In recent months, a transgender-identifying TikTokker named Dylan Mulvaney has built a profile for himself that is equal parts impressive and repulsive. About a year ago, Mulvaney decided he was a woman and began chronicling his journey into “girlhood” via social media, posting videos that feature him engaging in behaviors he apparently identifies as inherently feminine, such as playing with Barbie dolls, boasting of receiving free tampons from Tampax, and prancing around on a high-heeled nature walk like a brain-damaged ostrich.
A major reason Mulvaney has succeeded in growing his name recognition is the publicity he’s received from woke institutions. He got the red-carpet experience at the Grammys. Actress-turned-talk-show-host Drew Barrymore recently brought Mulvaney onto her show, knelt before him, and praised the beauty of his her-ness. The Biden administration gave him a sit-down interview with the president. More recently, Anheuser-Busch sent Mulvaney some Bud Light cans emblazoned with his face in honor of the Tik-Tokker completing his first year as a “woman.”
After some social media backlash, Anheuser-Busch released a statement clarifying that we shouldn’t expect to see Mulvaney’s beer-can eyes staring at us in the booze aisle of our local grocery store, but also reaffirming its support of him. “Anheuser-Busch works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics and passion points. From time to time, we produce unique commemorative cans for fans and for brand influencers, like Dylan Mulvaney. This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public.”
In other words, “We may not expect you to fill your fridges with our trans-affirming cans, but let us be clear: Dylan Mulvaney is a woman. And Dylan Mulvaney is beautiful.”
Neither of these things, of course, is true. Actual women celebrate the first anniversary of their womanhood on their first birthday, not when they’re 26. Dylan Mulvaney is a man, and no amount of cosplaying as a dead-eyed Disney princess can change that.
Likewise, Dylan Mulvaney is not beautiful. His female-minstrel-show antics are, in fact, hideous. They are reprehensible, a vile display from a man who clearly finds a kind of perverse delight in wearing femininity like a skin. Mocking God and His natural order is ugly. Forcing your way into female spaces to avail yourself of those female benefits, something Bud Light commercials used to mock, is ugly. Shoving your kink in people’s faces and demanding they call it “bravery” is ugly. Galavanting around in bikinis and expecting the world to call you Rosa Parks when you’re far closer to Buffalo Bill is ugly.
Why then, does Anheuser-Busch expect us to pretend otherwise? There are certainly many answers to that question, but perhaps the most common woke justification for the beer company’s Mulvaney worship is a shallow understanding of love.
Marginalized people like Dylan need our support. Vulnerable people need our encouragement. To deny Dylan’s womanhood is to deny her dignity, to erase her, to drive her to despair and toward suicide.
That’s the mindset.
But it’s a lie. And if we can see how transparently false it is to say Mulvaney is a beautiful woman, we should be able to recognize how false it is to assert that we must say Mulvaney is a beautiful woman in order to love him.
Rather, if we want to love Dylan Mulvaney and others like him, we should follow the example of the God who is love, the God who reveals Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. That example is this: Speak the truth, call to repentance, and proclaim the forgiveness that awaits those who repent.
When the Pharisees were imposing their perversion of God’s law onto the people and burdening the consciences of the innocent for personal gain, how does Jesus respond? Not by praising them for their beautiful creativity and unique theological self-expression, but by speaking honestly, by calling them white-washed tombs, by warning them that they could not have peace with God while living as His enemies, and by pointing them to the death and resurrection that would give them divine peace.
Jesus did the same with His own disciples. When Peter tried to hinder Jesus from going to the cross, Jesus didn’t respond by kneeling before him Barrymore-style and whispering, “I love the way you’re exploring your own understanding of my ministry.” Even though Peter was seeking to defend his Lord, Jesus loved Peter enough to wound him and wake him up. Peter believed that righteousness came from a false sense of loyalty to Christ. Jesus wanted Peter to see that he could only find righteousness in the blood Christ would shed at the cross. So Jesus called Peter “Satan,” called him to repentance, and pointed his eyes to Calvary.
Dylan Mulvaney needs that same love, spoken from the mouth of a true friend who wants to see his salvation far more than he wants to use him for woke-clout capital. For the sake of his mental health, his physical health, and his spiritual health, Mulvaney needs someone to tell him: “By putting on a woman’s dress, you have not turned yourself into a woman. You have turned yourself into an enemy of the God who made you a man. And you are not beautiful. Through your defiance, you have turned yourself into something hideous, something reprehensible. And you will not find happiness wearing that repulsive, sexualized skin of a woman. The more you alter and augment your body to become what you can never be, the more repulsive you will become to others and ultimately to yourself. The more you carve yourself up, the lonelier you will become and the closer you will march toward an early grave. The more you war against God, the further away from His peace you will become.”
“So repent. Turn to Christ and live. Take off the garments of your sin and put on the righteousness of God that Jesus won for you at Calvary because that righteousness will make you truly beautiful. Turn to Christ, and He will wash the filth of perversion off of you. Turn to Christ, and He will show you the peace that comes from His carved-up body and how it far surpasses the momentary pleasure you get from carving up your own. Turn to Christ, and He will show you that the maleness of your flesh is holy and good, just as He will show you that femininity is a treasure to protect and defend, not an object to possess and pervert. You have made yourself ugly. Christ will make you beautiful. Turn to Him.”
Dylan Mulvaney doesn’t need endorsement deals or fawning media coverage. He needs the harsh truth that God’s wrath burns against Him, just as He needs the sweet comfort of God’s mercy found in Jesus Christ. May our Lord part the dead sea of Mulvaney’s sycophants and enablers and give this lost little sheep a true friend to speak a true word.
