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Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico said this week he would “absolutely” vote for a national ban on gender transition surgery for minors and walked back several of his past statements on gender in a round of interviews as Republicans held their midterm convention in Dallas.
Getting into it: Talarico made the comments to Fox News at a food drive campaign event in Dallas, miles from where the GOP convention was underway. Asked whether he would support a federal ban on the surgeries, he said, “Absolutely.”
He argued that his record is consistent, pointing to votes he made as a Texas state representative in 2023. Talarico voted against SB 14, which banned gender transition surgeries, puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors. Democrats offered 18 amendments to the bill, all of which Talarico voted for, and all 18 failed.
On school sports, he went further. “I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness,” he said. “Every sport has to be safe and fair. As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes.” In 2021, as a member of the House Public Education Committee, he opposed SB 29, which would have required public school athletes to compete based on the sex on their birth certificate, calling the issue a “manufactured problem.” Later that year, he voted against HB 25, which put similar restrictions into law.
He also addressed the line Republicans have used against him most. On the House floor in 2021, opposing a sports bill, he said, “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary.” Asked about it now, he said: “I was being provocative with that statement. I get that. What I was trying to say is that you can’t use human categories to define God, and that’s not controversial theologically. In fact, the late Charlie Kirk, the late Pope Benedict all said the same thing.”
On a past claim that there are six genders, he said, “I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it. What I meant is that there are two sexes, and then there’s a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. Obviously didn’t say it correctly. There are not six sexes. There are two.”
This all comes as Talarico continues to face an onslaught of criticism from Republican lawmakers over previous comments, particularly as he tries to shift the conversation toward the rising cost of living for Americans. “Everywhere I go across the state of Texas, people are struggling to survive in this economy. They are struggling to afford the basics: groceries, gas, utilities, healthcare,” he said, arguing that Republicans want to talk about six sexes because “they don’t want to talk about $6 diesel.” Asked whether voters should trust his new positions, he said, “You shouldn’t believe anything a politician says, whether it’s me or Ken Paxton. You should look at what we’ve done.”
