Twitter locked out the owners of the Babylon Bee account over a tweet mocking U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, who is a transgender woman.
The satirical website’s CEO, Seth Dillon, expressed outrage at the action on Sunday and said the Babylon Bee will not delete the tweet, which linked to an article titled “The Babylon Bee’s Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine.”
“We’re not deleting anything,” Dillon said. “Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”
While the Babylon Bee’s account is still visible, it cannot post until the relevant tweet is deleted, Dillon said. After deleting the tweet, the account would then be restored within 12 hours.
“We at [the Babylon Bee] stated the fact that a man is a man, through satire, and got locked out of this platform for it,” the website’s editor-in-chief Kyle Mann tweeted. “We are living in a clown world.”
This is not the first time Twitter has suspended a conservative account over its treatment of Levine. Twitter locked PJ Media’s account in November after it tweeted an op-ed titled “Rachel Levine is not the ‘First Female Four-star Admiral’ Because He’s a Male” and requested that the conservative website delete the offending tweet. While PJ Media editor Paula Bolyard said she would not delete the tweet, the account was eventually unlocked and is active today.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton drew controversy on Thursday when he called Levine “a man” while sharing a link to an article by USA Today declaring the assistant secretary one of its “women of the year.” Twitter flagged the tweet and made it optional for people to view due to Paxton’s role as a government official.
The Babylon Bee has faced several controversies over its promotion of conservative ideas through satire, such as articles about transgender people including Levine and NCAA swimmer Lia Thomas.
The Babylon Bee’s Twitter account was briefly suspended in August 2020 after being mistaken as “spam.” Facebook also threatened to limit the Babylon Bee’s distribution after Snopes declared an article it published about CNN as “false.” Facebook later declared the decision a mistake.
