What it Means to Lose Everything

Graham Linehan is what courage looks like.

The last ten years have been a test. Who dared to stand up and speak out, and who did not. Who went along with cancel culture and who did not. Who shunned their friends, family, spouses, and colleagues for voting for Trump, and who did not. Who had the courage to lose everything, and who did not.

Those who have risked it all to be brave in the face of mass hysteria, pitchfork mobs, and puritanical zealots are my heroes. One of them is Graham Linehan, who was just arrested on Tuesday for tweets.

His tweets were deemed dangerous and “offensive” because he spoke his mind and told the truth. That is what has become of a UK that does not have a First Amendment written into its Constitution, and if there is a day to be proud of who we are as Americans and what so many fought and died for, this is it.

Graham Linehan has lost everything to speak up for kids in harm’s way because of a fast-moving contagion that has become a dangerous cult. Those of us who can see this clearly and plainly could not stay silent. Here is Linehan explaining why he has reached this moment in his life, with even his marriage ending because of it:

“They’re hurting kids.” Yes, they are. But it’s even worse than that. At least with physical abuse, you know you’re being hurt. This is done behind smiles and gentle language, people who call it “healthcare” and give parents the right to destroy their children’s bodies without their consent.

Children can’t consent to marrying adults — they certainly can’t consent to permanent changes on their bodies because a manipulative algorithm on TikTok or some other social media site found its way into their nervous system, and now they see this as life or death.

Andrew Doyle wrote a piece about Linehan for Unherd:

But you might struggle to make the same case for Graham Linehan, the comedy writer most famous for Father Ted. Yet there he was, apprehended by five armed police officers after landing at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday, as though he were a gangster of the most feral kind. His crime? Posting a handful of tweets that caused some offence.

As for those tweets: on 19 April, he posted an image of a transactivist protest in London along with the caption “a photo you can smell”. When challenged by a user for the “unnecessary comment”, he replied: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. Fuck em.” The third was posted on 20 April, and in it Graham wrote: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

And:

For Graham, this is only the latest act in an ongoing circus of persecution: one with multiple ringmasters. He was first contacted by the police back in October 2018, when he was given a verbal warning for “deadnaming” and “misgendering” trans activist Stephanie Hayden. A later police visit was prompted by a complaint about Graham’s tweets by Adrian Harrop, a doctor whose license to practise medicine was temporarily suspended for “insulting” online conduct. “This was the visit that really shocked my wife and frightened her”, Graham told me. “It’s one of the main reasons we broke up”.

There has, over the years, been a concerted effort by trans activists to weaponise the police against their victims, aided by the ideological capture of law enforcement. Consider the different standards at play here. It is now commonplace for trans activists to threaten violence and rape against their adversaries, and yet police rarely investigate. After two SNP politicians were photographed at a trans rally in Glasgow in front of “decapitate TERFS” placard, complete with guillotine, no arrests were made. Compare this with the routine hounding of feminists by police simply for expressing their gender-critical views. Perhaps the police might wish to refresh their memory about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on sex in the Equality Act, and its implications for the rights of women and gay people.

Matt Taibbi has written a beautiful piece tying many of these ideas together as only he can:

The symbolism of the Annunciation shooting was powerful. A violent apostate to one faith attacked a roomful of children belonging to another, more ancient church whose adherents don’t hide their religion. As an old-school liberal I’m unaccustomed to thinking in terms of good and evil, but this year-zero utopian fantasy that proselytizes to children under the guise of “science” has earned the latter label. Worse, it gained its foothold by twisting and exploiting good ideas.

And:

After Westman went on his rampage, it became clear his was a test case for media. Once the New York Times confirmed the 23-year-old had his name changed at age 17, with a court document noting he “identified as female and wants her name to reflect that,” it was known the Minnesota shooter was an anatomical male, a woman in verbal declaration only. The press at that point was no more obligated to call Westman a woman than it would be to use the term for Michael Caine’s wig-wearing “Dr. Robert Elliott” character in Dressed to Kill. Westman himself decried the “charade” of trans identity, saying his long hair was his “last shred of being trans,” making the case for respecting the dead assassin’s six-year-old wishes even more obscure. Even Walz, who a week before boasted his state is a place where “our children are valued and lifted up,” avoided gender-specific language after the tragedy.

Once they’ve decided the false reality we all must accept, the logical next step is arresting those who commit thought crimes. You might have to lose everything — your wife, your job, your friends, your family, but no one ever said being brave and having courage was easy.

The reason I “lost everything” was that I couldn’t do the other thing. I never knew this about myself until the last ten years. I never knew that I couldn’t stay silent or hide or go along to get along. Every day I am reminded of this. I feel the chill. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, terrified and alone.

But as the brave Linehan says over and over again in that video above, “They’re hurting kids. They’re hurting kids. They’re hurting kids.” I would throw myself in front of a moving train to protect kids. Social shunning, a loss of income, and too many dark nights of the soul are nothing compared to that.

Besides, I feel blessed to have many supporters here and elsewhere who are part of a growing counterculture, a movement of free speech warriors and protectors of children. That has to count for something.

Linehan has a YouTube. You can subscribe to it by clicking here.

He has a Substack. You can subscribe to it.

The most disturbing thing about the gender cult is that they dangle suicide. They put the idea in the heads of kids who then become obsessed with the false notion that if they can’t change their sex, they will kill themselves. They then use that threat to convince parents to go along with it. “Would you rather have a trans kid or a dead kid?”

This is why “trans” people should be profiled as potential mass shooters, not because transgender people are violent, but because the one thing mass shooters have in common is suicidal ideation. If suicide is the period at the end of that sentence, too, surely there must be a reason.

We should be watchful for any group that uses suicide as a threat or a bribe. We should worry about social contagions, whether they are about hurting kids or shooting kids. We should know better. Those of us on the Left should have stopped it long ago.

The Democratic Party owns this. Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama — every single one. Every single one. It should be hung around their necks like a dead cat for the next 20 years at least. I, for one, am happy to have lost everything to have voted against them.