Pride Month, a celebration of same-sex attraction and LGBTQ culture, traces its roots to riots at a gay bar in lower Manhattan in June 1969. A year later, there was an organized “Pride” march in New York City.
Thirty years later, Pride Month became a federal proclamation signed by former president Bill Clinton.
Now it’s an explosion of colors, its most recognizable symbol, the rainbow, being God’s promise to protect the earth from destruction by water.
Corporations have followed the government’s lead and advance the agenda through advertising and their consumer product line.
“There’s a big difference between what people do in their private lives and the way that Pride as a political movement is being forced on the entire society," Delano Squires, a research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, said on American Family Radio Monday. "Pride at this point has the force of the state, has the media behind it, the financial might of the private sector and corporations."
Despite all of that power combined to promote it, homosexual activists still claim they are victims of society. That anger is most often directed at Christianity.
“Christian resistance to the gods of Pride is interpreted as, ‘Oh, you guys hate homosexuals and gays and lesbians and transgender people,’ and that's not the case at all,” Squires said.
Squires, a father of three, told show host Jenna Ellis the Christian response should be to pray for people who choose the alternate lifestyle “to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ." In the meantime, he said, we should educate our children to what is right in the eyes of their Creator.
“Someone's values will always be imposed in the public square," he observed, "And I think believers need to begin to get serious about discipling and catechizing our own children, because, if we don't, we already see what the Left believes when it comes to some of these most bedrock issues."
Government-approved support for the Pride movement isn’t limited to the boundaries of the United States.
“We even enforce our Pride values on other nations through our embassies, and obviously all of that is backed up with the threat of military force,” Squires said.
Can your church 'stand on biblical principles'?
In the radio interview, Squires observed that Christians need to be confident on where God stands on these issues and have a strong enough foundation in his Word to know when they’re being led astray. That foundation includes the church pastor, he said, who are influential but can lead people astray. So Christian believers should have the knowledge to question a pastor, and even leave a church, if necessary.
If a pastor and the church congregation cannot biblically define a man and a woman, and marriage, Squires warned, and if you as a church member cannot push back, "you are going to be moved,” Squires said.
Some Christians succumb to an idea that they can love God’s children better than he can.
“I remember one pastor, a conservative evangelical, who said that he would engage in pronoun hospitality when talking to a man who believed he was a woman," he recalled. "We’ve seen it all across the country with politicians, even some pastors.
Conservatives must learn from 'Obama Effect'
Christians also should not expect a secular government to protect their biblical values. Squires addressed this topic in a commentary piece for Blaze when he warned Donald Trump supporters, who remember the former president’s pro-Christian decisions, should not expect him to be the champion who pushes back the Pride agenda. Squires wrote:
As June begins the millions of Christians who think Donald Trump is the only person who can stop the spread of “Pride” throughout our culture may want to temper their expectations. I’m not sure whether the former president’s base is ready to reconcile hopes of getting drag queens out of K-12 schools with the prospect of a Lady Maga performance at the next inauguration ball.
Conservatives are in danger of falling victim to the “Obama Effect,” the blind loyalty to a political candidate that makes people minimize or abandon their pre-existing principles. Trump’s Christian base voters should consult the religious backbone of his Democratic predecessor for a window into their potential future, Squires wrote.
Back on the AFR show, Squires said the “Obama Effect” left black pastors, who were resolute in their belief in the biblical definition of marriage, in a difficult spot when President Obama’s position began to shift.
“What Obama was to the Left, Trump is to the Right in terms of that singular figure, often described in Messianic terms,” Squires said.
Squires describes Trump’s political ideology as “at best center left.”
Any pro-Christian decisions that could result from a second term for Trump would be the result of people around Trump and not Trump himself, he predicted.
“I’m from New York. I know a New York liberal when I see one," he said of Trump. "Conservatives should be guarded against allowing themselves to be pulled to the Left because of (Trump’s) personal convictions on the matter."
