Laura Jane Grace set out to make a point with a recent performance of a new song. It turns out, the song went right over the heads of the people she was hoping would hear it most.
On Friday (March 7), Sen. Bernie Sanders hosted a town hall as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour across the country in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and invited Grace to perform on stage. One of the songs she performed — her February released “Your God (God’s D–k)” — caused immediate outrage online over its profane lyrics and religious themes.
In the song, Grace makes a point that while religious conservatives have a problem using the proper pronouns for trans people, they seem to have no problem imposing gender on an omnipresent, non-physical deity. “Does your god have a big fat d–k? ‘Cause it feels like he’s f—ing me,” Grace sings on the track. “Are his b–ls filled with lightning?/ Do they dangle like heaven’s keys?”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Grace said that the purpose of the song was to open people’s eyes to the double standard of gender constructs today. “I’m not being profane to be profane, I’m not just saying ‘d–k’ to say ‘d–k.’ I’m asking a genuine question,” she said. “If you refer to your God as he and him, but you will not refer to a transgender person with the pronouns that are theirs … that’s just insane.”
Grace continued, adding that the outrage itself was representative of the larger problem around the right’s attack on trans people. “It’s such blatant hypocrisy. You can’t prove God exists with biology or chromosomes,” she said. “So if you’re gonna throw science continually in my face, let’s stick to that: Your god doesn’t exist.”
Sanders’ event was aimed at protesting president Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers’ proposed plans to cut federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid that low-income families rely on. “4,000 people came out to say: NO tax breaks for billionaires,” he wrote on Instagram following his Kenosha event. “NO cuts to Medicaid. NO oligarchy. NO authoritarianism. NO MORE billionaires buying elections.”
The White House has since stated that Trump “will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” but has alleged that there is “waste and fraud in entitlement spending” without providing concrete evidence of where that waste and fraud exists in programs like Medicare or Medicaid.
