'Pansexual Activist' Tries to Corner Vivek Ramaswamy, He Turns the Tables in an Instant
Vivek Ramaswamy was right on target.
The businessman turned politician, currently polling a distant third in the Republican primary field, according to RealClearPolitics, was pressing the flesh at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines on Sunday when a self-described “pansexual” woman tried to corner him with a question clearly aimed at throwing him off his pace.
But Ramaswamy took it in stride — and delivered a lesson while he was at it.
Check out the interaction here, in a video posted to Ramaswamy’s Facebook page.
The initial, actual quote is hard to make out, but it’s clear the unidentified woman opened the questioning with a string of initials describing sexual lifestyles and asked Ramaswamy’s opinion on the “community.”
“I don’t think it’s one community,” he answered. “How could it be? Just mashed-together alphabet soup … What’s your opinion?”
That wasn’t the answer the woman expected, clearly, so she tried another tack:
“I, personally, am pansexual, so I was just wondering what your views on same-sex couples were.”
The question itself begs to be dismissed — if only on the grounds that it’s the kind of trap leftists love to spring on Republicans. A careless answer could turn into a social media firestorm for liberals; a slip of the tongue from the other direction could fuel suspicion on the right.
Ramaswamy didn’t dismiss it, though. He answered the question directly with the kind of logic that’s sadly missing in most of the establishment media today that the left and right should have no problem accepting.
“I don’t have a negative view of same-sex couples,” he said. “But I do have a negative view of the tyranny of the minority.
“I think, in the name of protecting against the tyranny of the majority — and there are times in this country’s history where we have had a tyranny of the majority — we have now … created a new tyranny of the minority. And I think that that’s wrong …
“I don’t think somebody who is a woman who has worked really hard for her achievements should be forced to compete against a biological man in a swim competition.
“I don’t think that somebody who’s a woman that respects her bodily autonomy and dignity should be forced to change clothes in a locker room with a man. That’s not freedom, that’s oppression.”
That is such a truly self-evident statement. There was a time not too long ago when any American passing on the street would have agreed with this.
The idea that men who are middling in athletics could change into champions simply by claiming they were women (a la the honorable Lia Thomas), or that high school girls would have to share locker rooms with boys claiming to be girls, would have been grounds for involuntary committal barely a generation ago (outside of, say, San Francisco).
Now that same lunacy is a key part of the Democratic Party’s progressive agenda.
Ramaswamy then took the discussion to a broader level:
“I believe that we live in a country where free adults should be free to dress how they want, behave how they want, and that’s fine. But you don’t oppress, you don’t become oppressive, by forcing that on others — and that especially includes kids, because kids aren’t the same as adults.
“Adults are free to make whatever choices they want, but do not force that ideology onto children, before children are in a position, as adults, to make decisions for themselves.
“I think a lot of the frustration in the country, and if I’m being really honest, that I also share, comes from that new culture of oppression, where saying those things can actually get somebody punished.
“And in my case, it’s part of why it’s my responsibility to say them.”
Ramaswamy closed the discussion by thanking the woman for being civil — a considerable upgrade from the shrieking insanity that characterizes too much leftist political talk — and demonstrated just how possible it is to have an exchange of ideas without resorting to tantrums.
But he also made his point.
In the United States and much of the West, an ungodly confluence of entertainment culture, politicized education and unmoored morality has produced a bizarre environment where a fringe, extreme movement has somehow become the arbiter of mainstream morality and civil behavior.
Drag shows and transgender fashions were the stuff of burlesque — not part of the classroom curriculum and extracurricular activity. Private sexual behavior of adults was private — not some kind of identity badge in tribal politics.
And the sexualization of children — a taboo unquestioned in the West for a millennia — is not only a topic of conversation, but is being actively promoted in public schools, among other places, by self-righteous fanatics who accuse normal human beings of “bigotry” simply for being normal.
Whatever the answer this “pansexual” woman was seeking from Ramaswamy, whatever moment of embarrassment she might have been trying to cause, the fact is that he answered it exactly the way a decent American would — as a Republican, or (once-upon-a-time) Democrat.
She might have been looking for a viral moment the left would love.
Instead, Ramaswamy was right on target.
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