I have a 24-hour rule I try to observe with breaking news stories. That is, I try to wait at least a day - until most of the facts are in - before sounding off.

But one thing became clear within hours of the heinous murders at The Covenant School in Nashville on Monday: The trans rights movement has become a cult.

And they expect the rest of us to play along with their make-believe world or risk being called transphobic.

Call me whatever you like. I’m done.I’m not playing the pronoun game when six people are in the morgue.

No sooner had the Nashville police chief confirmed that the killer identified as trans than the cult sprang into action.

Instead of expressing revulsion for what one of their own had done when she blasted the life out of three little children and three adults, trans activists began parsing news reports, ferreting out instances of “misgendering” of this biological female who “identified” as a male.

To them, calling a mentally ill female by feminine pronouns was a far greater sin than murder.

Check it out, even Andrew Sullivan - usually a thoughtful commentator - got in on the social media pronoun parlor game:

Worse, USA Today joined the cult, criticizing the lack of sensitivity toward the killer and The New York Times issued an apology of sorts for referring to the killer as a woman.

Frankly, if your biggest concern after a deranged monster kills children is that the news media used the person’s “dead name” - i.e. real name - or called her “she” instead of he, you need to re-evaluate your life choices, because your moral compass is broken.

The Federalist got it right. Here’s the lede on their story:

Three 9-year-old children and three adults are dead after a 28-year-old woman pretending to be a man opened fire in a small, private Christian grade school in Nashville on Monday. 

Factual and to the point.

In fact, the murderer was a 28-year-old mental case who thought she was a man.

That much we know. In the days ahead we’ll learn more about the killer.

It’s extremely rare for women to commit acts of mass murder. So I’m eager to find out if this shooter was full of testosterone, which can cause women to become aggressive and enraged. These pharmaceuticals do way more than grow facial hair.

The first question I’d pose to the Nashville coroner: Was the killer taking male hormones?

Look, I have argued for years that adults have the right to do what they please with their own bodies as long as they don’t hurt anyone else. My concern has always been to stop the mutilation - both surgical and chemical - of children.

If the law forbids minors from buying cigarettes and lottery tickets, it ought to also protect them from meddling parents and medical personnel determined to affirm their mental problems.

News reports show that Vanderbilt University has been enthusiastically providing medical interventions for minors who suffer from “gender dysphoria.” That’s one reason why Tennessee’s new law forbidding such interventions was badly needed. Yet trans activists are pointing to the law as a trigger for the murders.

Oh, please.

If you want to read a treatise on moral equivalency, have a peek at the embarrassing drivel an organization calling itself the Trans Resistance Network churned out in the aftermath of the Nashville massacre. No I won’t link to it.

In it, they actually claim there were TWO tragedies on Monday: The murder of six Christians, sure, and a “second and more complex tragedy that is Aiden or Aubrey Hale, who felt he had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others, and by consequence, himself.”

This is sick.

Oh, and these activists sternly remind the news media to “respect the self-identified pronouns of transgender individuals who come across your desk.”

Blah, blah, blah.

As if pronouns matter.

I have Audrey Hale’s pronouns right here:

Dead/Gone.