Banned From Twitter

Well, it has finally happened—I’ve been banned from Twitter. Never have I received even a warning, but now I am temporarily locked out. The culprit appears to be a tweet that I made on February 6 in which I said the following:

“No one is gay. No one is trans. No one is bi. No one is queer. You are a sinner, guilty of sexually perverse acts and worthy of the righteous judgment of God. You must repent and have faith in Jesus Christ. You will be saved from God’s wrath, and He will make you a new creation.”

This tweet was made in response to a nasty feminist heretic (but I repeat myself) named Jo Luehmann, who that same day tweeted this:

“Being gay is not a sin. Being trans is not a sin. Being bi is not a sin. Being queer is not a sin. A deity that creates LGBTQ+ people to call them sinners simply for being is a sadist and shouldn’t be followed or worshipped [sic]. Also that deity is just a projection of your bigotry.”

On Thursday morning, I had a notice from Twitter that I had been put on probation. “We determined this Tweet violated the Twitter Rules,” read the text on the lockout screen, “specifically for: Violating our rules against hateful conduct. You 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.”

That’s interesting. I’m harassed for my “religious affiliation” all the time, and Twitter will hardly do anything about it. Let me share with you something that happened to me two months ago.

On December 1, 2020, I made a similar tweet to the one above—I labeled the sin, called to repentance, and shared the gospel. I even had enough characters left over to put in a Scripture reference (it was 1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

Some online LGBTQ groups got a hold of it and put out a notice to harass me on social media. My Twitter and Instagram accounts were bombarded with thousands of hateful comments, filled with profanity and malice.

I did not read them all (why subject myself to that). What I did see was so vile, you’d hardly believe so many people could be that disgusting all at once. A few were public death threats. Many others openly fantasized what they wanted to do to me. I saw at least a half-dozen that threatened to rape my wife. One of the few I reported called on someone to put a hit out on my wife and children.

Now, I did not lose a minute of sleep over any of this. I’m hardly terrorized by effeminate men with My Little Pony avatars making death threats on Twitter. The worst of it were the dozens—possibly hundreds—of hardcore pornographic images, particularly of men sodomizing each other. Not only is that sexual harassment on the verge of assault, it’s a crime.

Think about this (okay, poor wording—don’t think about it too much). Say you are walking down the street, and two naked men run up and begin having sex with each other, right there in front of you. If you call 911 and the cops respond, what do you think will happen to these two men? Under any decent set of laws, they will be arrested and charged with a crime.

Here in the state of Texas, they are sure to serve jail time, they will be registered as sex offenders, and there are lifelong repercussions denying them job, education, or housing opportunities. Those should be the consequences for such demented public perversity at the very least. (Hey, if the law of God was the law of our land, they would be put to death.)

But this criminal level of sexual harassment is barely taken seriously by whatever clown show Twitter calls a disciplinary committee. Consider the following: I reported two Twitter users who both sent me a gif displaying sodomy (a gif is like a short video image, for those who don’t know). Twitter responded to both reports. One response said no offense was found. That’s right—they said there was nothing offensive at all about a clear act of hatred subjecting me and others to graphic images of men sodomizing men.

The second response said they reviewed the content I reported, and Twitter agreed they found it offensive. Oh, good! What is the penalty for someone who sexually harasses others with X-rated dirty images on Twitter? Nothing. The offender is only required to delete the reported tweet, and they can resume their normal Twitter activities.

The whole thing was so stupid, I wish I had kept a video record of the entire process. I did take screenshots of Twitter’s two responses, seen below. As awful as it all sounds, there was some good that came from it.

Many witnessed how calmly I responded to the whole ordeal. When reviled, I did not revile in return (1 Peter 2:23). I was called many names, but I did not retaliate in like manner. They listened to me share the gospel of Christ with peace and boldness. I received some wonderful and encouraging responses, including testimonies from men and women whom God had rescued out of a homosexual lifestyle. (I read some of those responses on my podcast, which you can listen to here.)

And yet, politely sharing the gospel, as I did on February 6, is perceived as hate speech on Twitter. You can perpetrate the equivalent of a sex crime on Twitter, and there are virtually no consequences for that behavior. But if you lovingly tell someone who claims to be LGBTQ that they are a sinner headed for hell unless they repent and turn to Christ, you will be banned for violence, harassment, and making threats.

I have appealed my ban and said that my tweet was not hateful. I was correcting a lie with the truth of what the Bible says, according to my faith, out of love and concern for those who live a self-destructive lifestyle, that they would repent of their sin, put faith in Jesus Christ, and be saved. Hey, someone is going to have to read that, right? I may as well share the gospel in my appeal!

If Twitter still requires me to delete the tweet, I’ll one-up them by wiping my entire past history, like I did in October when I took a month off social media. This is not the same as giving in—I am not apologizing for what I said. Most assuredly, I will say something like this again. And when I get banned, you know where to find me.

Post Script

Before getting banned, I had been on Twitter calling on folks to pray for James Coates, the pastor in Canada who was arrested in chains for preaching the gospel in his church. The law has said they will let him go, but he must agree never to preach again. Be in prayer for James, his church, and his family, who has not been allowed to see him.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” —Romans 1:16