Five armed British police officers arrested an Irish comedian Monday for “inciting violence” against “trans people” — through pro-women tweets he made months ago.
Graham Linehan “refuses to believe men can become women.” His staunch, often satirical, defense of biological reality makes him a frequent target of “trans” activists. The once successful screenwriter moved the U.S. last year after the British entertainment industry reportedly blacklisted him as a “transphobe.”
British police nabbed Linehan at the Heathrow Airport Monday under “suspicion of inciting violence on X.” He spent time in a holding cell at Heathrow Police Station before an officer interviewed him about these three X posts:
The posts, which the comedian made in April, express negative opinions about “trans” activists with his characteristic comedic flair. Only one even remotely references violence.
Police treated them like a crime.
“[The officer] asked about each of the posts in turn, with the sort of earnest intensity usually reserved for discussing something serious like … oh, I don’t know — crime?” Linehan wrote in a scathing account of his experience.
When the officer zeroed in on his tweet about punching men who enter women’s spaces, Linehan said it was “a serious point made with a joke.”
“Men who enter women’s spaces are abusers, and they need to be challenged every time,” he maintained.
Linehan’s tweet would be protected under America’s First Amendment. Per the U.S. Supreme Court, “The public expression of ideas may not be prohibited because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.” (Street v. New York, 1969).
But Britain’s Human Rights Act affords British citizens much flimsier protections. People can not only be prosecuted for inciting violence, but for uttering “hate speech” implicating a person’s “race, gender, sexuality and religion.”
What constitutes “hate speech,” you ask? Nobody knows.
Worse, the officer who interviewed Linehan for “inciting violence” apparently subscribes to radical gender ideology.
Per Linehan:
“Assigned at birth?” I responded. “Our sex isn’t assigned.” He called it semantics. I told him he was using activist language.
There’s nothing semantic about conceding people can be born in the wrong bodies. That single statement implies sex can not only be changed but is ultimately meaningless — two claims that defy natural law.
Ironically, the U.K is actively divorcing itself from such sentiments. In April, just days before Linehan posted the tweets that got him arrested, the U.K.’s Supreme Court defined “woman” as an adult female. The head of the U.K.’s Equality and Human Rights Commission subsequently announced men would no longer be allowed in women’s bathrooms, hospital wards and sports teams.
The decision should vindicate and embolden people, like Lineham, who speak biological truth and champion women. Instead, we’re left marveling at the U.K.’s failure to protect free speech.
Vice President J.D. Vance cautioned Europe against this exact scenario in a powerful speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.
“The threat I worry about most, vis a vis Europe, is not Russia or China or an external actor,” the vice president emphasized. “It’s the threat from within — the retreat of Europe from its fundamental values.”
He specifically exhorted Europe not to abandon free speech in favor of censorship — particularly on social media.
But here we are.
The vice president correctly recognizes Europe as a bellwether for America and the West. Though America’s free speech protections are more robust, our country is far from immune to government censorship and anti-speech laws.
Free speech protections are crucial, not only to a free society, but a flourishing Christian community. Anti-speech laws — like those preventing prayer, even silent prayer, outside abortion clinics — often target believers sharing Jesus Christ’s love, grace and truth with the world.
It is incumbent upon citizens and believers, then, to uncover and oppose violations of free speech, domestic and abroad.
President Ronald Reagan said it best in his first inaugural address:
Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.
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