We are in the midst of a moral and cultural disease, but few seem to recognize its lethality, much less how it developed. If we examine the cultural homogeneity of the late 1950s, we begin to see evidence of an incipient iconoclasm that led to degradation of our civic traditions and the moral clarity that, with few interruptions, have always informed the character of our Republic.
That evolved into the moral permissiveness of the 1960s, which assured us that the only absolute is relativism. That was the cultural gateway that effectively guaranteed the development of progressively aberrant behaviors. To wit, single parenthood, which was historically stigmatized, was championed, as illustrated by the television series Murphy Brown, and the Great Society’s welfare programs caused the deeply injurious intergenerational transfer of poverty and crime. As documented by Thomas Sowell, out-of-wedlock births among blacks in the 1940s were exceedingly low, but just thirty years later, they reached the alarming rate of 70 percent.
Concurrently, we suffered the slow death of the virtues of hard work, delayed gratification, self-sacrifice, and discipline and the rise of the self-centered notion that the world owes us. Compounding that, our public education system has been reliably ineffective in producing acceptable rates of reading comprehension, critical thinking skills, and mastery of basic arithmetic.
We fast-forward to today, where a debate that would have been unthinkable decades ago is raging over whether a male can become a female (and vice versa). Tragically, many parents have wittingly become dupes by obtusely embracing this amoral pathology. That we have allowed even our children and adolescents to be drawn into this cultural confusion, which has predictably caused chronic psychological trauma, is as irresponsible as it is inexcusable.
For those with pattern recognition deficits, the tragedy that befell the children at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis is just another in a series of shockingly violent incidents at the hands of transgender individuals, who perversely relish the taking innocent life. Yet liberal politicians and their mainstream media acolytes have formed a cultural Praetorian Guard to protect transgender individuals, labeling them “victims,” and anyone who has the temerity to challenge them is called “transphobic.”
Based on the relentless media attention, you will be surprised to learn that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, transgender people account for about 0.3 percent of the population. Given their extremely low prevalence, we would expect to see a statistically insignificant percent as mass shooters. But let’s look at the truth, just in the last seven years.
1. Snochia Moseley, born a man, who identified as a transgender, shot and killed 4 people in September 2018, at a Rite Aid distribution center in Aberdeen, Maryland, before killing himself. The Washington Post reported that Moseley “had been beset for years by mental illness as well as emotional turmoil related to her [sic] struggle with sexual identity.”
- Maya “Alec” McKinney and Devon Erickson, ages 16 and 19, respectively, opened fire in 2019 at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, killing 1 and injuring 8. McKinney is a female who identifies as male. She told police she was in a “pre-op transitioning phase” and was seeking revenge against students who had “picked on him [sic] for being transgender.”
- Anderson Lee Aldrich killed 5 and injured 25 in Colorado Springs in 2022. Though he may have falsely claimed a nonbinary identity, according to the trans movement’s own rules, he is nonbinary.
- Audrey Elizabeth Hale was born a female but wanted to be a male, and she went by the name “Aiden Williams.” According to news reports, she had a well documented history of mental health struggles going back to childhood and stretching into adulthood. She murdered three children and three adults at The Covenant School, a Christian school in Nashville in 2023, and was neutralized by law enforcement.
- Jason Lee Willie, who identifies as a woman and goes by Alexa, was indicted by a grand jury in 2023 for threatening to rape girls in girls’ restrooms and shoot up schools and bomb churches.
6. Dylan Butler, 17, killed 2 and injured 6 at Perry High School, in Perry, Iowa in 2024, before killing himself. He identified himself as “genderfluid.”
- Most recently, Robin Westman, in 2017, at age 17, transitioned to identifying as female — with, it should be noted, the written authorization of his mother, which was legally required. According to authorities, he had “a deranged obsession with previous mass shooters.” He murdered two children and injured 18 at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis before taking his own life. His writings and videos reveal a mentally twisted man who perfectly fits the definition of a ticking time bomb.
We transition to a bizarre cult, the “Zizians,” named for its leader, Ziz LaSota, who, along with many members, has professed to be transgender. They are responsible for six murders, three in 2022 and three in 2025, including David Maland, a U.S. Border Patrol agent. An online search of their cult reveals a stunningly savage group that, among other beliefs that are tantamount to psychotic, asserts that the hemispheres of the brain can have distinct genders. Federal law enforcement authorities have described them as “Manson-like.”
These incidents demonstrate a disturbing range of pathologies, from acute and chronic mental illness to a level of hatred that recalls the pogroms of the 20th century. Unless we have the will to return to the durable cultural and moral traditions that sustained us over the past two hundred and fifty years, we will continue in this downward civic spiral, and the carnage we have witnessed in recent years will become even more commonplace.
Philip E. Mella has been published in The Wall Street Journal, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the Colorado Springs Gazette. He is the author of A Journey to the Soul: Walking with Saints and Poets, published in 2024 and available on Amazon.
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