Critical Queering

The Philadelphia Flyers’ Ivan Provorov declined to wear a “pride jersey” and participate in the team’s warm-up session on the team’s “LGBTQ+ Pride Night”. Mr. Provorov is a Russian Orthodox Christian and stated that, “My choice is to stay true to my religion.” For the next several days he was relentlessly vilified in the press as a bigot, a hater, and a homophobe. One TV sports analyst called for him to be sent back to Russia.

Jack Phillips owns the Masterpiece Cake Shop in Lakewood, Colorado. He is a talented artist in his craft, and a strong Christian. For the past 10-years, Mr. Phillips has been under an unrelenting lawfare attack from local gay and transgender activists who insist that he, as a participant in the secular marketplace, must be forced to design and make cakes that celebrate events that violate his religious beliefs. The first case, which began in 2012 involved the request to bake a cake to celebrate a gay marriage. That case went all the way to the US Supreme Court and was eventually decided in his favor. The very day that he won that case, a transgender activist filed suit to force him to design a cake to celebrate their “gender transition”. Thus far, Mr. Phillips has lost this case at the local and appeals court level, and it too will be headed to the US Supreme Court for a final decision.

It isn’t as if Mr. Provorov’s lack of participation in the Flyer’s pride celebration had any impact on the event, or that there are no bakers in Colorado that will make cakes to celebrate gay marriage or gender transitions. The point is to use either cultural shaming or legal pressure to ensure that there is no dissent from LGBTQ++++ orthodoxy and to establish that gay rights are to take precedence over religious freedom. These two events foreshadow a relatively new cultural phenomenon that is spreading far and wide: You shall participate in the cultural celebration of LGBTQ++++, or you shall not participate in our society at all. Comply or face consequences.

It turns out these cultural consequences are quite effective. The speed with which our culture has been transformed is breathtaking. In November 2008, I was living in Carlsbad, California and I remember driving through an intersection where every corner was packed with people holding up yellow and blue “Yes on 208” campaign signs. Cars were honking horns and people were waving as they drove through. Proposition 208 was a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The law was passed by a margin of 52% to 48% - in California! (It was quickly overturned by the state courts a few months later.) Now, just 14 years later, a recent Gallup poll shows that nation-wide support for same-sex marriage is at 71%. In these times of political division it’s hard to believe that 71% of Americans agree on anything.

While recently watching an NFL game I was shocked when a commercial for some type of pharmaceutical came on featuring two shirtless men passionately kissing. I confess, this elicited an explicit utterance which is not suitable for publication. But then I thought, this is just the next logical step in the progression of promoting perversity as normalcy and pushing the boundaries of our society’s sexual mores to limits that until recently seemed unimaginable. I’ve grown so accustomed to media showing men holding hands on a romantic beach stroll, or two women caressing one another and looking affectionately into each other’s eyes, I no longer think about the subliminal messages they are relentlessly pushing.

It's all part of the Narrative™. Marxist critical theories imposed on society by our elites, with the goal of destroying the institutional foundations of western culture.

What started as the cultural promotion of tolerance as the ultimate virtue, or the “live and let live” libertarianism of the 80s and 90s, has quickly evolved into a soft authoritarian demand for adoration. Acceptance is insufficient now. We dedicate a full month every year to celebrating pride. Major corporations offer special product lines, packaging, and marketing events to promote their pride values. Politicians of all stripes strive to be included in pride parades as part of their gauntlet to hold elective office. The lifestyles of those in the LGBTQ++++ community are to be valued, promoted, praised, and worshipped. They are admirable, glamorous, “stunningly brave”, and deemed virtuous by how they choose to identify. To promote any view that does not align with the Narrative™ is to espouse bigotry, hatred, and LGBTQ++++-phobia, and must be shunned.

The Bible quite clearly does not align with the Narrative™. This presents a problem for leaders in the Christian Church. They can either teach the traditional Christian worldview and risk being rejected, or they can accommodate the values of our culture, promote the Narrative™ and remain popular and relevant. Like the days of Daniel, believers are at a point where we must decide between following the God of the Bible or bowing before the golden idol. Will it be Christ or Ashtaroth?

Sadly, many Christians have chosen to follow the Narrative™. Entire mainline denominations have become “affirming”, which means they have evolved beyond ignoring sin to full-on promoting it. Their Asherah Poles proudly fly the flag, and their pulpits adorned with rainbow idols. But what they are affirming is forsaking people, who are loved by God, to be further enslaved in their fleshly yearnings, and living a life of lies. Affirmed but with misplaced hope, upheld in the false identity they have embraced, and bowing before the throne of self-desire.

This is not limited to progressive denominations. Popular “evangelical” pastor Andy Stanley recently gave a sermon in which he extoled the virtues of gay churchgoers. “A gay person who still wants to attend church after the way the church has treated the gay community …. I'm telling you, they have more faith than I do …. We have some things to learn from a group of men and women who love Jesus that much and who want to worship with us.” At a recent conference he stated, “We need to make room for gay men who choose to be married to each other in our churches because that's as close as they can get to a New Testament framework of marriage. I believe in gay people.”

Pastor Stanley’s beliefs deserve to be questioned. Evangelical churches are typically welcoming to everyone, as they should be. Jesus spent much of His time with sinners and the marginalized of His time, and that should be the model for the modern church. We should absolutely embrace those who struggle and are persecuted. But we must do this in Truth. Jesus never said to anyone – “I forgive you, go on living in your sin.” If the Truth is difficult or offensive to the someone who hears it, then perhaps the issue is with the hearer. If a pastor is teaching anything that does not align with the Truth, then that Pastor is lying.

The future of western culture is becoming increasingly clear. If the Biblical standard of marriage is nullified, why should there be any limits? In a nihilistic culture, there is no reason polygamy or polyamory shouldn’t also be embraced. Love is love, after all, and “it takes a village”. There are already fringe activists pushing conversations about the morality of pedophilia, and it’s just a matter of time before the conversations turn into toleration, and toleration into acceptance, and acceptance into affirmation, and affirmation into celebration.

Romans 1 is coming true before our very eyes - “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

The utopian future envisioned by those who push and promote the Narrative™ does not include the Church – at least not the Church that has Christ as its head. Those churches that trade Truth for the lies of the Narrative™ will be tolerated for a while, but at some point, people will realize their hollowness and irrelevance, and seek to fulfill their need to worship with something more self-gratifying. Their emptying pews are evidence that this is already happening.

Our progressive, post-Christian nation is quickly leaving us behind. In some respects, that’s okay with me because I don’t want to go where they are going. But Christ didn’t call for us to wave goodbye to our neighbors as they accelerate down the road toward Hell. He called for us to love them, and He commanded us to go and make disciples. For me, it’s time to start living that out; Loving my neighbors, making disciples, and embracing the consequences.