On March 27, a transgender lunatic named Audrey Hale shot up a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter, who tragically killed three adults and three children before being neutralized by well-trained Metropolitan Nashville Police Department officers, was a 28-year-old biological female who had "transitioned" to a public-facing male "gender identity." Nashville police also confirmed that the shooter once attended the school herself.
Based simply on those established facts, one might offer a reasonably educated guess as to the likely motive of this horrific school shooting: a one-time Christian seems to have spurned the faith of her upbringing, adopted a vogue new worldview that is in irreconcilable tension with Christianity, and lashed out in one final kamikaze act to vindicate her new paganism and vanquish the foes of her youth.
The reasonably educated guess, in short, was -- and remains -- that this was an ideologically motivated anti-Christian hate crime, an act of domestic terrorism. The veracity of that guess was only bolstered by the revelation, which recently resurfaced on Twitter, that at some point during the murderous rampage, the shooter took precious time to divert from the school, scurry over to the adjacent church, and unload seven rounds into a stained-glass figure of Adam -- that is, Adam from Genesis.
Let's think this one over: Why, strictly, would a transgender former student of a Christian school return to that school to murder innocent Christian children and shoot up a stained-glass representation of no less symbolic a biblical figure than Adam himself? We don't necessarily need Sherlock Holmes on the case to figure this one out.
In fact, shortly after the slaughter at The Covenant School, Nashville police revealed that the murderer had, in an act all too common in this gruesome genre, left behind a manifesto. But that manifesto has thus far never seen the light of day. In the days following the massacre, as President Joe Biden and national Democrats stopped mourning the murdered Christian children and began pleading not to blame the "transgender community" at large, some transgender activists even took to social media to not-so-subtly threaten Nashville police against releasing the manifesto: "Don't release it, or else."
In the immediate aftermaths of the horrific mass shootings committed by vile white supremacists in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 and Buffalo, New York, in 2022, the national conversation immediately gravitated toward condemnations of the ever-looming specters of white supremacy and anti-black racism. But somehow, nearly two months after a mass school shooting that has all the hallmarks of being an anti-Christian hate crime committed by a transgender Christophobe, the manifesto left behind by the shooter has not even been made public.
In fact, the manifesto's release is now the subject of litigation. At least two lawsuits have been filed against the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department in an attempt to force the manifesto's release, and a third legal challenge -- technically, an administrative appeal -- has been made against the FBI. According to the National Police Association, which has sued both the city of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, to expedite the manifesto's release, a decision is expected in June.
It is inexcusable that the manifesto has not already been released. But unfortunately, it is also unsurprising. The reality is that the gender ideology lobby is an extremely powerful political force in today's Democratic Party, and for the American ruling class more generally. Transgender activists, with the possible exception of Black Lives Matter activists, best represent the tip of the spear of today's intersectional Democrats. Same-sex marriage was constitutionalized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, and the Left's sexual revolutionaries have long since identified their new pet cause in which to invest considerable political and social capital. In short, if transgender activists demand something, then today's Democrats -- and no small number of right-liberal Republicans terrified of being called "transphobic" -- will present it to them on a silver platter.
To demand the release of Audrey Hale's undoubtedly deranged manifesto is not to "politicize" a tragic act of mass murder. Indeed, Biden, national Democrats, and their apologists in the corporate press have already done precisely that. Instead, it is merely to demand the same treatment as similar tragedies in the past, after which the mass murderers' evil motives invariably become the center of public attention. But Christophobia, much like antisemitism, remains one of the final remaining forms of politically acceptable animus in the United States. Accordingly, nearly two months after the mass shooting and well after Nashville police and the FBI deemed it prudent to comply with a braying transgender activist mob, whether Hale's manifesto is released is a legal matter awaiting its fate before an ever-fickle judge.
The manifesto must be released. For that matter, moreover, we should also demand a toxicology report: If Hale's actions were in any way affected by injections of testosterone, that is important for the public to know.
Justice requires nothing less.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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