Global Christian ministry Focus on the Family remains locked out of its Twitter account after the organization tweeted a link to an article by writer Zachary Mettler on its affiliated-platform, the Daily Citizen. The tweet recited basic biology, and Twitter was not happy. In today’s censorious bully culture, speaking truth will land you in the digital gulag. “On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he had chosen Dr. Rachel Levine to serve as Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of HHS. Dr. Levine is a transgender woman, that is, a man who believes he is a woman,” the Daily Citizen account tweeted. The article by Mettler discusses the controversy concerning the calls in Pennsylvania for Levine’s resignation following her relocating her mother from a nursing home while moving COVID-19 infected patients into facilities about the same time. Twitter contacted the Daily Citizen and notified the media outlet that it had suspended the organization’s account for “violating [its] rules against hateful conduct,” and “promoted violence, threatened, or harassed” Levine. The publication was told it had to delete the tweet if it wanted to be reinstated. After the Daily Citizen appealed its suspension and was denied, it reached back out to Twitter for clarity. Twitter then deleted the tweet. In emails, obtained by The Federalist, the Daily Citizen contacted Twitter on separate occasions to try to resolve the matter and get back into its account. The tech giant has yet to respond. Paul Batura, vice president of communications at Focus on the Family, reached back out after being “stonewalled” for several weeks by Twitter, with the Daily Citizen’s account in limbo. This is not the first time Focus on the Family has been censored by the tyrannical powers that be. During the Georgia Senate run-offs, the Daily Citizen posted an interview with former MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on YouTube, which the tech giant subsequently took down. “We’re a non-partisan organization,” Batura said. “We just want to report on facts and let people make up their minds. And yet [censorship] is happening across the board. I know we are not the only organization that they’re pulling content down from.” Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center think tank, had his book “When Harry Became Sally” removed from Amazon over the weekend because of its rejection of the modern left’s anti-scientific transgender theory. The former senior research fellow in American principles and public policy at the Heritage Foundation has yet to receive a formal response from Amazon. “Make no mistake,” Anderson told The Federalist, “both Big Government and Big Tech can undermine human dignity and liberty, human flourishing and the common good. I discovered the book had vanished from Amazon — including Kindle and Audible and used booksellers — when someone looking to buy it alerted me. No one from Amazon notified me or my publisher. My publisher has reached out, but still no response.” Hate speech is a dangerous game instituted by Big Tech and other corporations but has emerged as the perverse norm in 2021. After the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, thousands of conservative accounts were purged from all Big Tech platforms without due reason. On Jan. 8, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a leaked call by Project Veritas that his company would be ramping up censorship. “We know we are focused on one account right now,” referring to the banning of then-President Donald Trump, “but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, the next few weeks, going on beyond inauguration,” Dorsey said. “We have to expect that. We have to be ready for that.” “For Twitter, it’s hateful conduct now to correctly state that a transgender woman, who biologically is a man, is a man,” Mettler, the author of the Daily Citizen article told The Federalist. “If you state biological truth on Twitter, that’s enough for them to censor you. Twitter is at war with biology here.” Family Policy Alliance, a Christian lobbying group that works hand-in-hand with Focus on the Family, announced a “#AreWeNext” petition campaign subsequent to the suspension of the Daily Citizen’s Twitter profile. As of Monday, the Family Policy Alliance petition has about 30,000 signatures and has been endorsed by several prominent conservative organizations, as well as dozens of members of Congress. “As you know, Family Policy Alliance was born from Focus on the Family, and we remain their close ally and public policy partner. We could not sit by when Twitter’s censorship machine decided that Focus would be their next victim,” the organization said in a statement. “It’s important that Twitter hears from us — they’ve crossed a line. If they want to censor the spread of pornography and child trafficking, we will stand with them. If they want to censor biological fact, free speech, and the open debate of ideas, we won’t.” “The curious thing is that we’ve been trying to receive clarification from Twitter and even some direction on how they’d want us to communicate on this issue and have been met with silence,” Focus on the Family said. Undoubtedly, silence is what Twitter and all the rest want. It’s what they crave. Big Tech is leveraging its unprecedented power to muzzle conservative voices. Twitter did not immediately respond to a media request from The Federalist.
Gabe Kaminsky is an intern at The Federalist, and a student at the University of Pittsburgh. His work has appeared in The Daily Wire, Townhall.com, The Washington Times, The American Conservative, RealClearPolitics, The Washington Examiner, and other outlets. He is a participant in the Academy program at The Heritage Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @Gabe__Kaminsky
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