voters should not be fooled. Talarico is a radical leftist who is saying whatever gets him elected. His own people don’t even buy what he is selling to voters.
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Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action, with more than 1,700 groups on middle and high school, college and university, medical and law school campuses in all 50 states – including 109 in Texas. Follow her @KristanHawkins or subscribe to her podcast, The Kristan Hawkins Show.
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