In Walt’s most recent sermon, he discussed the way we are to engage with the brokenness of the world as Christians. By way of example, he brought up the fact that June is Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community. In the face of something that is antithetical to God’s design for man, woman, marriage, and the family, how are we to respond? Are we to disassociate from this movement and “get off the grid?” Are we to throw ourselves into politics and revolution to overthrow the trajectory of this movement?
In the midst of a tumultuous political season, the New Testament authors say shockingly little about policies and political revolution. On the contrary, there is laser-like focus on faithfulness to God as we live as sojourners in this world. Walt charged us to sow faithfully into the work and the family in the place God has assigned to us.
To do this, we must have a clear understanding of what it means to be faithful. We need to be able to discern truth from error. Since this month is culturally recognized as Pride Month, we wanted to take a moment to give a brief background of Pride Month and then give some helpful resources that will help you understand how to engage as a Christian.
BACKGROUND
In 1967, members of the Genovese Mafia family found a new way to make money. Establishments openly serving alcohol to gay customers were considered by the State Liquor Authority (SLA) to be "disorderly houses," or places where "unlawful practices are habitually carried on by the public." Members of the Mafia saw a business opportunity in catering to the otherwise shunned gay population. So, they opened a bar called the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan. The primary patrons were drag queens, transgender people, male prostitutes, and homeless male teens. The Mafia members were profiting and bribed the local police precinct with a $1,200 monthly fee to turn a blind eye. With minimal police enforcement, the management easily cut corners on safety and hygiene while increasing profits. By 1969, it became the largest gay establishment in the United States.
Despite the alleged payoffs, 6 police officers raided the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969 and attempted to close the bar at 1:20am. They were met with resistance by nearly 200 patrons. Though pushed outside, the crowd continued to resist and grew in number to nearly 500 people. The crowd became increasingly violent and soon began to riot. The police officers barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn while rioters threw rocks and bricks and tried to burn the bar down with the police inside. Though the Tactical Patrol Force came and quelled the riot that evening, an even more violent riot broke out two nights later with nearly 1,000 people in the streets clashing with hundreds of police.
Fast-forward to 2013. In President Obama’s 2nd Inaugural Address, we heard this line: “all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.” In this string of “S” locations, President Obama was equating the starting point for the gay liberation movement (Stonewall Inn) with women’s suffrage (Seneca Falls) and civil rights for African Americans (Selma). In 2016, President Obama added the illegal bar alongside the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon on the short list of national monuments.
How did we get here?
Well, it was from this string of violent protests out of an illegally-operated, Mafia-owned gay bar that the so-called gay liberation movement was birthed. What we now call Pride Month was originally instituted to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots.
In Kevin DeYoung’s helpful article, he articulates the implications of using the idea of “pride” for a month that celebrates LGBTQ+:
The rallying cry of “pride” transformed their quest for culturewide moral legitimacy (a daunting task) into a personal plea for therapeutic well-being (a much easier goal). The debate would not be a head-on, rational discussion about whether the sexual revolution was acceptable by the standards of God’s Word, natural law, or Western tradition. The debate would not be about what was good for children, good for the public, or even good for those drawn to LGBTQ behavior. Instead, “pride” made the debate about feelings of personal acceptance. Changing the culture is hard work and takes a long time (about 50 years, it turns out). Convincing people to stop making other people feel bad is a much easier sell…How can anyone be against “pride” if the alternative is violent, morbid, relentless shame? Pride Month turns a moral argument—about which the Bible has clear and unequivocal answers—into a quest for personal self-acceptance, which is why many soft-hearted and muddle-headed Christians line up for the parade just like everyone else.
Is the only antidote to shame to embrace pride? It seems our culture insists that anything you feel should be validated as intrinsically good. One way we’re encouraged to deal with shame is to pretend that it’s not there. We know how to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). Given long enough, if we relentlessly push against our own consciences and God’s design, we will ultimately begin to call light dark and dark light (Is. 5:20). We will engage evil as if it were foolish to do otherwise - and, what’s worse, we’ll encourage others to do the same (Rom. 1:32).
RESOURCES
Is all shame bad? What is the biblical alternative to dealing with shame? We found the following article by Kevin DeYoung to be very helpful in navigating these questions in the context of critiquing Pride Month: “The indelible conscience and a month of “pride””
Carl Trueman also offered a helpful review of Pride Month from a Christian perspective in his article “Welcome to Pride Month, Christian: Social justice demands our opposition to its celebration and symbols.”
Additionally, you may want to go deeper into the question of “how did we get here?” You would be hard-pressed to find a more timely and helpful book than Carl Trueman’s Strange New World. Trueman outlines the history of Western thought to the distinctly sexual direction of present-day identity politics and explains the modern implications of these ideas on religion, free speech, and personal identity.
May God help us as we seek to live faithfully for him each day.