Some disgruntled Amazon employees at the company’s Seattle headquarters staged a so-called “die-in” protest during a “Pride” event in response to conservative author Matt Walsh’s book sales on the website.
Some 30 employees draped themselves in blue, pink, and white transgender “pride” flags, laid on the ground during the “Pride” flag-raising ceremony, and reportedly refused to move.
I’m at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, where about 30 Amazon employees are staging a die-in during Amazon’s Pride Flag raising ceremony in protest of the company’s continued sale of what they say are transphobic books. pic.twitter.com/Pz0Pyy0Mzi
— Katherine Long (@_katya_long) June 1, 2022
The motivations behind the Thursday demonstration are books authored by The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh — “Johnny the Walrus” and “What Is a Woman?” — and journalist Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.”
Protesters described both writers’ works as “transphobic” and decried Amazon for selling them.
The demonstrators are part of the employee activist group No Hate at Amazon and, according to a transcript of a speech from the event, they believe the brand is “spreading a culture of hatred through the sale of transphobic books, promoting and profiting off content that advocates for the abuse of transgender children.”
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They went on to describe the flag-raising ceremony as a “PR stunt” by Amazon, calling it a “blatant rainbow-washing” while the company sells “content that aids and encourages the psychological abuse of transgender children.”
“There is a direct line between the hateful transphobic rhetoric Amazon is profiting from, the unprecedented anti-trans legislation across the United States, and the violent and often deadly physical attacks so many of our community face,” continued the speech. “2021 saw the most murders of transgender people in recorded history. Overwhelmingly, these victims are black trans women and trans women of color.”
The group called Walsh “a serial abuser who has openly attacked our coworkers and our customers,” referring to the fact his children’s book, “Johnny the Walrus,” an allegory about the dangers of transgenderism, became a No. 1 best-seller when it was released in April.
“Walsh used the publicity from this attack to get his book to No. 1 on Amazon,” read the speech. “Let me repeat that: The No. 1 book across all of Amazon. Top of our charts.”
“In Walsh’s own words, this effectively made him the bestselling author in the country,” it continued. “Amazon rewarded him for this harassment with enormous sales. Money he will use to keep spreading hate. This is [expletive] embarrassing. Everyone who let this happen should be embarrassed and ashamed.”
The speech is accompanied by a petition purportedly signed by “over 600 employees.” It should be noted Amazon employs some 1.3 million people, just under 1 million of whom are in the U.S., according to Business Insider.
This is not the first dustup Amazon has had over books tackling transgenderism.
Last summer, at least two employees quit their jobs with the Seattle-based brand after it refused to remove Shrier’s book from its digital shelves. The kerfuffle came after Amazon stopped selling conservative author Ryan T. Anderson’s “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” telling Republican lawmakers at the time it would not sell books that “frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
Christians ought to understand sexuality as God intended it. Genesis 1:27 states God created two sexes — male and female — and designed them to pro-create within the confines of marriage (Hebrews 13:4). In 1 Corinthians 6:18, the Apostle Paul urged believers to “flee from sexual immorality,” continuing, “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (ESV).
While the secular world, particularly during “Pride” month, will wrongly tell people to find their identity in their sexual desires, Scripture tells believers the true source of their identity: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10, ESV).
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