A preacher at St. Andrew's Presbyterian church in Austin, Texas referred to Daily Wire host Michael Knowles' comments on transgenderism during his Saturday speech at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) as "blasphemy."
Knowles' speech discussed the nature of transgender ideology being at odds with reality and human nature.
"If you want to see pulsating evil, hatred, judgement ... an assault on the gospel message of Jesus Christ, listen to the Christians at CPAC who would not have anything to say if they did not have scapegoats," said Reverend Jim Bigby of Knowles' speech.
"There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism," Knowles said during his speech. "Trangenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level."
"Your LGBTQ neighbors are not an ideology. They're not ideas. They're not an opinion," Bigby continued. "And it's a lie to say that Christians have a right to oppress other people, and then that's just the opinion."
"Laws are not opinions. Oppression is not an opinion," Bigby said. "No one has a right to oppress another human being, and to do so in the name of Christ simply adds blasphemy to the oppression."
Several outlets improperly cited Knowles' speech, suggesting the Daily Wire host was calling for the "eradication" of the transgender community.
"Michael Knowles Says Transgender Community Must Be ‘Eradicated’ At CPAC," read one Daily Beast headline which has since been edited to more accurately represent Knowles' comments.
“I never said that and demand a retraction,” Knowles said, tagging The Daily Beast.
Knowles responded to the outlet's edited headline saying, "I’m pleased to see that [the Daily Beast's] lawyers scrambled to make them stealth-edit their defamatory headline about me. Unfortunately, this tweak does not constitute a retraction of the article, which remains libelous."
"The problem with transgenderism is that it puts forward a delusional vision of human nature that denies the reality and importance of sexual difference and complementarity," Knowles said Saturday. "The problem with transgenderism is that its acceptance at any level necessarily entails the complete destruction of women’s bathrooms, women’s sports, all of the specific rights and spaces that women currently have for themselves."
He continued:If transgenderism is true — if men really can become women and women really can become men — then it is true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false, as it is — if men and women really are different, as we are — then it is false for everybody too. And if it is false, then we should not indulge it, especially since that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of so many people.
"Nobody’s calling to exterminate anybody because the other problem with that statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category," Knowles said. "It’s not a legitimate category of being."
