Christian Nationalist Can’t Decide Who He Hates More: LGBTQ+ People or the Poor
As I write this, it is still Pride Month, a.k.a. June. I spent the day at a Pride event in the city where my wife works as a teacher. It was a very small gathering at a picnic pavilion. No drag queens, no thumping dance music (unless you count La Roux’s “Bulletproof”), no merch tables. It felt like a family gathering: hotdogs on the grill, picnic tables set up with face painting and plenty of arts and crafts. I have seven temporary tattoos that I applied myself while my wife did a little decoupage, as one does at a Pride event.
As I sat there eating Skittles, kids came up to the table and asked if they could have tattoos, too. They thought I was a volunteer. I was more than happy to help. Most kids chose rainbows. At the face painting table, a kid maybe 9 years old asked for a bisexual pride flag. The next kid asked for a pansexual flag. A parent standing by was wearing a shirt that read, “God loves you in a gay way.”
I looked at my wife in wonder. Things sure have changed since we were kids.
I couldn’t help thinking of how anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives would see this altogether very wholesome and homegrown event as something negative.
For example, Christian Nationalist Pastor Paul Blair, who recently went on a rant against Pride Month on his “Liberty Pastors” YouTube channel.
According to Right Wing Watch, Blaire showed a photo of a child holding hands with an adult who is presumably his mother at a Pride event. The child is wearing a rainbow tutu and beads. “This is child abuse,” Blair said. “This person will one day stand before God and give an account, but the damage that she is doing to this young man and the likelihood that he is going to wind up on drugs and contemplating suicide because of his mother’s abuse.”
That is… quite a leap. If Blaire and people who think like him really cared about addiction and suicide, let alone child abuse, they would push for public policy that actually addresses these issues. But they don’t. Conservatives are big on “personal responsibility.” If you’re poor, it’s your fault. If you have an addiction, it’s your fault. If you have a mental illness, it’s your fault. God forbid that tax money should go toward, say, addiction treatment or the alleviation of poverty. Nope. God would obviously want tax cuts for the rich, which is Republican doctrine.
And one Blaire supports. “Here’s God’s design,” Blair said at an event in 2023. “It wasn’t for a federal welfare system; the family is supposed to care for the family. Parents raise their children and provide for them as they’re young, and then as parents get older, their kids are to honor their parents, which means to provide for their needs as they get old. Throughout Scripture, slothfulness and laziness is condemned as sin.”
He also recites a quote he attributes to Benjamin Franklin: “Hunger is a great motivator.”
It’s pretty callous to tell a hungry person that they should stop being so lazy. Last time I checked, Jesus would have given that person food.
Blaire then pulls up a photo of two dads with their kid on one of their shoulders. The dads are smiling and the kid is leaning down to kiss one of them. Blaire calls this “pedophilia.”
It makes me really angry to think of all of the kids who really are abused when people like Blaire call something like taking a child to a Pride event child abuse or a dad showing affection to his child pedophilia. How callous can you be to turn a blind eye to real suffering to punish people who don’t think like you?
He points to two smiling people in the background, referring to one as a “wench” and one as an f-slur. “They ought to be intervening and putting [the dad kissing his son] face down on the concrete for abusing this child,” Blaire said. “I can’t imagine that this is going on in the streets in the United States of America and there’s no one here that’s godly enough or courageous enough to protect this child from this. One day, these men and these accomplices to the crime will stand before God and they’re gonna give an account.”
And maybe Blaire is right. But something tells me that God is going to be much more concerned with how Blaire thinks it’s better to watch a person starve to death than to take a kid to a parade.
Read More
The Humble Hippopotamus: Michigan’s Next Pride Symbol?
The animals that represent American political parties are quite the menagerie. Most people know about the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant, but [...]
Michigan Rep. John James Seems to Think Trans Kids Are a Bigger Threat Than Guns
On Saturday, June 15, there were three mass shootings in the Metro Detroit area, where I live. At a house party in Lathrup Village, a gathering in Detroit and [...]
Ron DeSantis Hopes His Freedom Summer Will Outshine Pride Month
Greetings from sunny and fascist Florida!Yes, that’s right. I’m writing this column from the least LGBTQ-friendly state in the nation. My wife, son [...]
From Samantha's HIV Test to Stonewall's First Brick: How LGBTQ+ Individuals Engage with Conspiracy Theories
I’m rewatching “Sex and the City,” and there's so much that's hard to believe: Carrie affording her apartment on a columnist's pay; Samantha [...]
Bye, Felicia: Texas Democrats Choose Love Over Hate in Houston
It’s Pride Month! Cue the rainbow flags, the Pride parades, the guy in the neon green Speedo wearing a leather dog mask, the lesbians with the toddler [...]
To Enact Real Changes for Trans People, We Must Center Trans Voices
There are three stories that have recently passed my desk, each of which are unrelated, but together paint a very descriptive image of what's wrong with the way [...]
