A few days before he won the race to be the Texas GOP’s candidate for U.S. Senate, Ken Paxton tried to call an ad-spend truce with his runoff opponent, the four-term incumbent John Cornyn. Ostensibly, a ceasefire would enable him to pour those dollars into campaigning against the Democratic candidate, James Talarico. The scorched-earth line of attack that a PAC affiliated with him landed on: Talarico thinks God isn’t a dude. Or, in exact terms, that one time he said on the Texas House floor that “God is nonbinary.” 

Talarico has mostly ignored the increased scrutiny of his public theology. On election night, he posted Paxton’s mugshot and named the attorney general’s various indictments and misdeeds, calling him “the most corrupt politician in America.” Meanwhile, Paxton doubled down at his victory party in Plano on that same evening. After he thanked President Donald Trump for the eleventh-hour endorsement, Paxton christened his opponent  “Low-T Talarico.” (Our God is a swole God, after all.) “Then, from the stage, he languidly listed a litany of the seminarian’s supposed sins, calling Talarico “a threat to our very way of life and our values—I mean, he’s a vegan who thinks that God is nonbinary.” (Based on Talarico’s much-derided breakfast-taco order—potato, egg, and cheese—he is, in fact, not a vegan.)

That blasphemous-sounding attack line was trotted out no fewer than three times at Paxton’s celebration, as well as by Republican politicians across the state and country online. Its wide embrace as a talking point would indicate that the GOP considers it a winning strategy in a state in which nearly 70 percent of adults identify as Christian. But . . . why?

Most Christian traditions adhere to the theological belief that God, the Creator, is genderless—also, not actually a created, anatomically correct human person. In his gospel, John writes that “God is spirit.” The notion of God’s masculine nature persists, however, particularly within more theologically conservative Christian denominations. The Bible does use terms such as “abba” (Aramaic for “father”) and “melek” (Hebrew for “king”) to describe the various roles of God, and the Hebrew and Greek scriptures often use the masculine construction when referring to God. Cultural references tend to depict God as a male figure. And, of course, God’s son, Jesus (also God—argh, confusing!), dwelled on earth as a man. 

But plenty of theologians point out the numerous feminine, even maternal, references to God throughout the Bible. The Hebrew term for the Holy Spirit (also God) is a feminine construction. Old Testament verses describe God as one who gives birth and compare God’s protection to that of a mother hen gathering her chicks. 

Some argue those descriptions are merely metaphorical and that a gender-inclusive approach to scripture is tantamount to altering God’s word and risks changing the intended meaning. Various Christian traditions have debated and will continue to debate all of this. Still, most generally agree that God lacks a biological sex, even while disagreeing on how to think about God’s nature and what that means for how to arrange the church. Some faith traditions, like the Southern Baptist Convention, Paxton’s faith group, believe that God self-identifies in masculine terms throughout scripture, given that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. (This insistence on a masculine God is also a useful proof point on which to hang a policy that denies women positions of authority.) In 2011, the SBC passed a resolution condemning an updated New International Version of the Bible for its gender-neutral language; it then commissioned its own translation.

But what we’re talking about here is not a narrow theological debate. This is Texas politics, baby, and who doesn’t love a straw man? Talarico made his statement in 2021, when he spoke on the statehouse floor in opposition to a Texas law that requires student athletes to compete on teams that align with their biological sex. He recently described his remarks to CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe as intentionally provocative, offering his explanation that “God can’t be defined by human categories.”

Paxton, who has already sloughed off a barrage of attacks from Cornyn over his multiple alleged affairs, felony indictments, and impeachment, saw in Talarico’s comment a clear opportunity to lift high the bogeyman of gender, a longtime winning strategy. In 2024, Senator Ted Cruz closed out his winning Senate campaign by releasing a torrent of ads attacking Democrat Colin Allred’s positions on trans athletes, drag shows, and gender-affirming care. In 2022, Greg Abbott adviser Dave Carney called transgender youth issues a “75, 80 percent winner.” In this light, resurrecting Talarico’s years-old, self-described “cringey” comments was a no-brainer, theological grounding be damned: It doesn’t matter what the word means, how does the 2026-lensed culture-war term make you feel?

It seems like Paxton is hoping it makes voters feel weird enough to look past the plank(s) sticking out of his own eye.