This is the first installment in the Wolves Among Us series. For the full pastor-grade reference document, read Thus Saith the Lord: A Biblical Defense of God’s Design for Human Sexuality.
***
When a seminary-trained politician rewrites Scripture to fit a progressive agenda, the church must offer a biblical response — with truth, with grief, and with hope.
The Oldest Question in the World
Dear Christian:
It began in a garden. Not with a weapon. Not with a frontal assault. Just a question — smooth, reasonable, and devastating: “Did God really say…?”
The strategy has never changed. Don’t deny God exists. Don’t attack Him openly. Simply plant doubt about whether His words mean what they say. Undermine the authority of Scripture, and everything else follows.
That ancient question is being asked again today — by a seminary-trained Texas politician named James Talarico, the national face of “progressive Christianity.” He is warm, winsome, and wildly popular on social media. And he is telling millions of believers that the Bible does not say what the church has always taught about human sexuality.
This is not a misunderstanding. He went to seminary. He learned what the text says. He chose to contradict it on national television.
What Kind of Book Is the Bible?
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Not some Scripture. Not the red letters only. Not the parts we find culturally convenient. All of it — breathed out by God Himself, inerrant and authoritative, binding on every generation.
Talarico’s argument rests on a method that would be thrown out of any courtroom in America. No judge permits a witness to selectively read a document — accepting the parts that support his position while dismissing the rest. The Word of God deserves no less. You do not get to choose your own canon.
What Jesus Actually Said
Talarico told Joe Rogan in July 2025: “We have four gospels with tons of teachings from Jesus, and none of them are about homosexuality.” And on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert: “Two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Two issues that Jesus never talked about.”
He is wrong.
In Matthew 19:4–5, Jesus reached back to creation itself: “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?” One man. One woman. One flesh. Jesus anchored sexual ethics in Genesis 1 and 2 — before the Law, before Moses, built into the architecture of what it means to be human.
Jesus also repeatedly condemned porneia — the Greek umbrella term for all sexual activity outside heterosexual covenant marriage — in Matthew 5:32, 15:19, and 19:9. His audience knew exactly what that word covered. Silence on a modern English term is not silence on the behavior.
Paul Wrote by Christ’s Own Authority
Talarico’s method requires removing Paul from the conversation. But Paul did not write on his own authority. Jesus personally commissioned him (Acts 9), and Paul confirmed his gospel came “not from any man… but by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11–12). To dismiss Paul is to dismiss the One who sent him.
Romans 1:26–27 is explicit — written to Rome, where same-sex relations were widely practiced. Paul knew precisely what he was addressing. So did the Holy Spirit who inspired every word.
But do not stop at the warning. Read the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 6:11: “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Were. Past tense. Changed. Redeemed. That is what progressive Christianity cannot offer — because it refuses to call sin what God calls sin, and therefore cannot point anyone to the only One who forgives it.
When a Politician Casts Himself as Jesus
Visit Talarico’s campaign website and you will find his headline banner in large bold type: “It’s time to Start Flipping Tables.”
Let that sink in. He is invoking John 2 — Jesus driving the money changers from the Temple — and casting himself in the role of Christ. The same man who tells you Jesus never addressed sexuality places himself in the sandals of the Son of God.
This is messianic self-promotion dressed in theological language — a pattern the church must learn to recognize.
Jesus did flip tables. He did so because He is the Son of God — the Author of the Law, the One before whom every knee will bow. He was not running for Senate.
Talarico is right that tables need flipping. He may not have considered which ones — or by Whom.
A Word to the Believer
If you have encountered these arguments and felt unsettled — that response is healthy. Something is wrong. You are right to sense it.
“Did God really say?” has been the enemy’s opening line since Eden. What has never changed is the answer.
No one reading these words is beyond repentance. No one is beyond grace. But grace begins with truth — and truth begins with the Word of God, not the spirit of the age.
God said it. He meant it. His Word stands.
For the full biblical and theological case — including Talarico’s verified quotes, complete exegesis, and the witness of 2,000 years of church history — read: Thus Saith the Lord: A Biblical Defense of God’s Design for Human Sexuality.
