GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy dismantled the progressive left’s “divisive” narrative about civil rights, the women’s movement, and the LGBTQ community, warning the hypocrisy championed by “cult-like” so-called social justice warriors defy “principles of sheer logic.”
Speaking on the campaign trail in Vinton, Iowa, Ramaswamy opened the floor for debate after a self-identified lesbian interrupted his speech, demanding he address allegedly chronic bullying of the LBGTQ community.
“LGBQ!” a woman in a green sweatshirt with a bowl haircut shouted as Ramaswamy fielded questions from attendees.
“What’s up?” Ramaswamy replied, asking her to clarify her question.
“You heard me –” she angrily shot back. “You just said there was nothing about transgender.”
The 38-year-old presidential candidate invited the woman to discuss her vantage point on the LGBTQ issue.
“How about this,” he said, “I give you the mic and we’ll hear what you have to say and then I am going to answer you and then I’ll hear what everybody else has to say. Does that sound good to you?”
“My name is Alexis Case, and I grew up here — in this town,” the woman continued. “LBGTQ is a serious situation in this world today. There are children that get bullied because they are gay, they are lesbian, they are transgender…What is your on LGBTQ?” the woman asked.
Ramaswamy proceeded to highlight an array of blaring illogical double standards that so-called civil rights activists have championed to “create more division.”
“LGBTQIA — there is so many letters they’ve just added a plus at the end there — that’s where we are now. What’s going on? So, the same movement — because if we are going to call that one thing, let’s play it fair — the same movement that said that, ‘The sex of the person you are attracted to is hardwired on the day you’re born’ — that was the premise of the gay rights movement for it to count as a civil right — that movement is now saying that, ‘Your own biological sex is totally fluid over the course of your life.’”
“Hypocrites,” a man in the crowd shouted in agreement with Ramaswamy.
“You can’t believe both of those things.” Ramaswamy continued. “Let’s think about the ‘feminists,’ the ‘women’s rights’ movement in this country, who said, ‘There’s many ways to be a woman, you can have long hair, short hair. You can wear a skirt, you can wear jeans,’ now says that, ‘Oh, if actually, you want to behave a certain way, that means you’re a man.’
“So, I think the hypocrisies go all the way down… You can’t believe both of those things at the same time if you are operating according to principles of sheer logic. But you can if you’re adopting… a faith…a cult-like belief system.”
As Ramaswamy pointed out the logical fallacies, the lesbian woman retorted with laughter.
“So, this is controversial for me to say, but I will tell you what I think. I believe that transgenderism, specifically, is a mental health disorder,” Ramaswamy said frankly, prompting the woman to squeal.
“I believe it’s a mental health condition,” he doubled down.
“Okay,” the woman replied, as she stood up, grabbed her beer, threw her middle finger in the air and made her way to towards an exit. “Nobody cares what you think!”
As she proceeded out, Ramaswamy urged her to stand her ground and debate.
“No, no, no. We are going to finish — this is good,” he said. “We have to have open conversations in this country.”
“It’s not a fucking mental health disorder. It’s how they fucking feel!” the woman screamed.
“We can’t have an open debate in this country if we are not able to state our peace,” Ramaswamy insisted.
“It’s how they feel!” she shouted again.
“I’ll tell you a story. And you deserve to hear this. I met two young women in this race. About six months ago. Their names were Chloe and Katie, two young women. They are in their 20s now. Both of them had their breasts cut off. One of them had her uterus removed,” Ramaswamy continued. “They regret that decision. One of them wants to have kids — she’ll never have kids. The other one will never breastfeed her children. They’ll never be the same because they had that done to them when they were teenagers. So, no. When a young person shows up and says, ‘My gender doesn’t match my biological sex,’ they are asking for help.
“One girl was 13 when it happened to her. She is in her 20s now and regrets it. This is what’s wrong in this country. We will look back at this and say that this was barbaric that we allowed this to happen in this country. That is not compassion! That is cruelty! And so, I don’t think the right thing to do.
“I am not going to villainize those people. You don’t villainize people who are going through suffering. But you have to be willing to say, when a kid shows up and says, ‘My gender doesn’t match my biological sex,’ you have to be able to say, ‘What else is going on at home?’ ‘What else might be going wrong at school?’ Get to the bottom of what’s going on. Help that person with compassion, with dignity. So, my view is this, if you are an adult, you are free to live your life however you want as long as you are not hurting somebody else.
“If you are a man, you can dress how you want. If you’re a woman, you can dress how you want — ‘identify’ how you want. We are in a free country and I’m not going to stop you. But kids are not the same as adults.”
The audience erupted in applause when Ramaswamy drew a line in the sand condemning the sexualization of kids, and the angry leftist protester began walking back toward her seat at the table.
“We have to protect our children,” he said. “And I am going to go further than that. We can’t change the way women and men compete in sports. We can’t do that. We can allow you to live your life the way you want to. But we can’t change the way that we operate in our own life.
“What we have in this country right now is a tyranny of the minority. That’s what we have right now, a tyranny of the fringe minority that tells you to ‘Shut up. Sit down. And do as you’re told. No! We have to stand for what is true.
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“I don’t get to do this on the campaign trail often — we all are in our own echo chambers and silos, so, it’s good for us to talk to each other. I like that.”
WATCH:
I love this. Now notice how the leftist wants to say her piece and run, which is very telling. Nonetheless, it is time to discuss & debate our issues, not scream & shout then run & hide. Vivek is organically bringing something to his campaign that has been missing in American… https://t.co/7vry3nFxfJ
— Owen Shroyer (@OwenShroyer1776) December 23, 2023
The civil rights movement is being exploited to divide Americans and expand the victim class, Ramaswamy continued:
Something funny has happened I think in the last few years in this country with the civil rights movement. It’s right when we get closest to the promise land of true racial equality that we then start obsessing over systemic racism. It right when we get to the point in our national history where whoever you are — you can marry who you want, where you want, if you want, whatever gender they are, we start then obsessing over the sexual identity revolution.
You know what’s actually funny right now, is many people, who are lesbian or gay are being taught to say, ‘Hey, if you’re a woman attracted to a woman, you’re not a woman, you’re a man.’ So, that’s the transgender movement. The ‘L’ and the ‘G,’ first of all, don’t have that much to do with each other. The ‘G’ and the ‘T’ don’t have that much to do with each other. But we are clubbing all of these things up to create more division.
I hate the term ‘persons of color.’ You want to know why? You take a hundred different cultures, combine them into one thing that is designed to be opposed to this other thing we call white. And so the way I view this is, you are free to live your life the way you wish to as long as you don’t hurt anybody else in return. And I’m free to do the same thing too. But that doesn’t mean we change the way men and women compete in sports.
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And so, we’ve got to respect people and treat them with dignity. Everyone is different. But all i’ll say is kids arent’ the same as adults. If we can agree on that then I think we have at least made some progress tongight. and we’ll have a step forward. so thank you.
When you are the only person in a room who believes what you believe I will tell you, ‘stand up and say it!’ that’s how we are going to get this country is actually all of us, starting to speak openly again.
The lesbian LGBTQ activist who was moments away from leaving the town hall ultimately walked up to Ramaswamy and gave him a fist bump in agreement and a high five for calling out the deep-seated hypocrisy.
Response to how Ramaswamy handled the heckler is overwhelmingly positive.
The most recent Des Moines Register/NBC/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows 5 percent of Iowans choosing Ramaswamy as their first choice, 11 points behind Nikki Haley, 14 points behind Ron DeSantis, and 37 points behind front-runner Donald Trump.
Ramaswamy is urging voters not to trust the “flawed and out of date” polls, noting, “They’re not polling people who haven’t been to a caucus before, so I think we’re on track to win this caucus. I think the polls are wildly off. And especially for a first-time outsider candidate who is bringing first-timers into the caucus as one of our main support bases, the polls are completely missing it.”