Babylon Bee Defiant 24 Hours After Twitter Lockdown for Calling Rachel Levine a ‘Man’

Rachel Levine, nominee for Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Servi
Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images
Paul Bois

Christian satire site the Babylon Bee has remained defiant 24 hours after Twitter locked its account for calling the transgender HHS assistant secretary Dr. Rachel Levine a “man.”

On Sunday, the Babylon Bee was sentenced to Twitter jail over an article mocking USA Today for recently declaring the biological male Rachel Levine a “woman of the year.”

“The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year is Rachel Levine,” said the headline.

Twitter then locked the satire site’s account for 12 hours on the condition that they delete the tweet, alleging it violates the platform’s “hateful conduct” policy. Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said they will not cave to Twitter’s demands.

“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,” Dillon said. “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.”

Over 24 hours later, the Babylon Bee’s account still remains on lockdown while Babylon Bee has refused to delete the tweet. When asked, Twitter reportedly said, “The account you referenced has been temporarily locked for violating our hateful conduct policy. The account owner is required to delete the violative Tweet before regaining access to their account.”

Seth Dillon noted that Twitter could delete the tweet themselves if they find it so offensive.

“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 on Monday.

Dillon later added that the Babylon Bee’s use of the word “man” instead of “male” offended the Twitter commissars.

“It’s the word ‘man’ that’s problematic, not ‘male,'” he said. “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.”

Seth Dillon later appeared on Tucker Carlson Monday night where he doubled down on the company’s refusal to comply with Twitter’s demand.

Babylon Bee editor-in-chief Kyle Mann later took to the New York Post where he exclaimed that the company will not bow down to Twitter’s censorship.

“It’s control over our minds that Twitter wants,” wrote Mann. “They can’t just delete the offending tweet and let us back in. They want us to go into our account and click the delete button ourselves. We have to bend the knee, kiss the ring, bow to the towering statue of LGBTQ politics when the trumpets play, or we stay on timeout indefinitely.”

“We have to promise to do better, implicitly agree that calling a man a man is hate speech, and then we’ll be allowed the right to speak on Twitter’s platform,” he added. “Well, we’re not going to do that. We’re fighting back. We’ll do whatever we have to do to retain our integrity here.”

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