Twitter locked the Christian satire site the Babylon Bee out of its account on Sunday for “hateful conduct” over an article satirizing Dr. Rachel Levine, the transgender assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The article and headline that reportedly sentenced the Babylon Bee to Twitter jail mocked USA Today recently declaring Rachel Levine a “woman of the year.” Levine is a man living as a woman.
“The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year is Rachel Levine,” said the headline.
For that, Twitter reportedly locked the account for 12 hours on the condition that the Babylon Bee delete the headline, according to company CEO Seth Dillon.
“I just received this notice that we’ve been locked out of our account for ‘hateful conduct,'” Dillon tweeted. “We’re told our account will be restored in 12 hours, but the countdown won’t begin until we delete the tweet that violates the Twitter Rules.”
The Twitter policy said that publications “may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
Seth Dillon added that the Babylon Bee will not delete the headline to appease Twitter.
“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,” he said.
In 2019, the Babylon Bee recruited legal representation after the fact-checking site Snopes published an allegedly defamatory piece accusing the outlet of using satire as a “ruse” to deliberately mislead its readers — a charge that Snopes never once leveled against the openly satirical site the Onion.
Seth Dillon explained to conservative film critic Christian Toto how Facebook threatened to demonetize the site’s page if it did not censor one of its articles poking fun at Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI). After battling with Facebook back and forth, the article was eventually allowed to stay, and the social media giant dismissed the incident as a “mistake.”
Rachel Levine testifies at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee February 25, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Photo by Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images)
“It’s always a mistake,” Dillon said. “They’re reaching, stretching to make us in violation of their community standards.”
In 2021, Twitter also locked the account of Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) for the crime of “misgendering” Rachel Levine.
“The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man,” Banks tweeted at the time.
Twitter also locked the accounts of two Canadian journalists for allegedly misgendering transgender activist Jessica Yaniv.
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