Yesterday, Senator Rand Paul put to shame every Congressman and Congresswoman who refuses to state publicly and definitively that no medical professional should support cross-sex hormone-doping for minors or the elective removal of healthy parts of their sexual anatomy as “treatments” for disordered feelings about their maleness or femaleness.
After preaching at my home congregation Sunday morning, I got into my car in the church parking lot to check my voicemails and messages. One of my colleagues had sent me the link to his new article, which I decided to share with my Twitter followers. To my surprise, I discovered I was locked out of my account for 12 hours for violating Twitter Rules.
But what I had done? What was the violation? There was no further information, no link to file an appeal, and no reference to an offending tweet.
Several years ago, something similar happened to me, but Twitter subsequently apologized, explaining that they had misunderstood my tweet.
This time, I was left in the dark, forcing me to search online for a way to appeal the suspension.
Obviously, this was not a serious crisis, and like many other conservatives, I knew my time on Twitter might be limited. Still, I was wondering what offense I had committed.
Minutes later, I had my answer.
I was informed that I had been locked out my account for 12 hours because of this tweet, which had been posted on January 20: “Will I get punished by Twitter for saying that, in God’s sight, ‘Rachel’ Levine (nominated by Biden to be his assistant secretary for HHS) is a man?”
Yes, that was the offending tweet. It looks like Twitter answered my question!
When biological truth conflicts with transgender activism, biological truth is banned.
When biblical truth conflicts with transgender activism, biblical truth is banned.
There was nothing hateful in the tweet.
There was nothing that would incite violence.
I didn’t even “deadname” Levine, referring to him as “Richard.”
I simply stated the truth. In the sight of God, President Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary for Health and Human Services is a man.
Someone might challenge the statement, asking what gives me the right to speak for God.
Someone else might claim to have a different perspective on God’s point of view.
And, of course, an atheist would dispute the whole notion of God.
Fair enough. We can have those debates.
But to block me for this tweet? Really?
I read the Twitter Rules carefully.
Under the category of Safety are listed these sub-categories: Violence; Terrorism/violent extremism; Child sexual exploitation; Abuse/harassment; Hateful conduct; Suicide or self-harm; Sensitive media, including graphic violence and adult content; and Illegal or certain regulated goods or services.
Then I read the categories of Privacy and then Authenticity.
What rule had I violated? Where had I sinned? What was my transgression? (For John Zmirak’s brilliant, satirical self-confession, see here.)
Then I re-read the verbiage under “Hateful conduct,” which stated, “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
So was that it? Was that my crime?
I dug down deeper into the rules, clicking the link for more information, which included this note (which, for some reason, used British English spelling):
“We recognise that if people experience abuse on Twitter, it can jeopardize their ability to express themselves. Research has shown that some groups of people are disproportionately targeted with abuse online. This includes; women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.”
So that must be it. By simply stating biological and biblical truth, I had “harassed” a transgender person. What else could it possibly be?
This led then to the next question. Why did it take Twitter four days to decide I was guilty?
My only guess is that on Saturday, former governor Mike Huckabee retweeted my article about Biden’s radical, trans-activist executive order, including my twitter handle in his tweet. And given the size of his Twitter following, the tweet got lots of attention. Did this, in turn, draw attention to my account, and then my tweet?
Either way, the end result was yet another example of Twitter’s leftist censorship.
Ironically, the Twitter Rules page states that,
“Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. Violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves, and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
In reality, Twitter is stifling public conversation and harassing people who believe things as basic as this: in God’s sight, a biological male remains a male, even when identifying as a female.
Not only so, but once again, we see how affirmation of radical transgender ideology trumps science, Scripture, and even common sense.
Perhaps I’ll get blocked the next time for saying that someone who identifies as a cat (or dog or dragon or the like) is actually a human? After all, wouldn’t therians (who believe in some way that they have an animal identity) fit in the class of “marginalized and historically underrepresented communities”?
And what about Twitter’s extraordinary double standards, as Bible-believing conservatives like me get bashed and mocked and cursed by the minute on these platforms, specifically for being who we are and believing what we believe, and that is somehow fine and dandy.
Over 15 years ago, when I began to warn that those who came out of the closet wanted to put us in the closet, I was roundly mocked. “That’s ridiculous,” I was told.
Who would have believed me if I said back then, “Social media platforms will block us for saying that a male who identifies as a female is actually a man in God’s sight”? Who would have believed that?
Levine may be a decent human being and a serious professional. But he is not a woman in God’s sight whether Twitter likes it or not.
In the end, Twitter may suspend me or block me (and countless others). But they cannot change the truth.
This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.
Written by Ignatius Amadeus
No, you’re not crazy. They just want you to feel that way.
There is a special flavor of cognitive dissonance experienced by those confronted with the dawning of a collectivist utopia. It’s found in the twilight between luminescent NuThink and the benighted remainders of objective reality that we plebs cling to so bitterly.
Allow me to illustrate.
Recently, as I perused the social media headlines about the present plague year, I came across a news item whose image featured the governor of Pennsylvania and his secretary of health, Dr. Rachel Levine, who is, in fact, a man. It struck me because the news was not about Dr. Levine’s chimeric redefinition. Rather, it was a serious news piece about a serious issue, and the doctor was peripheral to the point of it. The presentation of such an incongruity–an appointed official whose gender LARP (Live Action Role-Playing) is only slightly more convincing than that of Corporal Maxwell Klinger–without the slightest batting of an eyelash, is the whole game in a nutshell.
You see friend, it requires no acknowledgement, since there is nothing of note here. Only the grotesquely gauche would stumble. We have serious business to do here. Please focus.
The deadpan delivery leaves you feeling gaslit by the reality being proffered. The implicit assertion is not truth, but the situation itself is reality, formed by consensus, and presented without comment.
But, it’s democratic gaslighting.
This collective lack of acknowledgement, cemented by the integration with serious business being done, makes anyone who is tripped up by the disjoint feel that they are on the outside. Anyone hampered by a pedestrian tethering to pre-postmodernism is made to feel the keen edge of their status as other.
It’s akin to walking into a business meeting and finding one of the participants is wearing a bear suit. “What’s with the bear suit?” you ask. You are simply met with cold stares.
This feat of quiet ostracism, this sudden sense that one is an ideological castaway, coalesces all of a sudden. A breeze blows through you, and you realize the season has changed.
You are being gaslit but not by a sociopathic manipulator. The growing psychic pressure is the constricting consensus of an increasingly popular fabricated reality. You are on the business end of a casual conspiracy of complicity. There is a new set of tracks that your train of thought just doesn’t run properly on. You are given two choices: reconfiguration or derailment.
You keep entering business meetings, to be silently greeted by a fellow in a bear suit.
You’re going to keep getting this lesson until you learn it. Capisce?
In After the Ball, a diabolically masterful turnaround strategy created to take American homosexualism from reviled to revered, authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen laid out a pathway to bring us to this present moment of bear suit ubiquity. It began with desensitization, progressed through leveraging perceived commonalities, and promised powerful acceptance.
When you’re very different, and people hate you for it, this is what you do: first you get your foot in the door, by being as similar as possible; then, and only then – when your one little difference is finally accepted–can you start you start dragging in your other peculiarities, one by one. You hammer in the wedge narrow end first. As the saying goes, Allow the camel’s nose beneath your tent, and the whole body will soon follow.
This was published in 1989.
Once the concept of tolerance was deformed to mean acceptance, and love was refashioned to include things for which it was not designed, it was clear that The Plan was getting far more cultural traction than anyone had dreamed possible. As the sea change continued, the launching of Same Sex Mirage was a fait accompli. Always, you will note, brought to market in the carefully constructed context of simulated normalcy.
The weight of normalcy packaging + the momentum of previous acceptance = the psychic force applied to dissenters who note the incongruities.
This simulacrum of normalcy, coupled with the raised stakes of whatever novel idea is being introduced, creates an uncanny valley of experience. It’s designed to camouflage the situation such that it sufficiently approximates reality for the initiated, but to the sober-minded, the differences create dissonance. That dissonance is designed to cleave off the bitter clingers–to refuse entry to the non-compliant, and convince them that they are the ones failing to grasp this democratically elected reality.
The pressure can feel immense at times–not the Lilliputian arguments for NuThink–but their collective power to layer up, entangle and enervate. Yes, you can see each point where things got ratcheted up, but the cumulative effect–that you feel.
The most recent gut punch happened when I (virtually) encountered “Dr. Glitterbear,” a Rutgers University professor, in his unicorn-jammie-and-white-pumps ensemble. He had apparently led the charge to have a fellow PhD’s published paper about gender anarchy retracted due to its NuThink compliance failure.
“What’s with the unicorn suit?” Cold stares.
Yea, though I walk through the uncanny valley, I will brook no evil.
As has been noted by those who have experienced totalitarian rule, this immense pressure to conform to a synthesized consensus exerts a real toll on the non-compliant. Presented with each new escalation, the mind struggles like an up-ended turtle wriggling to regain its feet.
It can be exhausting and disheartening to keep the turtle righted.
First, know what the truth is and why it is the truth. If you’re reading this, I will assume that you’re likely well-engaged in this process. Understand that we are in an ontological crisis where millions are being swept out to sea. Know how to anchor to the fixed bedrock of actual truth. While this battle is presented as a quibble over small changes, you must understand that it’s actually a conflict over whether reality is already defined or ad-libbed. For anyone adhering to a belief in Logos and Creation, the definitions are fixed and non-negotiable.
Second, don’t lose your equilibrium. When wading through strong opposing forces, it’s easy to overcompensate. Movements become exaggerated, and overreactions can abound. It’s oh-so-easy to become shrill, alienated, or paranoid. It’s simple to get knocked back into reflexive overreaction. Learn to find grace under pressure, and don’t allow yourself to be distorted by your exertion against the onslaught.
Third, encourage and invest in others to strengthen the bulwark against this flood of Dionysian dissolution. Maintaining relationships with other people who are also committed in their fidelity to truth is important. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend, and a cord of three strands is not easily broken.
Finally, do not think it strange, this fiery trial which is upon us. Be encouraged that the Truth Himself was similarly opposed, and so we now share in that same suffering. Having done all, stand. Simply bearing witness to truth in a raging sea of illusion, is a Kingdom act.
“Ignatius Amadeus has been a brand messaging professional for over two decades, and his writing focus is on society, culture, and communication. His desire is to examine, understand, and express what is happening in our nation in order to clarify and see things move in a restorative direction. A typical Gen-Xer, he is most at home in a mashed-up kaleidoscope of the banal and sublime. His interests range from theology to cinema to fine art and music. Oh, and obsolete technology. He thinks that’s fun, too.”