Josie Luetke:
Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey
The Chosen, a wildly popular television series about the live of Jesus and His disciples, got into hot water last year because one of the members of the film crew was caught sporting a Pride flag on his equipment while on set.
In the resulting brouhaha, co-founder and co-CEO of The Daily Wire, Jeremy Boreing, condemned his own company’s coverage of the story as reeking of “‘purity death spiral’ politics.”
Certainly, one ought to be mindful not to become self-righteously preoccupied with perfection as the Pharisees were, but far more common in this day and age, I think, is a tolerance for merchants and money-changers in the Temple.
Some Chosen actors took to X (formerly Twitter) to defend the flag, with one claiming, “There are gay Christians, trans Christians, straight Christians, liberal Christians, conservative Christians, etc.”
That many Christians are confused is hardly revelatory. What’s noteworthy is the response of creator and director Dallas Jenkins, who said, “I don’t celebrate pride. I don’t celebrate pride month. I don’t celebrate the pride flag,” and yet still defended its presence, saying, “we don’t police individual workplaces or social media.”
Leaving aside the question of whether they should or not, would Jenkins’ response be the same if it was a pentagram or the goat-headed Baphomet that this crew member was parading around set? “The rainbow flag is different,” one might rebut, and the prevalence of this nonchalance or naivety is precisely the problem I wish to pin down.
Perhaps it is different, but a symbol celebrating the deadly sin of pride (also, lust) ought still to provoke the hasty retrieval of holy water, frantic crossing, and murmur of prayers for protection. Remember that the Devil operates through deceit. If “Catholic” schools began sticking pentagram-sealed “Safe Space” decals in every classroom, at least faithful Catholics would know to flee. However, because the LGBTQ movement has co-opted the beautiful and awe-inspiring rainbow—a sign of God’s covenant—to encourage a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance, many faithful Catholics can put off a confrontation with our culture for another day.
If they aren’t forced to admit that the foxes are in the henhouse, they won’t have to fight the foxes.
Is it any wonder that we have a hard time convincing school boards not to fly the pride flag when our allies just shrug off its infiltration behind-the-scenes of highly influential Christian media?
I don’t have a particular vendetta against The Chosen; the controversy (or attempt to quell it) just illustrates my point well. Though too many Christians celebrate Pride, pertinently, too many Christians tolerate it.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York received flack in February of this year for enabling profane behaviour during a funeral for transgender activist “Cecilia Gentili.” The rector, Fr. Enrique Salvo, only said that they “had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way,” but did not explain why neither Fr. Edward Dougherty nor Fr. Andrew King, put a stop to the scandal during the service—as prostitution, transgenderism, and drag were celebrated and the deceased was bequeathed a slew of blasphemous titles, including “St. Cecilia, mother of all whores.”
Perhaps this example is not the best; even Fr. James Martin, notorious for his support for the LGBTQ agenda, recognized some of the actions as “disrespectful.” Perhaps this is just cowardice rather than tolerance.
In your outrage, though, I’ll point out how many supposedly conservative organizations and media choose to platform trans-identified commentators like “Julia Malott,” “Jenn Smith,” and “Blaire White,” because they happen to be decent enough to criticize the indoctrination and sexualization of children.
Also quite common is the tacit acceptance of homosexuality, in favour of waging a seemingly more winnable war on transgenderism. The “right kind of gays,” like Dave Rubin, Sue-Ann Levy, and Gays against Groomers, are enthusiastically welcomed into the fold by self-congratulatory right-wingers relieved to be officially not homophobic.
Even the Vatican’s latest declaration on human dignity, Dignitas Infinita, fails to plainly condemn homosexual activity, thought it criticizes gender theory and sex-change (along with “the drama of poverty,” “war,” “the travail of migrants,” “human trafficking,” “sexual abuse,” “violence against women,” “abortion,” “surrogacy,” “euthanasia and assisted suicide,” “the marginalization of people with disabilities,” and “digital violence”). It only reiterates that no one should be unjustly discriminated against on grounds of “their sexual orientation.”
Again, I’m not trying to gate-keep or insist that our spokesmen be beyond reproach, but we do need to be careful about who we’re treating as authoritative. Weirdly, when it comes to discussions about sexuality, those “conservatives” with LGBTQ bona fides are considered extra authoritative, because of “lived experience,” I guess. While true for those who are repentant, a refusal to relinquish a sin is reason for caution.
We also need to be careful about the concessions we make, and how eager and quick we are to make them.
Granted, it wouldn’t make sense to focus on whether same-sex adults can get “married” or not, when the debate has “evolved” to whether or not kids can consent to mutilation and sterilization.
We’re forced to the frontlines, to fight whichever increasingly ludicrous battle presents itself, but we must also ask ourselves how we got here.
We lost the debate. We ignored the sexual design of man and woman. We put our own will before God’s.
As Dignitas Infinita correctly identified, “Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.”
The political dimension of the debate is somewhat of a distraction. This is not a left versus right referendum, but an up versus down referendum. The sort of evil we see now—ever more perverse avenues for sexual gratification, sexual experimentation on minors, and the collective clamouring of millions to protect this wickedness as a human right(!)—cannot be accidental. Millennia of evolution … for what? Mankind just to suddenly throw out their prized brains and bodies born from ancestors who beat the odds of natural selection? The internet brings the accumulated knowledge of generations to our unique fingertips, and for what? Mankind to reject the truth right before our eyes, and ingrained in every cell of our bodies? That we are men and women, different and complementary by design?
Explain that one, atheists, because I can only understand this delusion as Satanic. What else—or who else—could instill such self-hatred, but Satan, who hates God, and thus hates man for bearing His image and likeness?
So, we become goat-headed or fox-headed or just pig-headed, and nobody even realizes we’ve lost our human face, because all we see is rainbows, and the chickens are being eaten.
