Erick Erickson, editor-in-chief of the conservative blog RedState, said on Thursday that America’s acceptance of transgender people was creating an inability to discuss the “evil” that led to the Charleston, S.C. shootings.

Erickson’s comments, made on his radio show, “The Erick Erickson Show,” and in a blog post on RedState, addressed the Wednesday shooting that left nine people dead at a historic black church.

Erickson related the tragedy perpetrated by the “crazy” and “evil” white gunman, identified by authorities as Dylann Roof, to former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, who recently came out as a transgender woman. Erickson lamented that we couldn’t have a conversation about mental health and evil because of society’s acceptance of Jenner.

“We can’t have the conversations we need to have in this country about mental health and evil,” Erickson said. “We cannot have those conversations. It is impossible to have conversations like that in a society that can look at a 65-year-old male Olympian and say ‘Hey, he’s a girl now. We have to start calling him Caitlyn.’”

In his blog post titled “The Conversation We Won’t Have,” Erickson repeated the sentiment.

As a nation, when these things happen, we never have the conversation about real evil. We also never have the conversation about mental health. … Instead, we descend into partisan conversations where everything is political and neither side can concede or acknowledge the other’s points. Everyone and everything gets blamed while ignoring the actual person who killed. … A society that looks at a 65 year old male Olympian and, with a straight face, declares him a her and “a new normal” cannot have a conversation about mental health or evil because that society no longer distinguishes normal from crazy and evil from good. Our American society has a mental illness — overwhelming narcissism and delusion — and so cannot recognize what crazy or evil looks like.

h/t Media Matters