While Black Lives Matter, the organization, was an utter sham, and Black Lives Matter, the movement, a mess in practice , Black Lives Matter, the ethos, taught a valuable lesson. When a black person is unjustly killed by an officer, saying "All Lives Matter" is a bit like going to someone else's funeral and loudly proclaiming, "What about all the other people who have died, too?"

In short, the time to empathize and strategize about protecting the group is when one member is the victim of a violent crime.

This is the lesson conservatives had to learn and liberals ostensibly embraced. So it is baffling that, after an anti-Christian mass shooting at a conservative, Calvinist private school by a transgender murderer, some left-wing activists, and corporations and politicians, are showing solidarity not with the victims, but with the killer.

A day after the massacre, Amazon leadership emailed its employees that it "remains in solidarity with our LGBTQIA+ employees, customers, and communities," noting that "the last several weeks have been challenging, to say the least, as we continue to see disheartening news in the media." Predictably, the American Civil Liberties Union, which once pretended to care about civil liberties (including the right to worship), also pretended that transgenders are the persecuted community of the moment, not the Christians gunned down by one.

But most galling was the White House's reaction. President Joe Biden laughed when asked whether the Nashville shooter specifically targeted Christians, "joking" that he "probably" didn't believe so if Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) did. Refusing to utter one word of solidarity, Biden declared Friday the "Transgender Day of Visibility."

"Transgender Americans shape our nation's soul," the White House proclamation read. "But today, too many transgender Americans are still denied those rights and freedoms. A wave of discriminatory state laws is targeting transgender youth, terrifying families and hurting kids who are not hurting anyone. An epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, in particular women and girls of color, has taken lives far too soon."

It is not as though Biden must drop his opposition to laws he considers discriminatory. But when faced with six people murdered for going to Presbyterian school, Biden decided to ignore the corpses and act as if it is solely transgender people who are being persecuted.

This country was founded by Calvinists who fled religious persecution and intolerance in England. Their experience contributed to religious liberty becoming the first freedom in our Bill of Rights. For this reason, Christians historically have not been persecuted or discriminated against in America.

But our secularizing nation, not having turned away from religion entirely, is instead adopting a new Puritanism that Abrahamic religions directly contradict. Religious practices and preferences do not supersede all other rights, but the right to live out your preferred gender identity — now protected with passports, driver's licenses, and even Supreme Court rulings — must at least end where shooting up a school begins.

Transgender people, like most demographic groups, are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crimes. The optimum balance between the rights of transgender adults and religious believers is a debatable question. But without even taking a moment to address honestly that the Nashville shooter seems to have targeted victims on the basis of their Christian faith, virtue signals of "trans visibility" are no better than "All Lives Matter"-ing the situation.

Imagine if a Republican, when faced with officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd, pulled the "blue lives also matter!" card?

Oh wait, they were accused of trying to "both sides" police violence. Let us see if the Left gets the same treatment.