June Pride Month dates to the Clinton Administration. How is it that a month ostensibly dedicated to freedom is morphing into a month of demands, cultural repression, and even legal backlash?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #91 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
June Pride month has become a cultural tour de force. Despite LGBTQ+ advocacy groups proclaiming people who choose this lifestyle are somehow at extreme risk, their interest and ideology is making seemingly unstoppable headway at every level of society across the country.
No field of human endeavor in American life is immune from pressure to participate without reservation in a celebration of a percentage of the population’s decision to pursue immoral behaviors.
We celebrate Mothers on a given day and Fathers on another day. We salute Veterans on their day and remember their courage and sacrifice on Memorial Day.
Even the country’s birthday, July 4th, is, well, a day. LGBTQ+ lifestyle choices somehow rate an entire month of societal observance.
LGBTQ+ is the only group, or community, or movement, as its proponents now claim, that is rhapsodized for a decision to engage in sin. Think about it? Is there a day or month celebrating adulterers? The promiscuous? Pedophiles? No there is not. Only people who decide to express themselves sexually in an LGBTQ+ manner are socially celebrated.
We could say, “Pride, who cares? It’s a free country,” with the corollary that people already enjoy the liberty to choose any form of sexual expression, short of harming others. While Christians believe it is immoral, for example, to cheat on one’s spouse in an affair, or pursue sexual gratification outside of marriage, or engage in homosexuality, still, these behaviors are not illegal, and I am not arguing they should be.
But while “It’s a free country” may allow for individuals to pursue LGBTQ+ behaviors, including celebrating their own Pride parades or festivals—
it is another thing to turn that “free country” upside down by demanding unreserved, cult-like affirmation—no disagreement tolerated—of LGBTQ+ lifestyles, including Pride activities, transgender ideology in grade schools, blocking parents from being informed about their child’s trans choices, legally demanding transgender males be permitted to participate in female athletic events, and forcing social institutions to provide “non-binary” options in bathrooms, locker rooms, and much more. There is nothing “free” about any of these expectations, only authoritarian, tyrannical ultimatum.
“The concept of Pride Month has been heavily commercialized; many companies incorporate Pride Month imagery in packaging, commercials, press releases, social media, and so forth. Even within the LGBTQ community, some object to these developments, seeing them as insincere pandering.”
In Manhattan, surrounding the plaza at Rockefeller Center, 193 flagpoles each fly a “Pride” flag.
The US Army Military Police Corp issued a meme featuring a rainbow flag behind the symbols of each branch of the Armed Forces.
The Department of the Air Force published a social media meme saying, “Celebrate Pride Month,” featuring a rainbow background, the seal of the Air Force, and a soldier in silhouette saluting. No American flag is portrayed. What, one wonders, is the silhouette soldier saluting? It is illegal for an armed services member to salute anything but the American flag.
The U.S. Dept. of Education issued a Pride month rainbow colored meme saying, “Happy Pride Month.”
San Francisco Police raised a rainbow flag along with the American flag and stood at attention saluting both.
LGBTQ+ activists have been masterful in developing both their plan and their messaging, the latter of which often twists constitutional, political, and religious principles to make it nearly impossible to disagree without sounding like a so-called “hater.”
But Pride month is not a harmless expression of love, freedom, and happiness, as its proponents and sycophants contend. Pride is not about freedom or “see me,” or “you are welcome here.” All those who pursue LGBTQ+ lifestyles are already free, seen, and able to do whatever they wish in American society.
Rather, Pride is about disavowing moral restraint in the name of sexual liberation, more accurately described as licentiousness. Pride promotes an ideology that is anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-morality, anti-sexual fulfillment, anti-humanity-made-in-the-image-of-God.
Pride Month is modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and if this seems like an overstatement, I challenge anyone to watch video of a Pride parade in a major American city and tell me it is not a public orgy of vile wickedness far beyond anything Mardi Gras or Carnival have contemplated.
Pride, “an ideology that triumphs human desire and power over a meaningful, embodied human nature eventually ends up targeting the most vulnerable: women and children. This is evident in the absurd and nihilistic way women are no longer able to be defined or defended in everything from athletics, to locker rooms, to Supreme Court confirmations.”
“The direct harm is also evident in Queer Theory’s calculus that exposing children to adult sexuality is a necessary part of social liberation. Videos went viral this week of provocatively dressed men dancing while young children pressed cash into their G-strings at a “Drag the Kids to Drag Pride” event. In the name of Pride, Kellogg’s put cartoon characters on their cereal box urging kids to pick their pronouns and reminding them that no matter who they love, they’re too awesome to fit in a box. Also taking a knee in obeisance to Pride, WaPo featured a salvo for why ‘kink’ is for kids too.”
This is resulting in “heart-breaking yet predictable chaos and disruption of childhood. The rapidly rising numbers of minors seeking to hormonally halt puberty and mutilate their bodies before they are old enough to drive a car should convince us that something has gone catastrophically wrong and that, regardless of any particular person’s good intentions, this is far from a benevolent movement.”
Pride “is a creed that reduces and redefines the human person and calls them by their sin.”
“Pride month is not about human dignity. It is about human deification.”
“We need to raise and influence children to be so secure in their identity in Christ that the world can scream at them, throw temptation in the path and subtly condition them… and it will all land on infertile soil. Because they know that they were created in the image of God.”
“At least four strikingly sinister ironies define the secular celebration of gay pride month.
First, is the false advertising that says we are devoting merely a month to the celebration of homosexuality when, in truth, our culture demands the near-constant celebration of homosexuality every day and every month of every year.
Second, is waving the banner of ‘pride’ over a lifestyle choice that is transparently sinful…
Third, is the insistence from our sinful culture that anyone who opposes the infinite manifestations of the LGBTQ+ lifestyle is on the ‘wrong side of history.’…
Finally, the LGBTQ+ movement has attempted to steal from God himself, one of the most significant demonstrations of redemptive love in the Bible. When most people in our culture see a rainbow, they do not think of God’s patient determination to extend salvation to a sinful humanity but instead recognize a symbol of destructive sexuality.”
“The Christian responsibility in a confused culture…is to stand on the truth of the Word of God and on the grace of Jesus himself…The Bible says that Jesus came into this sinful world full of grace and truth (John 1:14). We must present ourselves to this sinful world in the same way.”
How can we respond to June Pride Month?
o Don’t hate, don’t be hateful—ever. Don’t speak the truth with anything but love, but by all means speak the truth. Only the truth of God’s Word can transform a sexually confused culture.
o Don’t participate. You need not attend Pride parades or festivals.
Certainly, do not take your children. If your workplace buys into Pride, you can opt for low key, polite and respectful ways to not participate.
o Learn whereof you speak. In other words, don’t “Just say No,” but Know why you say No, why you disagree, why, how, and what God’s Word offers that is immeasurably more hopeful than the message of false ideology coming from Pride activists. Know how to respond to non sequiturs like “love is love” with biblical understanding.
o Ultimately, Christians are called to be witnesses of the Way, the Truth, and Life (John 14:6; Acts 1:8).
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2023
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