Pride Month goes out with a whimper
As a follower of Jesus, I believe in treating every human being with civility and grace. And to be quite specific, I believe in loving my LGBTQ+ neighbor as myself. At the same time, because I care for the greater good of society and believe that God's ways are best, I oppose many of the goals of LGBTQ+ activism. That's why I was glad to see a much-more diminished version of Pride Month in 2024. The pushback, which I have been expecting for years, continues to grow.
Last year, things were so over the top and in your face that the longtime gay ally Piers Morgan asked, "Have we gone rainbow crazy or is Pride Month more important than patriotism?" And in response to a challenge from a gay comedian, Morgan answered, "I'm not triggered by a rainbow flag. I'm triggered by the fact that everywhere that I go for a month everything has to be a rainbow flag."
Last year, things got so extreme with Target's "tuck" bathing suits for males who identified as females (including children) that Joe Rogan commented, "When I go to Target, I don't wanna see like [expletive] tuck pants. They're designed to help you tuck your [expletive]. Like, hey, that's not normal."
Last year we were also in the thick of the Bud Light boycott, with Rogan calling the so-called "transgender influencer" Dylan Mulvaney "a confused person." As for Kid Rock, he let his gun do the talking (before adding some choice expletives).
Already, by the end of last year, Kid Rock had softened his stance, saying that Bud "'deserved a black eye and they got one' for the partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, but then added he's over the boycott. 'So, do I want to hold their head underwater and drown them because they made a mistake? No, I think they got the message.'"
It would be hard to miss a message that cost you more than 1 billion dollars.
Target got the message, too.
As CNN reported in May, "Target is limiting the number of stores that will sell LGBTQ-themed merchandise for Pride Month in June following a boycott from right-wing activists last year that took a toll on the brand's bottom line."
Indeed, "This year, Target said it will sell only Pride-themed 'adult apparel' and home goods 'in select stores, based on historical sales performance' – a drastic reversal for the chain that had typically sold the items in many of its U.S. stores for the past decade."
More broadly, CBS recently reported that, "this year, public-facing Pride campaigns at some of the world's largest brands were quieter than usual. At other companies that previously had them, they were completely absent. Fewer public campaigns mean less visibility, which LGBTQ advocates and consumers in the community say can be dangerous in myriad ways."
It was also this year that "Harry Potter" author (and longtime gay ally) J.K. Rowling took on the country of Scotland – and won.
As reported by the BBC in April, "J.K. Rowling has challenged Scotland's new hate crime law in a series of social media posts – inviting police to arrest her if they believe she has committed an offence."
According to the law, "A person commits an offence if they communicate material, or behave in a manner, 'that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive,' with the intention of stirring up hatred based on the protected characteristics," which include "transgender identity."
In response, Rowling posted a series of comments on April 1, all with pictures of men who identified as women, before explaining, "Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them.
"In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women's and girls' single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women's jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex."
In response to Rowling's posts, Scotland did nothing.
Leading up to last week's presidential debate, LGBTQ+ activists issued a dire warning, stating, "This will be an enormous slight to our community if LGBTQ questions are not asked during this debate. Our community is deeply affected by where these candidates stand."
Yet the candidates were not asked a single question relative to LGBTQ+ concerns, although the topic of abortion came up a number of times. This was duly noted by LGBTQ+ publications, such as the Washington Blade.
For good reason even tennis great Martina Navratilova, herself an out and proud lesbian, could say, "I know I'm on the right side of history" in calling so-called transwomen athletes "cheats."
It's hard to argue with reality.
And so, the pushback continues to gain ground as radical activism continues to lose steam and more and more Americans, regular people who are not bigots or haters, are saying, "Enough already."
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