Ep. 1498 - Matt Walsh Speaks In Front Of The Supreme Court Before Historic Hearing
Matt takes the stage at the Do No Harm Rally in Washington, D.C., as the Supreme Court hears a pivotal case on protecting children from harmful gender transition treatments.
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Ep.1498
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The Supreme Court is going to begin hearing arguments in a case that began here in Tennessee when we passed a law that bans the child gender transition, gender mutilation of children.
And now that case is in the Supreme Court.
I feel...
We'll see what happens, but I feel uncharacteristically optimistic with the makeup of this court and them hearing a case like this, that we could get a very favorable ruling that will then lead eventually, or at least open up the possibility for children to be protected from this form of brutality all across the nation.
So, I'm not here today, actually.
I'm in D.C. I'll be speaking at a rally.
I did speak at a rally, I guess, by the time you watch this.
The Do No Harm Rally, the Do No Harm Organization, is putting on a rally outside the Supreme Court.
And I addressed the crowd at this rally.
And we're going to play that for you right now.
Here it is.
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All right, great.
Thank you, guys.
We are all here on this cold day because we recognize three very basic truths.
First, that biology is real.
It is immutable.
It is not subject to the whims of any individual or government or medical organization.
Men are men.
Women are women.
That's all there is to it.
You cannot change a person's biological identity.
You cannot change their sex, and you should not try.
Second, that the most essential and fundamental duty of any society is to protect their children.
A country that cannot or will not protect its children is a country that deserves to die and will.
Children are innocent and helpless.
They know very little about themselves, very little about the world around them.
They rely on us for clarity and guidance and protection.
They trust us, the adults, implicitly.
So when they're and scared, they look to us to be the ones who light the way and lead them down the right and safe path.
It is our moral obligation to be the source of wisdom and security that they need and that they deserve.
If we will not fulfill that obligation, then we are worse than useless.
These are the truths that bring us to this spot on this day.
That we have a duty to protect our children.
We affirm these truths.
We call the Supreme Court to affirm them, too.
Now, the other side claims that this is a case about rights.
They say that the Tennessee law infringes on the rights of so-called trans kids.
There are few problems with that claim.
They are abuse victims.
Second, the law in Tennessee isn't banning kids from doing anything.
It's banning doctors from causing permanent damage to kids.
This is a ban targeting doctors and parents who are abusive and who are themselves targeting children.
So what the trans activists, what the people over there are actually claiming is not that kids have a right to be castrated, but that doctors have the right to castrate them.
They are fighting for the right of adults That's what all those people over there are fighting for.
Now third, finally, with all that said, I actually agree with the premise, sort of.
This case is about the rights of children.
It's about the right of a child to be protected from the...
That's what it's about.
Children have the constitutional right, the human right, the God-given right to live and grow and learn about themselves and the world without being indoctrinated and exploited by people who reject the fundamental realities of existence.
Children have a right to go through phases, to have moments of in their own bodies, just like every generation of children before them, without that being seized upon as a pretense to do to their bodies.
So to the trans activists over there claiming that this is all about the rights of children, I say again, yes, you're right, it is.
They have a right to be protected from you.
Children have a right to be protected from all of those people over there who want to...
And they will be.
They are going to lose.
They are losing right now.
We are not going to let them...
This case is just the beginning of the fight.
It is not the end.
We are not going to rest until every child is protected.
That's what we're fighting for, and we will not stop until we achieve it.
Thank you.
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I had the opportunity to testify at a House committee hearing to voice my support for legislation banning the castration and mutilation of children in Tennessee.
Now, I've addressed school boards in the past, as you know, but this was my first time in front of any kind of legislative committee.
So it was an interesting learning experience, kind of like my own schoolhouse rock sort of experience.
school board speeches, I've spoken out against policies and measures that the boards were wanting to put into place or had already put into place.
In this case, however, I was speaking in favor of a bill that the majority of the legislature has already expressed support for.
So I didn't need to convince them of what they already believe or urge them to do what they're already going to do, but rather my plan was simply to add my voice of support as a citizen of the state.
Now, you may be understandably concerned based on that description that my appearance in front of this committee must have been rather boring and lacking the kind of fireworks that you might expect and hope for.
Well, allow me to allay those fears because fortunately for you, there were a few Democrats in the room who, though on the losing side of this issue, were still determined to use my appearance as an opportunity to try and score some points with their own base.
So after I delivered my brief remarks and all the other witnesses, there were three others on the anti-mutilation side and four on the pro-mutilation side.
They had their turns also to speak.
And then the lawmakers on the committee had the chance to ask us questions.
And the first question came from a Republican who had a very fair and relevant query about the oft-repeated claim, which we also heard from other witnesses during the testimonies, that medically affirming quote-unquote trans-identified youth is necessary to decrease their suicide rate.
And because this is the thing that got everything kicked off, I want to play this clip for, it's a little bit long, but it's also, it's an important point too.
So here's my answer to his question.
We've heard in the news last week, and even today, that it's pro-life to vote against this bill.
We've heard that suicides are prevalent and suicide has impacted my family, so I'm sensitive when I hear something like that.
I've read some of the stuff that you've done and I was wondering, can you speak to the statistics of mental health and suicidal tendencies For the people who have gone through transition or for people who have not?
In your studies, from what I've read, can you speak to that?
Sure.
Well, the claim that, you know, doing the chemical castration drugs or surgery or hormonal intervention, the claim that this prevents suicide or has positive psychological effects down the line is utterly, totally baseless.
There are no credible long-term studies that bear that out.
And one of the reasons for that is that there couldn't possibly be any credible long-term studies because we've never done this to kids on this scale ever before in history.
So this current, shall we say, crop of children, they are the guinea pigs.
This is all experimental.
We're sort of trying it out on them to see if it works.
Now, they have attempted a few times to do studies, and the interesting thing is that the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, WPATH, which is a radical far-left pro-trans organization, they commissioned a study to try to prove that hormones and puberty blockers decrease suicide rates among trans people.
Trans-identified youth.
And even in their own study, they found that they couldn't prove it.
They couldn't make that link because it's just not possible to do.
The other thing I would mention, too, is that the number of trans-identified youth has skyrocketed in recent years.
We're talking about exponential 10x, 20x growth.
Just huge numbers of...
have increased and what we hear from the pro-trans side is that well this is not a social contagion it's just that you know there's always been this many trans people it's just that they were not in an affirming environment before in history and so they couldn't come out and now for the first time trans people have the ability to live their truth so to speak well if that's the case And there have always been these sort of like millions of trans people.
And if it's also true that if we don't affirm them, that it would cause them to commit suicide, then we should be able to look back in history and find just this unbroken, incredible epidemic of children mysteriously killing themselves because they weren't being affirmed as trans.
And what you find is that that didn't exist.
I mean, the youth suicide rate has increased exponentially alongside trans affirmation.
So trans-affirmation causes the suicide rate, not the other way around.
Last thing I'll note is that the suicide rate among trans-identified people is sky-high.
It remains sky-high.
All the data shows this.
It remains sky-high even after surgery.
And in fact, in the most reliable data that we have, it's years after surgery when suicidality is the highest for trans-identified people.
So you see all that.
I make a number of claims and arguments in that answer, just as I did in my initial remarks, that the Democrats on the panel had the opportunity to refute.
If indeed I was wrong about anything I said and can be refuted, then they had a chance to do it.
do it, but they couldn't refute it.
They had nothing to say, which, as we've learned about Democrats, will certainly not stop them from talking.
So the next question, or what pretended to be a question, came from a greasy little hack named Caleb Hemmer, who rather than discuss the issue at hand, instead decided to try and smear me with that Media Matters hit piece from my time as a shock jock morning host 15 years ago.
What does that have to do with anything?
It What did he think he would accomplish with this?
Well, we'll find out.
I found it interesting.
One of our people testified today that they had their gender affirming surgery at 16. I know you in former comments mentioned this on your blog.
At about 16, you're an adult who's mature and can make decisions.
You're that at 16. I don't care what anybody says.
Even going so far as to say, you know, when you're 16, you should be married and could be pregnant or should be pregnant.
An adult, in your view, why does this bill have the minor defined as 18?
That's a hit piece you took from Media Matters, from something when I was a radio host 13, 14 years ago in my early 20s.
It's also not an accurate reflection of what I actually said.
I was talking about the fact that people tended to marry young historically, and that's all that that was about.
How does that relate to this subject?
Just curious your definition of if you feel like people are adults at 16 should...
People are adults at 18, but actually your brain is not fully developed until you're 25. So we should be having a conversation about whether we should even be doing these surgeries to people at 18. But certainly before 18, it's absurd.
I mean, do you think that a 16-year-old can meaningfully consent to having their body parts removed?
Do you?
No?
We do not...
Yeah, we ask the questions.
It's not...
So, that was one gloriously awkward silence, even more so for those of us in the room.
Actually, you can't see it from that camera angle on the clip exactly, but Caleb sat back away from the microphone when I asked him that question, and he kind of looked off to the side, almost like he was trying to pretend he didn't hear the question.
It was a bizarre scene, but not so bizarre when you consider that I had asked a question that Caleb Hemmer simply could not answer.
He obviously couldn't say no, that 16-year-olds can't consent to having body parts removed, because then he'd be agreeing with me and with the legislation.
He doesn't want to do that.
But he also didn't want to come out and say yes, that 16-year-olds can consent, because that sounds horrific and insane when said out loud.
And it puts him in the position of having to explicitly defend a totally indefensible proposition.
You'll notice that leftists, they often find themselves in this kind of situation.
They hold many views that they cannot say out loud.
Their actual positions on the issues are often so deranged, so inconceivably gross, so morally vacuous and incoherent that you can defeat them in an argument simply by asking them to clearly state their own premise.
Of course, what this means is that leftists themselves, leftists like Caleb Hemmer, they themselves realize how evil their own policies are.
They are deliberately pushing things that they recognize as unspeakably wicked, which is why they will not speak it out loud.
And this puts people like Caleb Hemmer somewhere below mere partisan hacks.
You've got partisan hacks, and then it's below them that you have the Caleb Hemmers of the world.
Because these are people who are consciously evil, which also explains why they would resort to smear tactics against a private citizen at a legislative hearing.
Keep in mind, by the way, that I was not there as an author of the bill, nor was I testifying as some sort of accredited expert.
I didn't stand up there and say, I'm a medical expert and a doctor, and this is what...
In fact, I introduced myself as I'm a citizen of Tennessee, I'm a husband and a father, and this is how I feel about this.
A citizen of Tennessee who supports the bill.
And this is supposed to be a democracy, they tell me, right?
So the point is that even if they could succeed in tearing me down and embarrassing me, which sadly for them they didn't, how would that remotely come close to proving that the legislation is bad?
Now, if you're wondering how Caleb Hemmer will recover from this humiliation, well, he'll do it or he'll try to do it, the most weaselly and dishonest way possible, of course.
So shortly after the hearing, Ben Shapiro posted that full exchange that he just watched, and he posted it to Twitter.
Hemmer responded to the post with a link to a different video, which he urged people to watch instead to see what, quote, really went down.
Now, that video was an edited montage by an obscure left-wing propaganda rag called the Tennessee Holler.
And what they did is they took all the questions that the, and not really questions, but statements that the Democrats on the committee hearing made to me, and they spliced all that together and then cut out most of my responses.
And then anything else that may have been especially embarrassing for the Democrats and pasted all the rest of it together with a bunch of very obvious jump cuts and posted that.
So Hemmer therefore is actually claiming that an edited montage without my responses is a more accurate reflection of what actually transpired than the full unedited clip.
That's how shameless this guy is.
By the way, if you're concerned about his lack of honesty and this lack of honesty from an elected official, or perhaps you're not satisfied with his refusal to answer my simple question, you could always reach out to him on any of his social media channels.
And look, I'm not telling you.
I want to be very clear about this.
I am not telling you that I want you all to spam his Twitter and his Facebook and Instagram, that I want hundreds of comments and everything attacking him.
I'm not.
I could not tell you to do that.
I couldn't tell you to do that.
I just want to make sure that you have his information so that you can reach out to him to express your concerns.
Again, he's an elected official.
So you can find him on Twitter at Caleb Hemmer.
That's C-A-L-E-B-H-E-M-M-E-R. Or Instagram the same way.
Then you go to Facebook.
You have Facebook.com slash Caleb Hemmer T-N. And then Caleb Hemmer dot com slash contact will take you to his website.
And that's the contact information for his office.
So again, if you have any concerns about the behavior of this public official, or if you really want to know, like, does he think that 16-year-olds can consent to having body parts removed, he still hasn't answered that question.
But I bet he'd love an opportunity to answer it.
And I think he would want to hear from you.
He'd be very glad to hear from you.
So you can always do that if you want.
Now there's more, though.
The next question came from Democrat John Ray Clemens, who also had no interest in talking about the substance of the issue.
Instead, with the slander already covered by Caleb Hemmer, Clemens went to the Democrats' second favorite tool in the box, which is credentialism.
Let's watch.
Can you give us a summary of your educational background or your healthcare education experience?
Mr. Walsh, you're recognized.
My experience in healthcare?
Your educational background.
I'm just curious.
You've testified as to a lot of your own research.
I'm curious for what purpose you do that and what background you have to qualify as you to speak to that.
Well, my background that qualifies me to speak to this is that I'm a human being with a brain and common sense, and I have a soul, and so therefore I think it's a really bad idea to chemically castrate children.
That is my experience.
Also, I did, now it's true, I didn't go to college, but I did go to school long enough to learn how to read, so I can read the data for myself, and that's exactly what I've done.
And for what purpose do you conduct your research and use this brain of yours?
Mr. Walsh, you're recognized.
I use it for the purpose of trying to protect children from being castrated and mutilated.
That's one of the things I try to do.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You don't use it to get clicks on your publication?
Are you using it right now to try to get clicks with this interaction?
No.
I really like the idea of drawing attention to the fact that this is happening to children.
I know you seem to find it very amusing.
I don't.
Guess what qualifies me to speak up against chopping body parts off of kids?
Which credentials give me the right to form an opinion about the sterilization of middle schoolers?
I wonder what John Ray Clements might have said if I told him that I'm also against drowning bags of puppies in the river.
I'm not even a big dog guy, but I don't think that you should put puppies in a bag and drown them in the river.
If I were to tell him that, would he have demanded to know what veterinarian school I attended?
This apparently comes as a shock to Mr. Clemens, but using your brain and your conscience, it's not the kind of job that requires a resume or professional references.
That's something you're supposed to be doing all the time, especially when it comes to this particular issue.
But this is all they have.
They cannot challenge me on the merits.
They cannot debate me on the substance of the issue.
They cannot explain why I'm wrong.
So instead they will make the case that whether I'm wrong or right, I shouldn't be saying anything at all.
That's the entire argument.
That is the only argument I have heard from these people since I started talking about this issue years ago.
The only argument they have, it really only boils down to, you shouldn't be talking about this.
Yet they can't even make that case convincingly, so instead they're left with the bumbling, ridiculous mess you just witnessed.
Now, there were more questions, or questions, I should say.
After the exchange we just saw there, another Democrat representative started reading my tweets where I advocate for capital punishment for drug traffickers.
Now, what in the world could that possibly have to do with the bill in question?
Well, he couldn't explain that.
And I didn't have a chance to point out how irrelevant it was because they wouldn't let me respond either.
So after that happened, they basically got tired of me answering.
And so for most of the rest of the time, it was just them talking to me.
And then if I try to speak, they bang the gavel.
No, this is not, this is not, it's not time for responding.
Democracy in action, folks.
Isn't it inspiring?
But this is all predictable, of course.
I don't want you to think that I was surprised or caught off guard.
That was their intention.
But unfortunately, they were using the same tactics on me that a million hacks and charlatans before them have already used.
What I'll say to the Democrats on the committee is this.
If you want to rattle me with smears and irrelevant out-of-context quotes and bad faith questions and accusations, etc., you're going to have to try a lot harder than that.
A lot harder.
Or instead...
Instead of trying to get better at being gutless smear merchants and disgraceful hacks, you could instead work on becoming better people, better men.
You could stop trying to defend the indefensible, what you yourself know to be indefensible.
You could stop trading in your soul for the And instead, you could try to be men of dignity and integrity and moral courage.
That's the other option.
It's an option that will work out a lot better for you in a lot of ways, including come Judgment Day, I would add.
And in the meantime, another bonus, maybe you won't make such asses of yourself in any more committee hearings.
