Matt Calkins Quits Seattle Times After It Spikes His Defense of Sophie Cunningham as Hate | Ep 1223

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Late Night Bites with Friends?
Already hard to beat. That first too hot bite of fries you couldn't wait for, followed by ice cold Pepsi. Now that hits different. Suddenly, the energy kicks back in, the night goes longer, and the laughs don't stop. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment.
Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

**Jason Whitlock** (0:27)
Thursday in Dallas, Cathy Engelbert re-coded biology as hate.
Haters, she said, people who never watched the NBA using the league to sow divisiveness. That same Thursday, Matt Calkins resigned after 11 years at the Seattle Times because they killed a column that refused to call Sophie Cunningham transphobic.
Same priesthood, same smear, same day. Transphobic is not a diagnosis. It is a club. They swing when the argument is lost. The working definition is unfair hate, fear, or discrimination against people who are transgender.
Rejecting a gender identity, treating someone poorly because they do not match the new social script about sex.
Hate, fear, discrimination. I do not feel any of that. Most people do not. Matt Calkins did not. There are people who refuse to affirm gender dysphoria. That is not hate. That is not fear. That is not discrimination. That is reality. A man cannot become a woman. A boy cannot become a girl. Girls still get a category. The Seattle Times heard that sentence and reached for the dirtiest word in the American Style Book.

**Charles** (1:52)
This is that fire. Grab your popcorn.

**Jason Whitlock** (1:56)
Calkins paid with his job. After 11 years as a sports columnist, he resigned on the spot because the paper sat on, then killed, a column whose entire point was one sentence. Agreeing with Sophie Cunningham does not make you transphobic. That walk away is brave. It will cost him money. It will cost him standing in Seattle, a city that creates LGBTQ orthodoxy like civil religion.
Hebrews 11 says, Moses, when he was grown, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose affliction with the people of God over the treasures of Egypt for a season. Calkins is not Moses. Seattle is not Egypt. The courage is the same shape. A man looked at a palace, the paycheck, the masthead, the invitations in an LGBTQ friendly town and decided his soul was not for sale to the house style. Proverbs says, the fear of man is a snare. The Times built a newsroom on that snare and called it standards. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole paper and loses his own soul? He answered with a resignation. The buried column was not a manifesto. It was a 16-year-old girl. Aniley Wilson sat courtside at Climate Pledge Arena during Seattle's game against the fever with a sign thanking Sophie Cunningham for speaking up for girls.
She said she does not hate trans people. She said girls should have their own sport.
After the game, Storm owner, co-owner, Celeste Keaton walked over, called that child insane, hoped Jesus could forgive her and left her in tears. The Times still would not print the column. Frances Stout still takes daily abuse at Tumwater High for refusing to play basketball against a biological male from Shelton. Calkins put those girls in copy. The paper chose the priesthood over the child. On Substack, Calkins listed the spikes himself. This was not his first kill. He wrote that the Times sat on skepticism about the US women's national team's equal pay gospel. It sat on cancel culture in sports. After George Floyd, it sat on a column asking people to hear a black state championship coach, Mike Bethea, who said, don't stereotype cops.
Same crime every time. The copy contradicted the newsroom's approved story. A columnist job is heat on the hottest subject. If the only legal opinion is the orthodoxy, you do not have a column, you have a press release with a byline. Kathleen Engelbert preached that same creed from Dallas on the same Thursday. People who never watched, never wrote, never reported, haters using the WNBA to sow divisiveness. The league already put it in writing, raising eligibility is a bad faith effort to demean or marginalize. The CBA says, only women are eligible and then refuses to say what a woman is. Sophie Cunningham asked for a bold commissioner from inside the locker room. Thursday's answer was the smear, not the definition. Newsroom and league share a clergy. Transgender orthodoxy is the religion. The category is settled, so the speaker is the problem. Stamp transphobic on a man who will not affirm the delusion, and you never have to prove hate, fear or discrimination. You just end the argument. Aneely, Wilson and Francis Stout are the human receipts. Sophie Cunningham said it from the floor. Matt Calkins is the columnist who paid the price. A Metro newsroom now demands when you contradict the creed in a city that will punish you for it, your paycheck, your standing, your byline. He would not let them hang a word on his neck. That word does not stay in a Seattle newsroom. It runs the culture. The LGBTQIA Plus Alphabet Mafia learned the cheapest way to rule America, control the language, and the institutions follow. Newspapers, leagues, school, your corporate HR department. You do not have to win the argument that a man is a woman. You only have to make the man who says no unemployable, unpublishable, and afraid.