Country Music Awards Show Criticized for Celebrating Drag and Transgenders In Show Dedicated to Tennessee Victims
CMT’s country music awards show in Austin, Texas, on April 2 was dedicated to the Nashville transgender shooter’s six victims.
But, the show also loudly paid tribute to transgender activists, drawing backlash across social media.
“On March 27, 2023, three 9-year-olds—Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kenney, and Hallie Scruggs, along with Dr. Katerine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, and Mike Hill—walked into the Covenant School and didn’t walk out,” singer Kelsea Ballerini said as she opened the awards show.
“The community of sorrow over this, and the 130 mass shootings in the United States this year alone, stretches from coast to coast,” she said tearfully.
When Ballerini was a teen, she saw classmate Ryan McDonald die in a shooting at Central High School in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Ballerini recalled that she saw 15-year-old McDonald “lose his life to a gun in our cafeteria.”
Then, she prayed that “real action” to “create change for the safety of our kids and our loved ones” would result from the CMT show.
Above the stage, lights displayed the Progress Pride flag, a rainbow flag with overlapping white, pink, blue, brown, and black triangles on the side. The blue and pink represent transgender pride.
Then Ballerini was joined on stage by drag performers who danced as she sang her single “If You Go Down [I’m Goin’ Down Too].”
For her apparent support of drag and the LGBT community, Ballerini faced intense criticism on Twitter, with more than 5,000 comments on a post she made about the awards show.
She shared a photo of herself on stage, being embraced by the four drag performers.
“If you go down, I’m going down, too,” she wrote, punctuating the comment with a pride flag emoji. “Thank you to these iconic queens … for celebrating love, self-expression, and performance.”
Most of the replies were negative.
“Hey, wanna know what people are sick of? This. All the time. Being shoved in our face from every direction possible. Especially children. You can use bright happy rainbow colors and fun confetti all you want, but it’s still not enough to mask this ugly evil [expletive] you’re a part of,” said country star Five Times August.
August also posted a video showing a drag performer announcing that drag is a sexualized form of entertainment inappropriate for children.
The account for Jason Jones, a conservative with a large following, also criticized Ballerini for displaying the transgender pride flag onstage.
“Less than a week ago a transgender psychopath massacred six people in Nashville and this is who you honor? Their bodies aren’t even cold, Kelsea,” he said.
CMT isn’t alone in waving the transgender flag in an apparent nod to the Tennessee Christian school shooter, who was killed by police at the scene.
On March 30, activists marched into the Tennessee Capitol, demanding gun-control legislation. Some activists held up seven fingers in reference to both the victims and the shooter, a video posted to Twitter shows.
Activists scheduled, then later canceled, a planned “Transgender Day of Vengeance” in Washington to advocate for transgender rights. The cancellation, they said, was because of a “credible threat to life and safety.”
And after the Tennessee school shooting, superstar singer Madonna joined the angry uproar against Tennessee’s new law criminalizing drag performances in public places and anywhere children are present. She announced a concert to benefit Nashville transgender groups.
Increased Threats of Violence
Wyoming state Democrat lawmaker Rep. Karlee Provenza posted a meme encouraging the shooting of people who oppose transgenderism.
The meme showed an old woman in a transgender flag jacket gripping a rifle, and reading, “Auntie Fa says, protect trans folks against fascists and bigots.”
Josselyn Berry, press secretary for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, posted a tweet suggesting pulling guns on “transphobes.” The tweet showed a glaring woman with two revolvers.
“Us when we see transphobes,” the tweet read. Berry has since resigned.
Three days after the shooter struck the school in Nashville, President Joe Biden’s White House issued a proclamation about the Transgender Day of Visibility.
“I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination against all transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people,” Biden said in the written statement.
Conservative States Ban Child-sex Surgery
Lawmakers in conservative states are responding to the surge in minors who identify as transgender with legislation banning child sex-change procedures.
So far, lawmakers in 12 states have banned child sex-change procedures. Nineteen more states have similar bills moving through the process.
President Joe Biden decried the bills saying that “a wave of discriminatory state laws is targeting transgender youth, terrifying families and hurting kids who are not hurting anyone.”
Sex-change hormones offered to transgender-identifying children cause physical damage, as well, including weakened bones, heart attacks, lost fertility, and permanent hormone dependence, according to The Mayo Clinic.
Manifesto Not Released
So far, Nashville police haven’t released the shooter’s manifesto. It remains unclear exactly why the killer chose to target a Christian K-6 school that she had attended.
However, the killer planned the murders for months, authorities have said. Nashville law enforcement officials have promised to release the manifesto eventually.
In a climate of increased transgender-related violence, many activists against child sex change have faced violence.
Activist Chris Elston, known on social media as “Billboard Chris,” has been attacked by pro-transgenderism activists who broke his arm. But, for him, the risks of raising awareness are worth it.
The children who identify as transgender make that decision because of mental health, Elston told The Epoch Times.
“Every single story reads the same. They were lost, they were struggling, they had autism, borderline personality disorder, whatever. They’d been abused,” Elston said.
Activist Scott Newgent has spoken publicly about receiving many death threats for work to tell the risks of so-called “gender-affirming care.”
Newgent underwent a battery of surgeries to “transition” from woman to man and now speaks publicly about the ensuing mental anguish, physical pain, and ongoing health problems.
“When you are sold a lie, and instead dealt with lifelong medical complications, it tends to click in the huge regret category,” Newgent wrote on the blog TReVoices.
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh also has faced death threats from transgender activists online as a result of speaking about the harm of child sex change. Walsh has said he lives near Covenant School.
Walsh wrote in a post on Twitter, “25,000 people liked this tweet calling for me to be tortured and killed. It’s very encouraging to be so rabidly hated by the worst people in the country.”
The Epoch Times reached out to CMT but received no comment.
