We Stopped Child Mutilation in Tennessee

[Matt Walsh]

A Massive Win In Tennessee As The Outrage Mob Comes For My Job
On Thursday, lawmakers in the state of Tennessee did what all sane
lawmakers across the country should do immediately: they voted to
protect children from the indefensible, predatory and increasingly
lucrative pediatric transgender medical industry. As those who've been
following our show know quite well by now, Tennessee's Protecting
Children from Gender Mutilation Act was introduced in direct response
to our exposure of the ghoulish practices conducted by Vanderbilt
University Medical Center's pediatric gender clinic. The bill
effectively bars doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and cross-
sex hormones and from performing gender-related surgeries on minors for
the purpose of medical transition - and, importantly, it allows
patients and their family members to sue doctors for damages.

Following the VUMC investigation, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee aptly
expressed what the vast majority of Tennesseans believe: “We should not
allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children or policies
that suppress religious liberties, all for the purpose of financial
gain. We have to protect Tennessee children.” He has already said he
intends to sign the bill when it reaches his desk.

And Tennessee's Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson bluntly summed up
the reason he believed it was an urgent necessity to pass the bill:
“Under no circumstances should minors be allowed to undergo
irreversible elective procedures to mutilate body parts and
intentionally harm their reproductive systems. This practice comes with
lifelong health complications that children are not capable of
understanding.” That's what sanity sounds like.

On Thursday, the work of these sane lawmakers, spurred on by your
voices, moved this important protection for children and families
forward in Tennessee. Good on them and good on you for helping this
literally life and death issue get the attention it desperately needs.

Cue the Outrage Mob
The outrage mob is very upset, and has me trending on social media
again, all because of a brief comment from a show this week. During the
Daily Cancellation on Tuesday, I delivered my final rebuttal to the
conservatives who have been relentlessly attacking me for being, as
they claim, too mean to trans activists like Dylan Mulvaney. My PR reps
at Media Matters were of course, as always, watching and listening
intently, and taking careful notes. Towards the end of the monologue,
they found the bit they needed for their headline. Emphasis on “bit.”
They only need a phrase — not even a full sentence — and they can write
the rest themselves.

That's exactly what they did with this headline: “Daily Wire host: 'I
would rather be dead' than have a trans child.” From there, other Media
Matters goons like Ari Drennan ran with it. Ari tweeted: “In another
unhinged rant about Dylan Mulvaney, Matt Walsh says that he would
rather die than allow his kids to be trans. Matt says he's entitled to
whatever language he wants, as am I: his six kids are not safe with him
and he should not be allowed within a mile of them.”

It circulated from there to the corporate media, where NBC reporter and
obsessed fan, Benjamin Ryan posted: “Matt Walsh employs violent,
incendiary rhetoric to stir up moral panic against transgender people
as he proclaims he'd rather die than have a trans child.” And soon
there were people tagging Ben Shapiro and calling for me to be fired.
One of those posts earned a “like” from the “conservative” Jonah
Goldberg, who is so conservative that he thinks conservative media
figures should lose their jobs for not wanting their children to be
transed. Of course, the outrage made its way outside of the walls of
Twitter and out into Reddit and other forums, and the left-wing media
world, leading to headlines like this from the Leftist internet rag
AlterNet: “'A fate worse than death': Matt Walsh launches vicious
attack on parenting trans kids.”

At this point, it might be relevant to go back and review the comment
that these people are so upset about. I know that, as far as the
outrage mob is concerned, there is no need to consider what a person
actually said when deciding whether to be angry about what they said -
all that matters is how they feel about what they think I said. Be that
as it may, for those who care about irrelevant details like, you know,
the truth, here's what I actually said:

“I have personally heard from many parents — more than I can count —
who tell me versions of the same horror story. A beautiful and innocent
kid, one day, seemingly out of nowhere, gets sucked into the gender
cult, and is devoured by it. The child they held as a baby and raised
and gave their lives to and loved and still love becomes suddenly
unrecognizable. All of their innocence and light and beauty just
drained out of them, replaced by this self-cannibalizing madness. For a
parent, to see this happen to a child, it is a fate worse than death —
I would rather be dead than have that happen to my kids. See, the thing
that I most despise about Dylan Mulvaney is that he is part of a
movement which actively seeks to turn my children into Dylan Mulvaney.
That's why I am entitled to my anger, and to whatever language I use to
convey it. I will say whatever I want to say, and I will be justified
in saying it because these people are after my kids — and yours, and
everyone else's. And you're worried that I'm being a little rude? Well,
you see, when it comes to my children — the children that I cherish
more than my own life — if you think 'mean words' go too far, then you
would be very shocked to hear how far I would really go to protect
them. Trust me, words are the least of it.”

I know you don't need me to say this, but I obviously stand by all of
that. I'm happy that I said it and I'm happy with the way I said it,
and I don't care whose feelings it hurt — in fact, from what I've seen,
the people who've had their feelings hurt by this deserve to have their
feelings hurt.

My point was very clear: I love my children. I would give my life to
protect them. I would jump in front of a moving train if they were
stuck on the tracks. I would dive in front of a bullet. This is what it
means to be a loving parent, and any loving parent feels the same way
about their own kids. And that means I would also, if necessary, give
my life to stop my children from being indoctrinated into a death cult,
that will deprive them of their sense of identity, lead them towards
self-mutilation and self-harm, and in a large percentage of cases,
suicide. Obviously, I would rather die than have my kids suffer such a
fate. I have said some provocative things in my time. I have offered up
some hot takes that even I will admit were a bit on the eccentric side
— even though I was still right about them. But this is not one of
those takes. This is very normal. I want my kids to be happy, whole,
and fulfilled. I want them to live fruitful and productive lives. I
don't want them to fall prey to a poisonous social contagion that will
deprive them of all of that. It's not just that I don't want it. It's
that I will fight to my dying breath to prevent it. This is not
extremism. It's love. And loving your child is normal, or should be.

But this is how the Left's game is played. Take a normal thing and try
to make it unspeakable, unthinkable. Shriek in horror at what is normal
and healthy and virtuous, and hope that the shrieks alone are enough to
convince people to run the other way. It's an effective strategy to a
certain extent, as anyone who understands group psychology can tell
you. Try walking down a busy sidewalk, suddenly looking behind you, and
then running away with a terrified expression on your face. It's
guaranteed that other people will run with you even though they have no
idea what you're running from. Your reaction to the imaginary threat
was enough to convince them. The Left deploys this method at an
ideological level, and on a culture-wide scale. Here they do it again.
A man simply says that he doesn't want his children to fall victim to a
self-mutilating cult, the Left hears this totally normal sentiment and
reacts as though the man had advocated for genocide, and they hope that
others will follow them in their panic. No need to articulate any sort
of coherent argument against my statement, any more than you'd have to
make an argument to the crowd on the sidewalk in order to convince them
to run away from the invisible monster. They don't have to explain why
normalcy is evil — they just have to treat it that way.

This is another reason Tennessee lawmakers banning the mutilation and
castration of children is so critical: it cuts through the noise and
exposes the lie for what it is. But it's important to note that not
every Tennessee legislator was on board with protecting children. We do
have a few Democrats here, sadly, and as we saw at the hearing a few
weeks ago, they are very depressed about the fact that kids can't be
mutilated anymore.

One of those legislators is state rep Gloria Johnson, a particularly
loathsome person who feels personally attacked by our efforts to
protect children — and she's noticed that Tennessee is becoming more
conservative as more and more sane and decent people move here. We
moved in, and next thing you know child castration and child drag shows
are about to be illegal. This state just ain't big enough for all of
us, which means the groomers and predators have to go. This is what led
Johnson to tweet a few days ago: “If I am hearing this right, the
following people now live in TN, please correct me if I'm wrong. Betsy
DeVos, Rebekah Mercer, Roger Stone, Tomi Lahren, Ben Shapiro, Matt
Walsh, Candace Owens…who am I leaving out? It seems we are a testing
ground for the vortex of evil.”

Objectively, it is not a healthy thing for elected officials to label
their own constituents “the vortex of evil,” yet this is the kind of
rhetoric that even Leftists in government will use. And they'll use it
while the Right continues to debate whether our own language is too
harsh. You better not tell a man that he makes an ugly woman. That
would be very offensive to the sorts of people who already consider you
to be a member of the vortex of evil.

I'm honored by the label. I'd been wondering what our supervillain
squad name should be, and now we have it. I'd thought about Axis of
Evil but that's already taken. Cyclone of Evil might overdo it. Vortex
of Evil — that's the one. Mostly though I'm honored because I know what
they consider evil. It's always Opposite Day with these people, so the
word “evil” simply means good, or sane, or normal. We are not heroes
because we oppose child abuse and want to protect our own children from
it. We are just normal. A vortex of normal. But I guess that doesn't
have the same ring to it.