The widely popular Christian satire news site The Babylon Bee was told on Sunday, March 20, 2022, that their Twitter account has been locked because it violated the social media giant’s rules against “hateful conduct.”
The Babylon Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon posted the news on his personal Twitter page with a screengrab of Twitter’s allegations, saying, “I just received this notice that we’ve been locked out of our account for ‘hateful conduct.’”
The humor site posted an image last Wednesday, March 16, 2022 of U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Rachel Levine with the title “The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year Is Rachel Levine,” with a link back to their article, which has since been removed. The tweet has received over 13,500 likes and almost 2,500 retweets.
The Babylon Bee’s post was made a few days after USA Today’s announcement that Levine was named one of their “Women of the Year.”
Levine is an American pediatrician who was born in 1957 and later transitioned from a man to a woman in 2011. Levine was nominated by President Joe Biden as the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health in 2021 and was officially appointed the role after being confirmed by a Senate vote on March 24, 2021—making Levine the first openly transgender person to receive the Senate’s confirmation to an office.
The article, which is intended as satire, calls Levine a “boss” while repeatedly referring to Levine as a man and uses the pronoun “he” multiple times. The article even calls Levine a “dude.”
The article also called out Levine’s pre-transition name, an act referred to as “deadnaming” in the trans community, going to to say, “Who cares? Who says a dude as accomplished as this can’t be named ‘Rachel?’ This king doesn’t care what people think about him! He often wears a dress, which some people think is weird—but he doesn’t care one bit. Come on! Men in India wear dress-type garments, don’t they?”
The Babylon Bee said Levine is “breaking barriers” and showing us all what the meaning of true “courage” is.
“We applaud this precious and perfectly made child of God for all his accomplishments and hope he stays true to who God made him to be,” the article said.
At the conclusion of their article, The Babylon Bee wrote, “UPDATE: Since announcing this award, we’ve been told that Levine actually identifies as a woman. We have still chosen to give the award as his self-identification has no bearing on the truth. Congratulations, Rachel Levine!”
In a Twitter thread, Dillon shared with his audience that The Babylon Bee was told by Twitter that their account would be restored in twelve hours, but they first had to delete their “The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year Is Rachel Levine” tweet.