Michael Knowles addressed CPAC late last week and made comments that have been twisted by the radical LGBTQ movement. Knowles took aim at the radical transgender movement crossing the country and sweeping the schools.
Mainstream is media is attempting to say that Knowles called for “eradicating” transgender people. The truth, though, is that isn’t what he said at all. Instead, he simply said that transgenderism must be eradicated — especially for what he called the “poor people” caught up in the lie.
Here is what he actually said:
“The problem with transgenderism is not that it’s inappropriate for children under the age of nine, the problem with transgenderism is that it isn’t true,” he said. “The problem with transgenderism is that it puts forward a delusional vision of human nature that denies the reality and the importance of sexual difference and complementary. The problem with transgenderism is that its acceptance, at any level, necessarily entails the complete destruction of women’s bathrooms, women’s sports and all of the specific rights and spaces that women currently enjoy.
“There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false, as it is, if men really can’t become women, as they cannot, then it’s false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it. Especially since that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of so many people. If it is false, then for the good of society and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely. The whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”
There cannot be a compromise on the issue, he added, despite the fact that conservatives sometimes lack imagination and suffer from low expectations.
“We think that the thing we can most hope for is that we halt the Left exactly where it is, preserve the status quo and hope we don’t lose any more ground,” he said. “It sometimes feels as if all conservatives do is defend the policies that the liberals fought for 10 years ago.”
“On one side liberals argue third-graders should be taught to change their sex in schools,” he said. “On the other side of the debate, you’ve got the conservatives who say that we should wait until fourth grade. Doesn’t seem like much of a difference to me.”
While rights are important, Knowles noted so too are duties.
“And men have a duty to act like men,” he said. “It’s not complicated.”
Transgenderism didn’t exist until eight years ago, he said, noting that Barack Obama and other liberals in North Carolina introduced it through military policy and bathroom ordinances.
“Eight years ago the notion that a man of any age had some sort of right to strap on stilettos and read a book to your kids, that would’ve been met with nothing but laughter and scorn by everybody in the country,” he said. “And then a handful of devoted, radical, left-wing activists pushed relentlessly to normalize this crazy notion and the craziest part is the conservatives now want to meet them halfway. But there is no meeting halfway between truth and falsehood, between reality and delusion. There’s no neutrality. We are either gaining ground or we are losing ground. Meeting the liberals halfway will always take us all the way down their road to perdition in the long run — always.”
Over the last 50 years, Knowles said the liberals introduce a “crazy idea” that conservatives briefly oppose. The liberals then stand firm, and the conservatives cave. But then the liberals throw out their next crazy idea, and conservatives promise not to accept that one. It started in the 1970s with “bra-burning” feminists who said they didn’t need men any more than a fish needed a bicycle.
“Then what happened,” he asked. “(Conservatives) caved.”
Conservatives caved and said feminism was fine, but all the sexual revolution stuff was crazy. Then conservatives caved on the sexual revolution stuff, but promised to fight against the redefinition of marriage. Then redefining marriage was OK, but the transgender stuff was crazy. Now transgender stuff is fine, just so long as they’re not “transing the kids.”
Now some conservatives are saying it’s OK to trans the kids as long as we don’t trans the really little kids.
“That’s how it goes,” he said.
Conservatives accepted the liberal premise in the 70s that men and women are interchangeable. And in that moment, “all was lost.”
“Transgenderism flows naturally from that premise,” he said. “Conservatives became progressives driving the speed limit. They offered votes not a choice, but an echo.”
Ironically, Knowles said there is one issue where conservatives haven’t caved — life.
“You want to hear a crazy coincidence — it’s the only issue on which we’ve won,” he said. “It’s the issue on which we’ve stood firm. We didn’t meet anybody halfway. We said murder is wrong, we’re not going to give up and now Roe v. Wade is gone — deader than disco.”
The national decline is not inevitable, he said.
“It is only inevitable if we believe that it is,” Knowles added. “If we give up, if we give up and give into popular and destructive fashions as though they could ever supplant simple and eternal truths. Cardinal Manning said there is a day to come which will reverse the confident judgments of men. Those men say we offer simple answers to complex problems. I hope we still do. I hope that we still have the simplicity and the courage to say that men ought to act like men. That criminals ought to go to jail. That marriage, real marriage, the kind between a man and a woman, is the fundamental building block of our society — the basic, unchangeable political unit. That our republic was built for a moral and religious people and so our country founded as a shining city on a hill should always give glory to God and relentlessly pursue what we know in our hearts is morally right — no matter the odds, no matter the consequences, no matter the passing fashions of the day.”
