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TikTok Bans Catholic Nonprofit after Videos Flagged for ‘Hateful Behavior’

An illustration of the TikTok app (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

Months ago TikTok flagged CatholicVote videos publicizing gender ideology books and drag shows for children.

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TikTok has banned a Catholic advocacy non-profit for “hateful behavior” after it posted videos calling attention to sexualized LGBT-themed children’s books and drag shows intended for kids.

While the platform has flagged the organization’s content in the past, today it was formally locked out from its account, Joshua Mercer, communications director for CatholicVote.org, told National Review.

In June, TikTok flagged a video of Catholic Vote marketing intern Ethan Potter reading out loud the book “Rick”, about a fifth grader who attends an after school called “Spectrum,” where he learns to question his sexual identity. The book has been found in many public children’s and K-12 school libraries. In the story, Rick has a lesbian teacher who is pregnant, a gay teacher, and a grandfather who is described as a cross dresser.

The video was published as part of a Catholic Vote campaign called “Hide the Pride,” which encourages concerned parents to check out all the “Pride Month” books from the children’s section of their local libraries, isolate the books from children’s reach, and write a letter to the library board condemning their display. “Return your library books on time,” the instructions add.

“Inappropriate books like ‘Rick’ are targeting young children. This is exactly what we are trying to expose with Hide the Pride. Visit catholicvote.org/hide-the-pride-instructions to join us,” the organization wrote in its Instagram caption alongside the video.

TikTok also flagged a June video showing a “family-friendly” drag show in Dallas in which children danced with the performers, some of whom were wearing thongs and flashing cleavage. “It started with drag queen story hour, now its children’s books about sex and 10 year-olds throwing cash at grown men,” CatholicVote said in its Instagram caption.

“I don’t believe I should be seeing signs advertising for children to be dancing on stage with men in thongs and in inappropriate clothing and makeup,” a local resident told CatholicVote in an interview that was featured in the video.

After both videos were scrubbed from TikTok on the grounds that they constituted “hateful behavior,” CatholicVote appealed the decision.

“We do not tolerate content that attacks or incites violence against an individual or a group of individuals on the basis of protected attributes,” the company sent in a message to CatholicVote. “We do not allow content that includes hate speech, and we remove it from our platform. We also suspend or ban accounts that have multiple hate speech violations.”

Mercer said TikTok didn’t clarify what exactly prompted it to ban CatholicVote’s account on Monday, months after the initial alleged infractions.

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