by Paul Gottfried
The Hill was recently in a great huff because Twitter would not remove statements by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) referring disrespectfully to gender reassignment surgery and calling Admiral Rachel Levine by her former male name. Although I’m not recommending disrespectful language, I’m also not sure that I see the reason for this indignant outburst. The Hill supposedly supports the right of letting dissenting (non-leftist) voices into the public discussion. Why is Greene not allowed to oppose gender reassignment surgery, a critical position that millions of Americans openly and passionately hold? Have we reached the point where we can no longer criticize the woke agenda without running the risk of being canceled by Twitter, at the urging of The Hill and other supposedly non-leftist websites?
Moreover, Greene’s disgust with sex change operations, and particularly the chemical castration of children, seems fully justified in my view. My own feelings on this matter may be even stronger. Greene’s use of Admiral Rachel Levine’s earlier male name, when this media darling was the male head of a traditional family, hardly borders on an outrage. Levine spent much of his/her life as a male although there is no question that Levine’s sex change provided him/her with spectacular professional opportunities, allowing Levine to become a widely televised health official in my state of Pennsylvania under a very progressive Democratic administration. The sex change may have also helped Levine reach the unlikely honor of admiral under Biden’s over-the-top woke administration.
What is omitted from this success story are the thousands of elderly Americans who died because of Levine’s decision to stick COVID-infected senior citizens into the same facilities as non-infected residents. Levine conveniently placed her own mother into a separate facility so she would be protected from the disease to which our health official exposed other elderly Pennsylvanians.
Rather than being punished for this outrageous behavior, Levine became a poster child for the LGBT cause under Biden. Given this advancement is at least partly because of Levine’s value as an advocate for non-binary causes, including sex change procedures for the young, why shouldn’t Greene be allowed to go after Levine as a model and advocate for something that offends her morally? Why must Greene be demeaned if she chooses to challenge the LGBT lobby with only a fraction of that fury that lobby vents on its critics? Is it because other Americans are too terrified to offend the object of Greene’s attack? To her credit, Greene will venture into areas into which her fellow Republicans are too fearful to tread.
Thus we find a nationwide media vilification of Greene after she tangles with perhaps the most embattled champion of the transgender cause in Congress, Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.). Greene expressed her opinion to Newman after Democrats pushed a “civil rights act” for LGBT Americans through Congress, with votes from such media-approved conservatives as Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). Newman took this action, she claimed, in honor of her son who had recently transitioned to a girl named Evie:
“Your biological son does not belong in my daughters’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams,” Greene said.
Contrary to the impression created by this narrative, it is not Newman but Greene who came under fire for her position. USA Today assaulted the Georgia representative as “transphobic” for vocally disagreeing with Newman, which is after all her right. In fact, Greene sounds entirely reasonable as she explains that Newman’s still biologically male offspring should not be using the same locker room as her biological daughter. Greene emphatically refuses to play by the Left’s rules. If the other side is free to slander its critics as bigots and Nazis with the aid of a media megaphone, then the cultural-moral Right should be free to fire back. Greene had every right to put a “hateful” sign on her door stating there are two distinct genders. This came after Newman stuck an LGBT banner in the office hallway to taunt Greene.
An equally no-holds-barred critic of the LGBT lobby is North Carolina’s black Lieutenant Governor, Mark Robinson, who plans to run for his state’s governorship in 2024. Robinson, a devout Bible-believing Christian, has spoken in churches as well as at political gatherings against the transitioning of children and the torrent of gay propaganda issuing from public schools. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper naturally finds Robinson’s views “abhorrent.” His impudence has also rattled LGBT-subservient Republican politicians, as seen by these remarks from a Charlotte party operative: “You cannot have an anti-LGBTQ platform,” said Lawrence Shaheen, a Charlotte-based attorney and Republican campaign consultant.
Allow me to respond in Robinson’s defense as well as in Greene’s: If a party that claims to be conservative cannot defend what until recently was considered social decency, it does not deserve to exist. It is certainly not standing up for anything that I can recognize as normal family and gender values.
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Paul Edward Gottfried is the editor of Chronicles. An American paleoconservative philosopher, historian, and columnist, Gottfried is a former Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, as well as a Guggenheim recipient.
Photo “Marjorie Taylor Greene” by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
