In case you have been in a coma for the past few weeks, June has been designated as “Pride Month” by almost every major corporation, every government entity, every university, Hollywood, and the media. Every store seems to be selling “pride” merchandise and the rainbow sign is ubiquitous. What does Pride Month celebrate, exactly? Simply the radical LGBT agenda and the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, non-binary, gender-fluid, and the other seventy alternative lifestyles.
One thing often overlooked by “pride” supporters is that their actions are a direct attack on traditional Christianity and Judaism, which both clearly oppose the LGBT agenda and LGBT lifestyles. These religions do agree with pride supporters that members of the LGBT community are to be respected and valued; indeed, Christianity and Judaism go even further than this by calling their believers to actually love such people as they are made in the image and likeness of God. However, traditional Christians and Jews diverge from pride supporters by condemning homosexual acts and rebellion against the givenness of biological sex; both the Old and New Testaments clearly teach that these things are disordered and sinful. (For example, see Genesis 1:27, 19:1-38, Leviticus 18:22; Matthew 19:3-5, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:10.) Love the sinner yet hate the sin because you love the sinner.
One important question then looms: If Christians and Jews make up roughly 70% of the American population and practicing members of the various LGBT communities make up roughly 5% of the American population, why are so many institutions in America willing to brazenly insult 70% of the population for the benefit of only 5% of the population? Indeed, why are so many American institutions and people, who rabidly support tolerance and non-judgmentalism, falling over themselves to attack Christians and Jews?
Several possible answers exist. The first one focuses on “religious” believers. Perhaps the number of true religious believers (i.e., those who actually believe what the Bible teaches) is less than 70% of the population and, hence, the real disparity in numbers between believers and LGBT individuals is negligible. That is, some people who say they are “Christian” or “Jewish” may not, in fact, be so. For example, maybe many believers do not know what their faiths teach, especially regarding moral issues. It is true that many churches and synagogues often do a poor job of teaching the faith to their members, often specifically downplaying demanding moral teachings that require self-restraint and sacrifice for fear of losing members. However, with the cultural wars over the past few decades being mainly fought over sexual and identity issues, how Christians and Jews could not know the biblical view of LGBT issues seems almost impossible. Or maybe many believers know what their faiths teach regarding morality but openly disagree with it. In this case, they are Christians or Jews “in name only” and what in earlier times would be called “heretics”; thus, they should not be counted as true religious believers. If we assume that the ignorant and the heretical make up half of the “religious” population (which corresponds roughly with a Gallup poll showing that 37% of Americans are “highly religious”), we are still left with a traditional religious population that is still over seven times larger than the LGBT population. Again, why are so many people willing to demean the larger group?
The second possible answer focuses on the groups supporting pride month. The analysis here is similar to that of believers. Perhaps the people running these groups do not know what the Bible clearly teaches regarding LGBT issues. If some alleged “Christians” and “Jews” do not even know what their religions teach, how can we expect leaders in business, government, academic, and the media worlds, who may not be highly religious, to know what the Bible teaches? But again, after thirty years of the culture wars, for people to not know what the Judeo-Christian positions on LGBT issues are seems a stretch. But even if these people are truly ignorant of what Christians and Jews believe, then they are poor leaders who should be fired as they are failing at the number one rule of marketing: know your potential audience (shoppers, students, movie goers, etc.). Or perhaps the leaders of these groups do know the religious positions of Christians and Jews but openly oppose them. Opposing a much larger group of potential customers to support a much smaller one makes sense only if pride supporters 1) grossly underestimate the number of true Christian and Jewish believers; 2) believe that Christians and Jews will ignore their beliefs and still buy their products, watch their movies, attend their universities, etc.; or 3) are so wedded to the LGBT agenda that they do not care what potential customers think. But in all these scenarios, the result is the same: these leaders are openly choosing to insult the beliefs of traditional Christians and Jews.
Whichever of the analyses above regarding believers or pride supporters ends up being correct, the fact remains that businesses, governments, universities, Hollywood, and the media are openly showing contempt for the beliefs of religious believers by supporting “pride” month. What should traditional Christians and Jews do in response? We can do several things. First, we need to educate these groups on what we believe regarding LGBT issues. We need to write letters to and meet with store managers, theater owners, boards of directors, university officials, movie producers, local, state and federal government officials, and local reporters to let them know what we believe and why. Second, if this fails to produce results, we need to then publicly confront these groups that are actively opposing our beliefs. We need to write letters to the editor, organize boycotts of unfriendly groups and “buycotts” of friendly ones, and protest in front of places of offending business. We need to vote out politicians that support the LGBT agenda and publicize on social media and elsewhere those shows and movies that offend our faith. And, most importantly of all, we need to commit, or recommit, ourselves to our God and our faith traditions and to leading lives of holiness. If we do these things, if we make our voices heard and let our wallets do the talking, if we truly live the faith we profess, then we can and will make a difference.