Johnny the Walrus

Walsh is a critic of the LGBT community, and particularly the transgender community and sex reassignment surgery.[1] Walsh said on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News that he wrote the picture book because he believes that "Gender ideology is so absurd that they realize that if they want to convince people of it, they have to get to them when they’re very, very young and they’re not able to distinguish between fantasy and reality and make these kinds of common-sense judgments" and that "it's important to protect our kids from that brainwashing".[2]

In the book, Johnny is a little boy with an imagination who dresses up as a walrus by using spoons as tusks. When "internet people" find out that Johnny enjoys being a walrus, he is forced to decide between being a boy and a walrus, and he is not allowed to change his mind.[1][2]

Johnny the Walrus became the best-selling book in Amazon's LGBTQ+ category before Amazon recategorized it on December 10, 2021, to the Political and Social Commentary category.[1][2][3] In response, Walsh called the recategorization "an unconscionable attack on gay rights and a horrific example of homophobia and gay erasure".[3] GLAAD, an LGBT media monitoring organization, had previously called for Amazon to remove the book from its LGBTQ+ category.[3] Also on December 10, Target removed the book from its online bookstore.[3]

On December 11, 2021, right-wing media personality Ashley St. Clair accused Walsh of stealing the idea and plot for Johnny the Walrus from her children's book Elephants Aren't Birds, which was published in July 2021.[4]

Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the book "hilarious".[2] TheBlaze called the book "an effort to push back against radical gender ideology which defies biological reality".[5] The LGBT website PinkNews called the book "hateful" and "transphobic".[5]