The Hercules actor speaks out after a blog post claimed that his children’s book The Test of Lionhood “is intended to teach children, among other things, that being transgender is inherently wrong and sinful.”
Kevin Sorbo is defending his children’s book The Test of Lionhood from a claim that it has anti-LGBTQ messaging in it after a blog post by a liberal writer named Joe Jervis claimed just that.
Linking out to the post on X (formerly Twitter), Sorbo argued it was “yet another example of the left doing whatever it takes to score clicks while bashing Christian conservatives.” He went on to suggest the blog’s argument must be “books that don’t include LGBTQ+ characters are automatically ‘Anti-LGBTQ.'”
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He argued that the blogger who made the claim “has no clue what he’s talking about” and that his piece “furthers [the] narrative that most journalists are a joke.”
Yet another example of the left doing whatever it takes to score clicks while bashing Christian conservatives. This guy has no clue what he’s talking about, and and only furthers narrative that most journalists are a joke.
My book, The Test of Lionhood, is about a lion cub who… https://t.co/8hNoJXkQfU
— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) September 26, 2023
@ksorbs
Jervis’ original article was referencing an interview the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys actor gave to The Christian Post published Monday to promote his book. What stood out to the blogger, who posted on his site Joe.My.God., was that Sorbo noted the end of his book features Bible Scripture about the gender roles God designed for men and women.
“All the craziness that’s going on with what we’re doing to kids now in public schools, you know, we have to let kids be kids and let them just grow up,” Sorbo told the outlet. The actor said it was dangerous to teach children that men and women can swap sexes at will, per the article.
Sorbo also said in the interview that his book is about “letting boys become boys to hopefully become men and strong men, strong providers for families as they grow up.”
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“The danger is trying to make them the same,” Sorbo said of children. “We’re not the same. It’s like these transgenders going in and racing against women in sports now, boxing matches. It’s just crazy to me.”
That these sentiments were expressed in this interview alongside the statement about Scripture being in the back of Sorbo’s book led Jervis to write that he suspects “the book is intended to teach children, among other things, that being transgender is inherently wrong and sinful.”
“As anyone familiar with his Twitter posts might gather, his book appears to be just another in a raft of recent anti-LGBTQ children’s books … intended to teach children that simply being transgender is sinful and wrong,” Jervis told TheWrap in a statement.
“He may couch it in terms of masculinity and biblical-ordained gender roles, but the ultimate message – as noted in reported scriptural quotes appended to the closing – seems clear.”
The Christian Post article’s opening lines appear to reference this as well, saying that the book was written “to expose the dangers of ‘woke’ ideology and its agenda that’s blurring the lines of God’s creation and what it means to be male and female.”
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At the same time, Sorbo emphasized that he has no problem with the LGBTQ community, or people becoming transgender as adults. “I’m not bashing that world,” he argued, saying that no LGBTQ individual in Hollywood would ever say, “He was so horrible to me,” about him.
“I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy,” Sorbo asserted. “You want to do that with yourself, fine. Be at a mature enough level to do it. Look at [Caitlyn] Jenner. He waited until he was 60 years old to become Caitlyn Jenner. I think at 60, you can pretty much figure out what you want to do.”
“But to sit there and try to tell kids in third grade, at six years old, ‘Let’s change your sex.’ You know what, that’s just insane to me,” Sorbo continued. “Let them find their way when they become adults and are old enough to do it.”
He goes on in the interview to make several additional claims about “the emasculation of men,” which he credits in part to the rise of feminism in the 1960s and the way Hollywood portrays masculinity, as well as the “indoctrination camps” that are today’s public schools.
Getting back to his book, Sorbo said, “People need to start fighting back. The title of my book came from the idea that I need to wake up the lions. I’m tired of the lions being cowards in the background and being afraid to speak up.”
