Texas Senate Race Sharpens Around Talarico's Theological Views and His Church's Children's Library

Since Talarico secured the Democratic nomination for the Texas Senate seat, the campaign against him has moved from general ideological attack to granular opposition research, pulling up five-year-old podcast appearances, church library catalogs, and floor votes.

The newest material in circulation: a March 2021 podcast appearance in which Talarico gushed over Roberto Henderson-Espinoza, a PhD theologian who self-describes as Mestizaje, autistic, non-binary, transgender, and Latinx, and who uses He/They pronouns. "When you started following me on Twitter, I couldn't contain my inner fan boy," Talarico said, according to the New York Post, adding that Henderson-Espinoza's 2019 book Activist Theology "continues to inspire me."

Talarico also told Henderson-Espinoza that "my whiteness, my masculinity, all those things limit my imagination about what's possible." His spokesperson JT Ennis told the Post that Talarico "has already said that he's missed the mark on some of these old statements."

What Henderson-Espinoza Actually Argued

The Post's coverage provides some useful context here. In 2018, Henderson-Espinoza published academic work calling for "transing religion" as a method to "dismantle the logic of the norm that grounds the reproduction of binarisms." Henderson-Espinoza also described transgender individuals as "Easter icons" and opposed Texas legislation requiring schools to notify parents if their child was socially transitioning. These are genuinely heterodox theological positions, not mainstream Presbyterian ones.

Talarico's engagement with them in 2021 offers a window into where some of his more disputed statements originated, including his 2021 argument that "God is non-binary," his claim that the Bible is compatible with abortion, and his assertion that there are "six biological sexes."

The Church Library Question

The Daily Wire reported on the children's library at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, where Talarico has delivered sermons. The library, framed by the church as a "banned books" collection, includes Gender Queer, which contains illustrated depictions of oral sex and masturbation; All Boys Aren't Blue, which discusses anal rape and incest; and This Book Is Gay, which includes a chapter on gay sex mechanics. The church's own website describes the collection as a way for children to find "affirmation in the books they read."

The Daily Wire's coverage is adversarial in tone, but the books it names are real, the church's stated rationale is quoted directly from its website, and Talarico has given sermons at that church. Those facts stand independent of the framing.

What the Daily Wire does not establish is that Talarico personally selected, curated, or endorsed the specific library titles. Being a member and occasional guest preacher at a church is not the same as signing off on its library catalog.

The Strongest Case for Talarico

Carl Trueman, writing in the Washington Post, makes a sharp observation that cuts against the Republican framing: he argues that Talarico's brand of progressive Christianity represents Christianity's past, not its future, suggesting that mainline Protestant churches have been declining for decades precisely because this theological direction alienates ordinary churchgoers. His argument is that Talarico is less a revolutionary than a product of a tradition already losing ground.

Talarico's defenders make a related point: his theological heterodoxy is not hidden. He is a Presbyterian seminarian running in a Democratic primary he won openly. Voters who nominated him knew what they were getting. His spokesperson's framing — that Paxton is "clipping a few cringey comments to distract" from Paxton's own legal baggage — is a legitimate counter-argument. The spokesperson specifically referenced what Ennis called a corrupt deal involving Adam Hoffman, a Waco lawyer who served 29 days in jail after admitting to misdemeanor counts of indecent assault and displaying harmful material to a minor, after Paxton's office took over the case.

The Race

Texas is not a swing state by recent measure. Trump won it by 14 points in 2024, according to the Daily Wire's reporting. Paxton, in his first speech as the official GOP nominee, called Talarico "Six-Gender Jimmy" and "James Tala-FREAKO." This language signals the Republican strategy is to make Talarico's views on gender and religion the defining issue, rather than engage on policy. When a candidate opens with a nickname instead of an argument, it suggests they've decided the culture-war framing wins more votes than a substantive debate.

Talarico's bet is the opposite: that a changing Texas electorate, driven by urban growth in Austin, Houston, and Dallas, is ready for a candidate this far left of the state's historical center. That bet has zero modern precedent in Texas Senate elections.

The unresolved question heading into the fall is whether Talarico will formally distance himself from the specific Henderson-Espinoza positions, particularly the opposition to parental notification on school gender transitions, or whether his campaign calculates that a clean break costs him more with the Democratic base than it gains with persuadable voters. His spokesperson's current posture — calling old statements "cringey" without specifying which ones or why — leaves that question open.