XX-XY Athletics goes to Washington

I spoke at the 3rd annual Moms For Liberty conference in DC. The stories of moms ex-communicated from their families were heartbreaking.

I spent the weekend in Washington D.C. at the Moms For Liberty (M4L) conference. Yes, the Moms for Liberty that Southern Poverty Law Center calls anti-government, anti-student, extremist, alt-right, a “so-called” parents’ rights organization, blah blah.

It’s all so dumb.

As I’ve written about here before, I first met Tiffany Justice, one of the M4L founders, in March 2021. We didn’t “meet” actually. We talked on the phone, in the morning, a novelty during Zoom happy hours and other stupidity people pretended was just the same as “in person.”

We were both outspoken advocates for open schools during covid and for letting kids have their lives back. We both saw the harms being done not just from closed public schools, but from prolonged restrictions placed on children — masking and closed playgrounds and shuttered sports programs, and on and on. And we weren’t quiet about it.

We only just met in person for the first time a few weeks ago at an event in Chicago, and now, for the second time in DC.

Tiffany and her co-founder Tina are not alt-right, or terrorists or extremists or white supremacists or fascists. They are moms who have built a powerful and influential organization in a very short period of time. How? Because there are moms across the country who were pissed off during covid that their kids couldn’t go to school. They saw their children suffering. And they needed a way to focus their outrage and advocacy. Moms For Liberty provided guidance and organizational support. It isn’t complicated or nefarious.

And to those who disagree with the “Moms,” you disagree. That doesn’t make them “extremists.”

Yes, the members are mostly religious. Mostly Christian. And I am not.

I met some former Democrats, now Independents, like myself. And I met quite a few women who, up until 2020, didn’t get involved in politics at all. I met a few Jewish women. I might have been the only Atheist, though I didn’t take a poll.

I don’t care if I was the only anything. These women care about children, they believe (correctly) that parents have the right to raise their own children — rather than the government deciding how our children are raised — and they aren’t afraid of being cancelled or called career destroying names. They stand up and they fight for kids.

These are my people.

It was a heartbreaking and uplifting weekend, all at the same time. I spoke at length with dozens of women and every one had a story of loss. Every one had either family members or friends who have written them off because of their views; usually that estrangement started during covid. Some had lost jobs because of their advocacy. Most who I spoke with remain estranged from people they’d considered life long friends. Or from parents, or siblings.

It’s awful.

These women were right about closed schools during covid. It’s even the consensus now. It’s in The New York Times FFS.

And yet, these women lost jobs. And their family members still don’t speak to them.

It shouldn’t matter if they were right or not (and they were right). What kind of deranged people cut off a lifelong friend or close family member for saying hey maybe public school kids should get to go to school just like the well-off private school kids? Or, for saying I want school curriculum to focus on the basics — literacy, math, history — not social emotional learning and gay pride. But that is exactly what happened. To them and to me.

I’m not the first to say it, but this kind of behavior of cutting off family members for having different beliefs is cult-like. It’s exactly the practice in Scientology they call “disconnection,” whereby a member must cut off all ties to family members and friends who are viewed as “antagonistic” towards Scientology. While the Left does not explicitly state that you must cut people off, it is what they strongly suggest is honorable and even required, to be in good Leftie standing. Anyone with views that can be construed as “right-leaning” is vilified as “deplorable” by Democratic leaders and talking heads on MSNBC and CNN. Any person who is perceived to have any view that might align with Trump, is so evil that they must be banished, according to the Left.

And because these moms in M4L state proudly that they will not “co-parent with the government,” and they didn’t want their kids forever masking, they are evil Trumpers and must be ex-communicated.

In exactly zero of these instances did the moms I spoke with initiate the feud or the broyges. (Sorry I’m going to use Yiddish here because I can’t quite come up with a better word . . . broyges it is an unbridgeable divide, an unreconcilable anger, often in families.)

The women’s stories broke my heart. And, matched my own in many ways. My brother and I haven’t spoken in 4 years. He believes I disrespected doctors — his wife being one — and murdered people in the process of saying schools should open and masks don’t work and then taking a vacation to Florida in the fall of 2020.

1. Who says I’m not allowed to question doctors? The doctors that brought us the opioid crisis, Phen Phen, Thalidomide, recovered memory, Tuskegee, lobotomies, silicone implants and medicalization of young people at record levels which does not seem to be helping AT ALL? Yeah, I’m gonna question those doctors.

2. Criticizing policy driven by the medical establishment is not criticizing an individual doctor. Unless the individual influenced or set that policy. So yeah, I’m gonna criticize Dr. Fauci. And Dr. Birx. And Dr. Rochelle Walensky. And any public health official who used their soap box to keep schools closed and harm children.

3. I’m a business person. You can criticize business leaders as greedy, crooked and unethical all you want. I don’t take that personally. I know I’m not those things. I am not Sam Bankman Fried. Or Adam Neumann. Or Elizabeth Holmes.

I don’t think if you gathered a room full of actual criminals you would have as many stories about divided families. I’m being totally serious. I think if you had a room full of people who had been convicted of crimes — violence, drugs, white collar financial theft — you wouldn’t have as many people who were cut off from family. Those actual crimes are forgivable.

Somehow though, in the world today, if you adopt a position that can be billed as “right wing” or conservative or Republican, which includes believing in free speech and the basic founding principles of this country iterated in the Constitution, you are an alt-right fascist that deserves to be cut off from society.

You’re worse than a murderer or money launderer or drunk driver or drug addict. Those people deserve forgiveness. But not you. Those people deserve restorative justice. But not you.

It’s been said time and time again, I’m not laying out any sort of original thought here, but it still blows my mind.

It’s psychotic. And this is why the Left in its current iteration is irredeemable. They believe that by any means necessary they will coerce fealty or cast you out. Take RFK, Jr . . . he was kept off various state ballots because the Democrats were afraid it would hurt Biden; now in the states that he was able to secure a spot on the ballot, the Democrats are fighting to keep him ON the ballot because they believe it will help Harris. This is cheating. They are treacherous and deeply unprincipled. The party is corrupt. And the individuals driving these actions are wicked.

Democratic Party leaders do not believe in democracy, even though they claim to be fighting to save it. And it isn’t new. They shoved Bernie aside. They anointed Biden. Then shoved him aside when he was no longer useful. Now they’ve anointed the least liked VP in history as the President and they coopted press and crowned her the Brat queen. It’s disgusting. Truly.

I can’t believe members of my own family fall for it. But here we are.

Call me what you will. I don’t care. I am immune to it. We are immune to it.

These Democratic Party loyal-beyond-reason apparatchiks smeared us, destroyed our professional reputations and decided we were too horrible to have Thanksgiving with. And we’re still here. And we’re still standing up for children and free speech.

And we’re very open to accepting apologies.

But until then — and I’m not holding my breath — we’ll draw strength and comfort from new friends. And we’ll continue the fight.

Here’s part of my speech from M4L: