From a Gallup poll and proclamations about the family in Arkansas and Tennessee, to a California election for state superintendent, the momentum of “Pride Month” is in retreat.
According to a new Gallup poll, first reported by Fox News, support for same-sex marriage peaked in 2022, after the landmark Obergefell court ruling in 2015, but it has dropped six percentage points since then.
That overall percentage is 65 percent thanks to unchanged support from self-identified Democrats, Gallup found, but it plummeted among self-identified Republicans from 55 percent just four years ago to 37 percent now.
The suggestion that a cultural counterattack is underway is not just coming from Fox and from conservative organizations claiming victory.
A sympathetic NPR story, published on the eve of Pride Month, describes how annual “pride” events are struggling this year because donations from previously supportive corporations have dried up.
The NPR story describes a loss of such donations in New York City, Salt Lake City, Louisville, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Orlando.
A related story at The Advocate, published last year at this time, named 14 major corporations that have ended or scaled back their “allyship” with “LGBTQ+” activists. Among the well-known brands named in the article are Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Lowe’s, Mastercard, Nissan, and Pepsi.
Ryan Helfenbein, a culture analyst at Liberty University, told American Family Radio he believes the pushback is coming after the public realized it was lied to after the Obergefell ruling recognized a 14th Amendment right to same-sex marriage.
“From the beginning, what we were told and what we were lied to about,” he said, “is that this was all about what goes on in the bedroom. This would never be about Main Street. This would never be about public schools.”
Regarding that equal-rights argument, AFR host Jenna Ellis said the "rainbow mafia" demanded the public accept and celebrate its wickedness and depravity, but there is now backlash especially when it comes to children and their innocence.
"It's actually really exciting," she observed, "to see this kind of renewed momentum, and this drive among Christians, to have the righteous desire to protect children."
Obergefell and the let-live lie
Back when Obergefell was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, the nine justices were told by the plaintiff's attorneys that recognizing a same-sex marriage would mean the legal right to visit a same-sex spouse in a hospital bed.
That plea came after lead plaintiff Jim Obergefell (pictured at right) faced legal problems under Ohio law to recognize him as the surviving spouse when his partner, John Arthur, passed away from ALS.
A heart-tugging argument over equality was a winning one for a little while, Helfenbein said, because it was presented as a “live-and-let-live” proposal by the other side.
“In reality, that's not how society really operates. The first loyalty, the first form of government, the first sense of belonging, is always to the family,” he argued. “It's the thing that God instituted even before he instituted the church or even civil government. He instituted the family.”
The term “nuclear family," which originated in the 1920s from anthropologists, refers to the Latin word “nux,” meaning the nut or core.
The term became more popular in the 1940s when a Yale anthropologist, George Murdock, studied hundreds of cultures around the world. His study called "Social Structure" concluded every family, whether it lives in a hut or a home, has a mother, father, and children.
Recognizing the nuclear family is behind the proclamations from the State of Arkansas and the State of Tennessee that were signed by their respective governors in a direct challenge to “Pride Month.”
On its X account, the Tennessee House Republicans posted an image (pictured at right) and stated the Tennessee Republican Party is celebrating "the backbone of our great state and nation: strong families."
Another problem with the live-and-let-live promise, Helfenbein said, is the LGBTQ activists are really bullies who never agreed to some sort of truce with their religious and cultural enemies.
“The LGBT movement has never left anyone alone. They've taken more and more and more,” he said. “They want all of society to be a part of this cultural movement.”
