House Republicans hosted a notorious anti-transgender rights activist to testify at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. The shameful show was the latest in a string of actions from the right meant to platform and advance transphobic bigotry.
Former television writer Graham Linehan, who created the “The IT Crowd” and co-created “Father Ted,” testified before the committee at a hearing billed as “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation: Part II.”
Republicans held the hearings to purportedly address concerns about censorship under European content laws.
Ironically, while complaining about this legislation and holding a hearing to criticize Europe, Republicans have turned a blind eye to the growing controversy surrounding GOP donor Elon Musk, whose company is being investigated in multiple European nations for the dissemination of nonconsensual sexual images, including of minors.
Linehan is a committed anti-trans activist who has dedicated his life to fighting against transgender people being accepted as equal citizens in Europe. Under the guise of defending women’s rights—a bogus argument also made by American conservatives—Linehan has argued against transgender acceptance, even claiming that transgender women are violent criminals for using women’s bathrooms.
Linehan has said his current life goal is to “reveal the havoc gender identity had wrought on society” and to “help bring about its end.” This eliminationist rhetoric didn’t disqualify him from being invited to testify before Congress, and in fact seems to have been one of the key reasons Republicans hosted him.
In a 2020 interview on the BBC’s “Newsnight” program, Linehan compared doctors who perform transgender surgery to Nazis, arguing that there were “a couple of parallels.”
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“Children are basically being experimented on with puberty blockers,” he stated, equating gender affirming care with an antisemitic genocidal regime.
In a 2022 incident he referred to “Doctor Who” actor David Tennant as a “groomer” because Tennant wore a T-shirt at a red carpet premiere urging the public to protect transgender children.
Then in 2024, when he was confronted by a teenage transgender activist, Linehan grabbed her phone and threw it to the ground. He then posted comments on social media calling her a “domestic terrorist” and “groomer.”
Linehan was banned from Twitter for his bigoted comments in 2020, but was reinstated when Musk—who has echoed Linehan’s anti-trans bigotry and misgendered his own trans child—took over the social media site.
Related | Trump administration steps up its heinous war on trans people
Republicans have spent the past few years demonizing and attacking the rights of transgender people. Senior leaders like House Speaker Mike Johnson have instituted anti-trans rules while the Trump administration has attempted to enshrine anti-trans bigotry in the federal government.
Linehan’s invitation is another sign that Republicans are willing to extend their hate all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.
Oliver Willis February 04, 2026 at 11:30PM From Daily Kos
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