Here’s the column that got me fired from the Denver Post:

I’ve been a regular columnist for the Denver Post since 2016.

Editorial Editor Megan Schrader informed me today this will be my last piece for the Denver Post as a weekly columnist.

A quick word about my now former editor Megan.

She took over the Editorial department during a period of painful upheaval at the Post and handled the transition masterfully. She cares deeply about the Post’s editorial page. She and the Editor and Chief, Lee Ann Colacioppo inherited a shrinking and sinking newspaper in crisis and both have skillfully steadied the ship and are steering it to calmer seas. They are journalists in the finest sense of the word.

Megan is one of the sweetest, most heartfelt people I know. She cares deeply about those in society she feels have been victims. We’d argue over how she would edit my column, but almost always she’d make it much better. And I am grateful. I’ll miss the friendly arguments the most. Megan is and will be a good friend.

The reason for my firing is over a difference in style. Not to put words in her mouth but Megan found my writing too insensitive. And yes, it is.

My column is not a soft voiced, sticky sweet NPR-styled piece which employs the language now mandated by the victim-centric, identity politics driven media. Plain talk that doesn’t conform to the newspeak law of “use only the words mandated by the perpetually offended.” So, it is labeled as “mean spirited” and banned.

If conservatives and libertarians are granted a voice in the mainstream media, they must use the language of their ideological opponents. That is, they are not allowed to have their own voice.

What seemed to be the last straw for my column was my insistence that there are only two sexes and my frustration that to be inclusive of the transgendered (even that word isn’t allowed) we must lose our right to free speech.

To be clear I am strongly pro-gay marriage, which has frustrated many of my socially conservative friends. I have friends, family and employees from the LGBT community. I don’t care who uses whose bathroom, what you wear, or how you identify. People from this community have rights which we must protect.

But to force us to use inaccurate pronouns, to force us to teach our kids that there are more than two sexes, to call what is plainly a man in a dress, well, not a man in a dress violates our right of speech.

YOU are free to wear a dress, and quite sincerely, more power to you! That’s power over your own self. You are sovereign.

And so am I. Which means YOU cannot choose my words. Our words are now chosen by the press, and our kids’ words are being mandated at school.

There was a time when the liberals in the press fought hard to protect free speech. Now they fight hard to mandate speech because, heaven forbid, someone be offended or have their feelings hurt. It’s okay people get offended. In fact, I encourage it. It means we are being challenged. It’s not hate speech. It’s speech. It used to be the press was all about.

I believe the reason so many people distrust the news media is the lack of intellectual diversity in it. My column is the most read column on the editorial pages. Perhaps it’s because people hated it so much. Who knows?

I do know that the stifling of conservative and libertarian voices because journalists and those in entertainment see it as mean-spirited, has built up the frustration with the politically correct to the point someone who speaks as vilely as Donald Trump becomes president.

It’s why I think he’ll be re-elected.

I guess, thank you media. Your intolerance created him.

Think Freedom,

Jon