The month of June can be a disappointing, discouraging, and at times, a sickening month for Christians and conservatives due to the non-stop, relentless promotion of pride, perversion, and public displays of hyper-sexualized behavior.
Let’s be honest. It’s not just a one-month campaign; it’s year-round, so let’s drop the formalities, and the talking points that the LGBTQ community needs more exposure and visibility.
Children are watching. Many of them have grown up thinking it’s all normal, natural, and even healthy because that’s what they’ve been told. Too many have been recruited, some have become activists while others have experienced depression driving them to attempt suicide.
Words have been redefined and used as weapons. Where’s the church? Where’s the resistance to this deadly, sinful ideology? Pride is an offense to God, and yet, some professing Christians support this.
The Bible states that “Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling” (Proverbs 16:18).
Ephesians 5:11 warns believers, “do not participate” in deeds of darkness, but rather, expose evil. The past silence of believers in America has been misinterpreted as consent of homosexuality and beyond. I believe today we’re seeing the consequences of Christians taking the path of least resistance.
How did we get here? There is a chapter in my new book, Assault on the Image of God, that details the extensive progression of this movement going all the way back to the 1950s. It’s a “Transgender Event Historical Timeline.”
In more recent history, Target and Disney are just two of the big corporations to push pride programming. Disney doubled down after losing hundreds of millions of dollars last year, its worst year since 1974. It hosts Pride nights in its theme parks and continues pushing LGBTQ ideology in its movies and TV shows.
Target has had Pride displays in its stores since around 2012, but in the last two years or so, Target’s stock price has fallen by more than 40%. Disney has also taken a huge hit which indicates more Americans are tired of the onslaught. But don’t think these corporate giants are laying off the demonic agenda or reversing course anytime soon.
The good news is Target is cutting back on the assortment of LGBTQ-Pride products in its collection to ‘only’ 75 items. Seventy-five is still a lot if you ask me, but they used to have a mind-boggling 2,000 Pride products a year ago. Two thousand!
Boycotts matter – though they are reducing, not removing displays and online products.
Another chain that may surprise you is Walmart and its new “Pride Always” collection. They have over 1,000 products including Pride notebooks, tote bags, fanny packs, pool floaties, more rainbow-colored products to celebrate the season including one t-shirt that declares, “Some people are gay. Get over it.”
Just weeks ago, Walmart presented two Hispanic homosexuals marketing the company’s latest line of clothing and stated, “We couldn’t be prouder of this year’s LGBTQIA+ founders & designers. Today. Tomorrow. Always. #PrideAlways”
Even small-town TV stations are anything but neutral in the culture war. One of our local “news” stations is again going all-in to promote Pride, stating: “…as you get ready to show your pride this year, consider shopping Walmart LGBTQ+ brands. Buying from brands that support LGBTQ+ individuals is something we should all do more of whether it’s Pride Month or not.”
Translation: we need to be queer all year and not just in June.
Walmart Chief Merchandising Officer, Latriece Watkins said last year the company had no plans to change its LGBTQ+ merchandise.
Smaller corporations, feeling the parent pushback perhaps, have scaled back on previous LGBTQ advocacy and no longer have a perfect score with the radical Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Apparently, some brands feel they are in a bind. What a dilemma.
GlobalData’s Neil Saunders recently said 297 businesses scaled back their LGBTQ advocacy this year and that retailers are more cautious about what causes they promote and how. Saunders states: “If you promote Pride, some people will be unhappy with it. If you don’t promote Pride, some people will be unhappy about that. It’s not a battle you can win completely, which is why some retailers and brands are taking a middle-of-the-road approach and keeping it moderate. They are doing some promotion but they are restricting it to things that they think are palatable and acceptable for most people.”
It seems more American consumers simply want neutrality. If we like a product, don’t push a religious or political ideology – and the cult of LGBTQ is both.
But even though some, and I do emphasize “some,” retailers and corporations are trying to play both sides by slightly reducing (not eliminating!) promotion of the perverse (Pride), we need to ask tough questions: has the damage already been done to an entire generation?
Does speaking against all this mass marketing and promotion really matter? You tell me.
According to the CDC, an astonishing 1 in 4 high schoolers now identify as gay, an increase of 15 percent from less than ten years ago. Meanwhile, thousands of children in the United States now openly identify as a gender different from their birth. Hormone therapy and surgical centers are increasing business as youth confusion, depression, STD’s, and drug abuse surge to historic and catastrophic rates.
This is a result of the infiltration of sexual deviation in government schools, the legislation of immorality, and the successful marketing and saturation of American culture.
How do we respond? Pastor and former President of Wesley Biblical Seminary, Dr. Matt Ayars insists the gospel is the only antidote to pride and sexual brokenness. He writes: “From a Christian perspective, Pride Month is harmful because it affirms, encourages, and celebrates what Scripture plainly identifies as sin, which is against God, nature, individuals, and communities. As such, sin is destructive and thwarts the generation and sustaining of life as God intends it. Pride Month is an act of rebellion against God, who deeply loves us and expresses such by prohibiting that which is against our well-being.”
This is not an argument over who is right or who is better; it is a life and death issue having both physical and eternal consequences. Hebrews 9:27 states, “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment…”
True believers stand against this evil agenda because of our compassion and concern for LGBTQ individuals and the fact they are lost, and they celebrate behaviors that are harmful and destructive. Such were some of you (1 Cor. 6:11). Love them enough to point them to tell them the truth and point them to the hope in Christ.
