Twitter suspended the parental-rights organization Moms for Liberty on Monday for posting a tweet that accused backers of a California “gender-affirming healthcare” bill of endangering children by facilitating out-of-state tourism for youth gender-transition treatments.
The tweet, which is no longer visible on the site, read: “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”
The social media platform locked the Moms for Liberty account in response, claiming that the comment violated its rule against hateful conduct, which forbids the promotion of violence on the basis of gender and gender identity. Suspended accounts cannot engage with followers via tweets, retweets, follows, or likes.
Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of the national group, told National Review that she appealed the decision with the company, asking for clarification on what part of the tweet was flagged and for what reason.
“My options now are to delete the tweet or appeal it. I’m not deleting the tweet. This is just madness and our children are paying the price,” she said.
Prior to posting that tweet, Justice had retweeted a post from Florida Department of Health press secretary Jeremy Redfern, who claimed the California legislation would “remove parental rights in all 50 states” by helping children travel to the state to obtain sex-change surgeries and hormone therapy.
“For those that didn’t know, @Scott_Wiener proposed a law in California that removes parental rights in all 50 states. California will take your kid, put them into their foster system, and allow them to receive a double mastectomy,” Redfern wrote.
The bill would prohibit California law-enforcement agencies from arresting an individual pursuant to an out-of-state arrest warrant based on another state’s law against providing or allowing a child to receive so-called gender-affirming health care. It would also outlaw the extradition of an individual charged with violating another state’s law prohibiting the facilitation of “gender-affirming health care” for children.
Notably, the bill would also “authorize a court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.”
Justice said her organization has been through the de-platforming experience before with Facebook. In January, the tech giant flagged 22 Moms for Liberty chapter accounts for “community violation,” barring them from “posting basic information about local government operations such as school board meeting times, or questions about student textbooks,” the group claimed in a press release.
After Moms for Liberty wrote an open letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging “fair and equal treatment,” however, “Facebook listened and worked with us to reopen our account,” Justice said.
“We’re trying to embrace social media. We’re getting important information out all across the country,” she added.
Justice says she speaks for a diverse coalition of 100,000 parents nationwide who are united against the proliferation of radical gender ideology in schools.
“These are crimes against children,” she said. “If my kids desperately wanted to be thin, would I starve them? If my kids wanted to have small feet, would I bind them? If my child wants to be the opposite sex, should I mutilate them?”
Last year the Tennessee chapter of Moms for Liberty received backlash for lobbying against the inclusion of several books about the civil rights movement in the school district’s language arts curriculum. Those books included the well known “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington,” and “Ruby Bridges Goes to School,” an autobiography of the first Black child integrated into a New Orleans school.