The Twitter account of The Babylon Bee was suspended after it awarded a transgender Biden administration official the title of “man of the year”.
Last week, USA Today named Rachel Levine, the US assistant secretary for health for the US Department of Health and Human Services, as one of its “women of the year”.
Shortly after, The Babylon Bee shared its story on Twitter, naming Levine “Man of the Year”.
The article says Levine “serves proudly as the first man in that position to dress like a western cultural stereotype of a woman. He is also an admiral in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. What a boss!”
“He often wears a dress, which some people think is weird — but he doesn’t care one bit,” it continues. “Come on! Men in India wear dress-type garments, don’t they?”
Twitter said it will restore the account, which has more than 1.3 million followers, if the Bee deletes the tweet.
CEO Seth Dillon tweeted “We’re not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it”.
“They could, of course, delete the tweet themselves. But they won’t. It’s not enough for them to just wipe it out. They want us to bend the knee and admit that we engaged in hateful conduct,” Dillon said in another tweet on his personal account.
“It’s the word “man” that’s problematic, not “male.” They allow transgenders like Rachel Levine to be described as physically male. But they won’t allow you to conclude that a person’s maleness makes them a man. If Rachel self-identifies as a woman, then you must affirm that,” he explained.