With just weeks to go before the U.S. midterm elections, Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who is looking to represent the state of Georgia, is polling neck and neck with his opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock — and needs to lock in votes from his conservative base soon. Depressingly, he seems to be bullying trans kids to make that happen.
At a rally in Calhoun, Georgia this week, Walker, who is the father of conservative viral video star Christian Walker, told the crowd that in his Christian opinion, trans kids wouldn’t be able to enter heaven because, for some reason, Jesus wouldn’t recognize them.
“I want the young kids to know, you go to heaven. Jesus may not recognize you. Because he made you a boy. He made you a girl. Why are we talking about things like that?” Walker bloviated, saying a woman is “from the rib of a man” per the Biblical story of Adam and Eve.
“They’re trying to tell you right now that this is normal. But I’m here to tell you this is not normal,” Walker added. All of this was to show support for measures banning trans students from school sports teams that correspond with their gender.
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Obviously, Walker’s comments don’t merit debunking with Facts and Logic, as they are one man’s opinion about who gets to go to a nice place after they die. (It does sort of defeat the purpose of an omniscient deity if just going on HRT and changing your name makes you a soul-ninja, though.)
As far as Walker himself goes, the Lord might recognize him at the ol’ Pearly Gates, but whether he’ll like what he sees is another thing entirely. Apart from his career in sports, the would-be senator is best known for running a portfolio of businesses whose operations, valuation, and employee count Walker consistently misrepresents; far from being a successful multi-million dollar company as Walker is wont to claim, H. Walker Enterprises has serially defaulted on loans and been sued by creditors multiple times, per investigative reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. We’re no theologians, but that sounds like a little something called “bearing false witness.”
And that’s not even mentioning Walker’s alleged history of domestic abuse; according to his former wife Cindy DeAngelis Grossman, Walker repeatedly threatened her life during their marriage, holding a gun to her head on at least one occasion and threatening to “blow [her] fucking brains out.” (In response to an ad that pointed this out, Walker told a reporter “he who is without sin cast the first stone.”)
Walker’s opponent Sen. Warnock, meanwhile, is a full-on reverend who’s described himself as “a pro-LGBTQ+ pastor who understands that no one is free until we are all free.” Recent polling thankfully indicates a slight turn in Warnock’s favor, but a lot can still happen before November.
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