Twitter has temporarily locked the account of satirical news website The Babylon Bee due to a tweet that the social media site viewed as violating its policies. The post in question was a link to an article by The Bee that awarded transgender U.S. assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine the title “Man of the Year.”
The Babylon Bee story was a response to USA Today naming the administration official as one of its “Women of the Year” a few days ago.
“Levine is the U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he serves proudly as the first man in that position to dress like a western cultural stereotype of a woman. He is also an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. What a boss!” read the article linked in the tweet.
CEO of The Bee Seth Dillon took to Twitter to explain to his followers why the news company’s account had been suspended and share his reaction to the decision.
He posted screenshots of Twitter’s notification that The Babylon Bee’s account had been locked, which instructed the satirical news outlet to take down the Levine tweet in order to regain access to its platform of 1.3 million followers.
The outspoken CEO refused to delete the tweet.
“We’re not deleting anything,” tweeted Dillion from his personal account. “Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”
The notification informing The Bee that it had violated the “Twitter Rules” categorized the tweet as “hateful conduct.”
As a result, the account would no longer be permitted to tweet or retweet for a duration of 12 hours, but the countdown would not start until the offending post had been deleted.
Dillon wrote that, in lieu of seeing The Bee’s content on Twitter, anyone interested in reading the satirical outlet’s stories can subscribe to its newsletter or become a premium subscriber to its site.
This is not the first time Twitter has taken action against someone over Levine’s gender. When Levine publicly came out as a transgender official in the Senate, Rep. Jim Banks’ Twitter account was suspended for referring to Levine as a man.
Twitter’s notification for violating its rules against hateful conduct states users “may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”