Nancy Churchill shares how she believes an ideology demands silence, suffering and sacrifice
Nancy Churchill
Dangerous Rhetoric
The tragedy at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis left two children dead and many more wounded. The shooter, 23-year-old Robert “Robin” Westman, ended his own life after targeting kids at prayer. Beneath the horror of his violence lies a darker truth: Westman himself was a victim of a cultural death cult, one that tells vulnerable young people they must choose “death before detransition.”
The slogan’s dark power
The phrase “death before detransition” is not a throwaway line. It is a loyalty oath. Activists insist that a “real” trans person would rather die than admit regret. Those who detransition are branded as betrayers, their pain silenced, their humanity erased.
Prisha Mosley, a detransitioner, explained what this looks like from the inside: “People experience regret after transition, but inside of a death cult, where apostates like me get doxxed and daily threats and death is said to be the only inevitability, things like this happen.”
The shooter’s own words
As reported in the New York Post, Westman confessed, “I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself.” He wrote, “I can’t cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.”
Westman also wrote that he regretted being trans and just wished he were a girl. “I regret being trans. I wish I was a girl I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have today. I also can’t afford that,” he said.
This is the chilling effect of the slogan: even when the regret was real, even when the despair was unbearable, he felt he could not turn back. For Westman, “death before detransition” became literal.
Grief and manipulation
Others who read Westman’s journals saw not just anger but profound grief.
On Substack, “Exulansic” noted, “He was a young man who had been naive boy. So this tragedy was in part a result of the ‘death before detransition’ suicide pact. Rather than admit that it was indeed, just a phase, he chose to fire a gun through the stained glass windows of a Catholic church in the midst of mass, killing 2 children and grievously wounding 17 more.”
“Korpijarvi” observed that Westman was “a young person lost in pain, confusion, guilt, grief, and self-loathing… strictly speaking, this wasn’t a psychopathic young man … Grieving people struggle to appear normal, despite being detonated by whatever/whoever they lost (including themselves), and how it mutilates them.”
Westman’s words reveal deep grief for the loss of everything he used to be. For a lost happy future. For his complete betrayal by the adults in his life (who were likely pressured into affirmation) and by the medical system (which didn’t care about him as a person, but as a profit center).
This was not simply an individual collapse. It was the inevitable result of a culture that grooms children into false identities, then traps them in shame and fear when regret sets in.
Off-ramps and compassionate alternatives
There must be another way. As “Redhead Ranting” wrote after the tragedy, what young people need most is “an off ramp for the kids and young adults, and their parents, who want to detransition. It must be non-judgmental, welcoming and provide the medical and therapeutic care necessary. In Minnesota, if you are a care provider you cannot offer detransition as an option. This young man had nowhere to go because of the horrible policies put in place by our legislators.”
Sadly, lawmakers in several states are blocking those exits. In Washington state, a teen as young as 13 can seek mental health services or go to a youth shelter asking for “gender-affirming care.” Parents don’t have to be told. They can be cut out of the process entirely.
Senator Jamie Pederson made it explicit: “Parents don’t have a right to have notice, they don’t have a right to have consent about that.” The result is a cruel choice for families: affirm a teen’s confusion, or risk losing contact altogether when the state hides that child in shelters to funnel them toward hormones and surgeries.
Real compassion means giving struggling kids and their parents an open door back to healing, not locking them into choices they can’t undo.
Protect the innocent
This isn’t about excusing violence. And it isn’t about vilifying any group.
It’s about creating space where a hurting young person doesn’t feel that death is the only escape from regret. That means real therapy, not just prescriptions. It means protecting children from toxic online spaces that feed despair. It means building communities where detransition is survival, not shame.
Two innocent children are dead. Their families grieve.
And so do the parents of a son who was led into an ideology that promised liberation but delivered despair. Westman bears full responsibility for his crimes. But we must also face the truth: a culture that chants “death before detransition” creates conditions where tragedies like this become possible.
True bravery is not dying for a lie. True bravery is living long enough to tell the truth.
Our charge is simple: protect the innocent, tell the truth, and build a future where no child believes death and mass murder is their only way out.
Nancy Churchill is a writer and educator in rural eastern Washington state, and the chair of the Ferry County Republican Party. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on Substack, X, and Rumble
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