Far-right anti-LGBTQ commentator Matt Walsh faced criticism this week for recently-surfaced comments he made on his drive-time radio show The Matt and Crank Program that contradict a key claim in his crusade against trans teens, their families, and the physicians who care for them.
Media Matters revealed that on the program’s run from 2010 to 2011, broadcast on Delaware’s WZBH, Walsh asserted that “girls getting pregnant” at a “young age” is perfectly normal. He said that teen pregnancy isn’t a problem as long as the teens are married and stressed that it’s normal for 16-year-old girls to get pregnant because that’s when they’re “technically most fertile.”
“So to all of a sudden act like this phenomenon of girls getting pregnant at that — at a young age — that we consider young, 16 or 17, to act like it’s a new thing is ridiculous,” he said. “It’s always been that way. … Girls between the ages of like 17 and 24 is when they’re technically most fertile.”
“What I’m saying is that the problem is not, per se, teenage pregnancy — it’s unwed pregnancy,” he continued.
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“At about 16, you’re an adult who is mature and can make decisions — you are that at 16. I don’t care what anybody says,” Walsh said. “And if you’re going to tell me it’s different, well, then how come for the first 10,000 years of human civilization, that’s the way it was? It’s just recently where all of a sudden we’re all ret****d until we’re 25?”
His co-hosts complained about the “whorish behavior of these same-aged girls” while another person on his show called them “sluts.”
The radio rant was a contradiction to the trans troll’s claim that affirming the gender identities of transgender minors is child abuse.
Walsh’s hypocrisy is compounded in a blog post the media watchdog unearthed from 2013, with his claim that adolescence is a fictional concept.
“Adolescence isn’t a product of brain chemistry — it’s a product of our expectations,” Walsh wrote. “If we expect 23 year-olds to act like they’re 13, then we will get just that. For thousands of years, 13 year-olds were expected to act like they’re 23, and those expectations were met.”
In September, Walsh targeted Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in the latest chapter of his crusade against gender-affirming healthcare.
In a Twitter thread, Walsh claimed that the staff at VUMC’s Transgender Health Clinic “castrate, sterilize, and mutilate” trans kids 18 and under, “while apparently taking steps to hide this activity from the public view.” The hospital denied the accusations and said they provide care to transgender people “in line with professional practice standards and guidance established by medical specialty societies.”
Walsh criticized the clinic’s Trans Buddy program – which offers peer support to teen patients – and accused medical staff of “drugging and sterilizing” trans kids for financial gain.
Following a weeks-long harassment campaign from anti-LGBTQ groups including Walsh and far-right Libs of TikTok scowl Chaya Raichik, the Boston Children’s Hospital was forced to evacuate this summer after an anonymous bomb threat was called in.
In a video response posted Thursday, Walsh evinced defiance and didn’t apologize for his support of teen pregnancy or his show calling teen girls “sluts.”
“You know, the thing that they never say out loud is, no one gets cancelled unless they consent to it, and they willingly play their assigned roles. Well, I do not consent, and I’m not going to play the game,” said Walsh.
I have a feeling Matt Walsh only opposes teenage gender transition because he wants to impregnate them all. https://t.co/OAAYzHS6MH
— Katelyn Burns (@transscribe) October 6, 2022
