I want to talk about a Christian response to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign, and to do that, we need to start with Batman.
In Frank Miller’s 1986 comic book series The Dark Knight Returns, an aging Bruce Wayne puts the Batman mask back on to quell a violent gang that has taken over Gotham during his retirement. He recruits a rival gang as his personal army to help restore order and is furious when they show up armed with guns. In a well-known panel, a scowling Batman snatches one of the rifles and breaks it in half. “This is the weapon of the enemy,” he spits. “We do not need it. We will not use it.”
Any comic book nerd will tell you that Batman has a pathological aversion to guns. The man who killed his parents used a gun, so in Batman’s mind, guns—“loud, clumsy, stupid” tools—are off-limits. He’s fighting for a world without guns, and he will not use guns to make that world a reality, no matter how much easier it might seem.
It’s a nice conviction, a superhero comic echo of Paul’s words in Romans 12:21: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” It’s one we should be holding to in our own work.
The presidential election of 2028 is a long way away, but Newsom (D-Calif.) is emerging as many mainstream Democrats' preferred contender. While he hasn’t officially announced his intention to run yet, it’s easy to see why there’s a lot of speculation. He’s rich, handsome, white, and well-connected. He’s a politician’s idea of a great politician. His approval rates in California are broadly satisfactory, and he’s gained some attention for This Is Gavin Newsom, his podcast that counts political opponents like Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon, and the late Charlie Kirk among its guests.
This is the sort of aisle-hopping that counts as brave in our era, and it’s all well and good, as far as it goes. But the thing that seems to have elevated Newsom most among President Donald Trump’s critics is Newsom’s social media presence. On X and elsewhere, Newsom’s account gleefully turns Trump’s grandiloquent posting style against him. That all-caps, self-aware “THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!” mockery is catnip on social media, where anti-Trump meme warfare still makes for good clout. And if Newsom’s social media attacks stopped there, they wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But they don’t stop there. Instead, Newsom uses the tools of the enemy.
When notorious right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson tweeted that he was traveling to California to look for financial impropriety, Newsom’s account quote-tweeted the post. “We got a call from Grindr after this,” Newsom’s account posted, “and said your team was their biggest users. Congrats!” Grindr, is of course, a popular LGBTQ+ hookup app, making Newsom's retort essentially a “you’re so gay” put down, straight out of a mid-2000s middle school lunchroom.
This isn’t the first time Newsom’s done what some might call “gay jokes.” It’s not even the first time he’s tried to use Grindr as a punchline against Johnson, though Johnson’s not the only person to get Newsom’s gay-joke treatment. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) was also on the receiving end of one of Newsom’s gay jokes.
In another interview, Newsom lambasted politicians like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who pivoted from criticizing Trump to praising him. “Lindsey Graham—speaking of kneepads,” Newsom said, pausing while the crowd giggled. “I’m sorry,” Newsom continued. “This is tough stuff.” He’s not that sorry. If you head over to Newsom’s website, you can buy “Newsom Kneepads” with Trump’s signature on them for $100. “It’s about people bending the knee to Trump and kowtowing,” Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon insisted. “It’s not about a blowjob.” Feel free to take Newsom’s word on that.
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These are not only the actions of children; they are the actions of particularly mean-spirited children who make life miserable for kids of every sexual orientation. Kids who talk like this should be punished. Adults who talk like this should be humiliated. This was true when Trump started normalizing this kind of campaign trail talk in 2015. It’s still true now.
Newsom’s borrowing of Trump’s weapons stash doesn’t stop at crass posting. He’s also finding other ways to triangulate on MAGA positions and snag a few conservative votes in the process. Where Newsom once declared Palestinians to be living in an apartheid state, he now backpedals, saying he regretted using the word. “Backpedal” would be a generous term for his views on transgender people, which seem to shift with every new YouGov poll. Throwing trans people and Palestinians under the campaign bus wheels can be an effective weapon for getting voters and donors. But it’s not a weapon for people who believe in overcoming evil with good.
“Well,” one might say. “I don’t love that Newsom is doing this stuff, but how can you care about a thing like this now, with democracy under fire, immigrants in concentration camps, and free speech on life support? Why shouldn’t he use every weapon available to him?”
Two reasons:
The first is the old wisdom that whatever is used to build your movement will be used to sustain your movement. If Newsom wants to fuel his rise with homophobic taunts and focus-grouped calculations on which communities can be sacrificed on the way to the White House, then that is the energy that he will need to maintain his rise. He will not suddenly pivot from bullying minorities to building a better world. That is not how the moral math of the universe works.
The second reason is God’s promise to God’s people in Isaiah: “No weapon formed against you will prosper” (54:17). If we take these words on faith, that means that every weapon in Trump’s arsenal will one day rust and shatter. Why, given this, would we use such weapons? We’d doom ourselves along with Trump’s movement.
In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul writes: “Indeed, we live as humans but do not wage war according to human standards, for the weapons of our warfare are not merely human, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
So this is our position as Christians. We are armed, but not with human weapons. We do not demean anyone made in God’s image, but we will destroy arguments that seek to do so, whether they come from Trump, Newsom, or anyone else. The weapons we use have divine power. Their weapons will not prosper. We do not need them. We will not use them.
Every weapon in Trump’s arsenal will one day rust and shatter. Why, given this, would we use such weapons?
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