Court Jesters of the Sexual Revolution

With the release of new comedy specials by Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais, we have been treated once again to several rounds of commentary complaining that their jokes about transgenderism are unacceptable and “punching down.” The backlash felt tired this time, since Chapelle and Gervais have proven uncancellable. We’ve all seen this show before. The idea that making jokes about one of the most powerful movements in the world is “punching down” is genuinely laughable.

What is more interesting is that Chapelle and Gervais are being treated as traitors to their class. In comedy of the 2020s it is fine to be transgressive, so long as you transgress in one direction: that of mocking morality, Christianity, and any remaining social boundaries. For the rest, the bulk of the comedian class serves as court jesters for the sexual revolution, targeting anyone who dares question its dogmas and, revealingly, scorning the very idea of virtue as impossible.

Consider how America’s late-night hosts deal with the issue of pornography. Jimmy Fallon spent an entire segment mocking Oklahoma state senator Dusty Deevers, who recently put forward legislation banning pornography and sexting. To uncomfortable laughter, Fallon read out fake sexts from Deevers and claimed that the Christian politician’s name sounded like a porn handle. It wasn’t funny, but the point wasn’t humor—it was to mock someone for opposing porn and for advocating public morality. Despite the growing consensus that pornography is addictive, toxic, and ruins relationships (porn is a factor in at least 56% of marriage breakdowns), opposing it is portrayed as a joke. Deevers’ response on X (formerly Twitter) was a class act:

My response to Jimmy Fallon and his writers, et al. First, I mourn the cost of enumerable people enticed into and trapped in pornography’s banquet in the grave and the fact that Jimmy Fallon serves as a waiter. Second, I long to see singlehood, marriages, families, and futures rescued from the poisonous promises of porn’s insatiable appetite for increasing deviance and destruction. Third, I know Jesus rescues sinners by His saving grace if they abhor and grieve their rebellion against Him, and turn to Christ, pursuing faith and obedience. That is my prayer for our nation and for Jimmy Fallon. Come to Jesus and live.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson got similar treatment. When it was reported that Johnson and his family use the accountability software Covenant Eyes, which monitors digital devices in order to break and prevent porn addictions, the media promptly melted down. Sarah Silverman made vile, crude jokes about the names of Johnson’s children and insisted that there was “no way this app is going to stop people from masturbating.” According to Silverman, the new Speaker “just keeps getting weirder and weirder”—not because he’s looking at porn, but because he isn’t. What does that tell you about the comedian class?

Jimmy Kimmel concurred and dedicated an entire monologue to making fun of the Speaker, ending with: “So if his son looks at porn, his dad gets an alert. And if Mike looks at porn, his son gets an alert. It is possible to be too close with your children.” Because they’re both obviously hypocrites who look at porn, get it? This is the same Kimmel who went after Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who has been persecuted by LGBT activists for years for declining to bake a gay wedding cake: “It’s funny because this is a guy who spends all day, every day, meticulously designing flowers out of icing. His whole life is gay, okay?” Kimmel went on to refer to Phillips several times as “the totally straight baker,” closing the bit with: “You would think that someone who looks like the Reba McEntire version of Colonel Sanders would be more sympathetic to gender identity issues.” According to Kimmel, opposition to  same-sex “marriage” is somehow…well, gay.

More sinister is the role comedians have played in running cover for the transgender industry. Gervais and Chapelle are exceptions to the rule—late-night hosts have been supporting sex changes for minors and the rest of the radical trans agenda for years. Before returning to The Daily Show this year, Jon Stewart came out as a supporter of “gender affirming care” on his short-lived AppleTV show The Problem with Jon Stewart, skewering Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge over her state’s ban on transgender drugs and surgeries for minors (Rutledge was, it must be said, woefully ill-prepared for what she must have known would be a hostile interview).

His former colleague John Oliver dedicated an entire episode of Last Week Tonight  to making the case for “gender-affirming care,” ruthlessly mocking those who believe that children should not be castrated. Stephen Colbert uses his late night show to defend the LGBT agenda while posing as a Catholic; other late night hosts are also reliable revolutionary allies. It’s easy to be dismissive of late-night hosts and comedians, but that would be a mistake. Humor is a tremendously powerful weapon. That is precisely why trans activists come for those who mock them with such a vengeance—because they understand this. Most people fear being mocked, and this fear drives behavior. To have the entire comedian class committed to mocking virtue is culturally corrosive, and deliberately so.

There’s an old Soviet joke about a judge walking down the hall to his chambers, chuckling. A colleague passing him asks what’s funny. “A joke I heard,” the judge says. “Tell me!” says his colleague. “Oh, I can’t—I just gave someone ten years for it,” the judge replies. This time around, the comedians are no longer the subversives.