Texas Senate Candidate Talarico Blames GOP 'Extremism' for His 'God Is Non-Binary' and Six Sexes Remarks

Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has blamed Republican extremism for his past controversial remarks, including his assertions that God is "non-binary" and that there are six biological sexes. He said he did not run for the legislature to discuss those issues, arguing that Republicans were the ones who made culture-war topics prominent.

Talarico spoke to Michael Barbaro on The New York Times' podcast "The Daily" on Tuesday. He is running against Republican Ken Paxton in the state's closely watched U.S. Senate race. Asked about his 2021 comments, he said he had felt compelled to fight what he described as Republican extremism at the time.

In 2021, Talarico opposed a bill to ban men from women's sports and claimed on the House floor in Austin that "God is non-binary." The same year, at a Texas House Committee on Public Education hearing, he stated: "Modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes; in fact, there are six." Those remarks are now a central line of attack for his opponents.

"I was put in a position where I had to fight back against that extremism. So, you mentioned some of my comments on gender or on issues affecting trans people. It's not like I ran for the legislature to talk about these things. Again, if you go back to my first session, I wanted to talk about public education, which is why I ran in the first place," he said.

He continued: "It's kind of ironic that they're clipping these things to make it sound like I'm the one who was talking about this when, in reality, it was the Republican extremists at the Capitol who were obsessed with talking about trans issues, obsessed with talking about people's private parts. That wasn't me. That was them that changed."

Asked whether Democratic positions on cultural issues around 2020 had gone too far, Talarico said that at the national level the party may have gone too far. But at the state level in Texas, he believed certain bills were targeting and harming his constituents. He pointed to Texas' abortion ban and legislation affecting the LGBTQ community.

On trans athletes, he said: "These bills targeting LGBTQ people have real ramifications in our state, especially when they're written to be overly broad. I'm all for if we want to figure out when it's appropriate for a trans athlete to play in a sport. That's a policy discussion that we should have. But the bill that they were trying to pass, the bill they ultimately did pass, was a blanket ban in all cases. It treated tee-ball the same as varsity baseball." Their goal, he argued, was to score political points off a very small, vulnerable group of people.

Talarico also regretted not articulating his position in a more straightforward way, while saying he had no regrets about defending his constituents. "I'm not a perfect person. None of us are. And so I'm going to always keep trying to improve how I talk about things so that I'm getting my point across," he said.

He was recently confronted about his past comments at a "Jubilee"-style town hall, where voters questioned him one-on-one. Sarah Gardner, a fellow Christian from Texas and a small business owner, pressed him on statements related to faith and social issues, including the 'God is non-binary' remark and his use of the Bible in arguments about abortion.

Conservative analysts, however, sharply criticized his remarks. Inez Stepman, senior policy and legal analyst at Independent Women, said: "The left is always pulling a bait and switch with cultural issues. They advanced policies that placed males on girls sports teams, in locker rooms, in women's prisons, and tried to push anyone who objected to that insanity out of public life. Now, they say none of this ever existed or isn't important. But they don't change their policy or votes."

The Texas Senate race is one of the most closely watched contests in the upcoming U.S. elections. Talarico's interview makes clear that cultural issues will remain at the centre of the fight, and that he intends the blame for the controversy to land on Republicans rather than on himself.