It’s Pride Month! Or, as the gang at Answers in Genesis would rather call it, shame month. Ken Ham has written a complaint about all the terrible things Christians are now expected to do while under the yoke of The Gays — it’s reminiscent of the bondage of the Hebrews in Egypt. I don’t know how The Christians will cope.
I should qualify that. I don’t think Ken Ham speaks for The Christians, that univocal mob he thinks he leads, but only for a subset that is terminally stupid and believes in the literalness of the Bible — which already marks them as gullible fools, since an oft-retranslated work of a multiplicity of authors can’t be “literal”. Also, like many of his recent editorials, he credits the assistance of AiG’s research team
in writing it. In other words, he didn’t literally write it, but you’re supposed to believe he did.
Today marks the beginning of what has become known as pride month—a 30-day celebration of sexual sin and sinful identities by the media, many corporations, and even cities and towns. As those who believe God’s Word and understand that what these individuals are celebrating is nothing short of bondage and slavery to sin, June can be a discouraging month. But it can also be more than that—it can be a month that tests our commitment to the truth of God’s Word.
You thought my opening paragraph was hyperbole, didn’t you? I must have been exaggerating, suggesting that living during Pride Month was comparable to living in bondage and slavery
. You should learn that these crackers are the most entitled martyrs in America, and they love telling you about their imaginary sufferings. The AiG research team
worked hard to come up with “plausible scenarios” of what could happen to you this month.
Consider these very plausible scenarios that may happen to you this June:
Excuse me, very “plausible scenarios”. You can tell they were shackled by the constraints of reality in this exercise, and while they wanted to tell you about the imagined scenario where Ken was handcuffed to a bed and a large hairy man with a whip and a massive dildo was approaching him, they had to tone it down a bit. For once, their imaginations had to be limited by reality, so this is the worst they could come up with:
• The school you teach at requires educators to put their pronouns in their bios and call students by their preferred pronouns.
The school I teach at does not require that, but they did add an option in the personnel database to specify preferred pronouns. We do have an expectation that our students be treated with courtesy and respect, which may seem like an unnatural obligation to the AiG research team
, but isn’t that demanding to those of us living in the real world. We’re also expected to learn our students names, you know, and that’s harder than learning the few available options for pronouns.
• The company you work for hosts a rainbow-adorned pride-themed family picnic.
Oh no. Family picnics are like a damnation party. Don’t do that. Or if you do, stomp about glowering at everyone in attendance and take one bite of the potato salad before spitting it out and cursing the company to hell. Or is it the bit about adorning the event with rainbows? Like the entrance to Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter?
OK, yeah, that does look hellish.
My university does have a family picnic late in the summer. They don’t call it “pride-themed,” though, because they don’t need to — we’re accepting of all sexual orientations in all events.
• A family member you love, and who professes Christ, changes their social media profile picture to a rainbow filter to be a good “ally.”
<gasp> There are Christians who are supportive of their gay friends? Man, they’re going to be horrified when they learn they have Christian family members who are actually gay. And if taking the least and most negligible action of adding a filter to a social media profile cause the AiG research team
to tremble in fear that they might have to compromise their love of Jesus, imagine if their beloved family member came out as queer, marched in a gay pride parade, voted for gay rights, and married someone of the same sex!
Life must be truly scary for these people if that is their nightmare scenario.
The list goes on of scenarios that may play out during the month of June that hit close to home and that force us as believers to make decisions as we apply our biblical worldview in very practical ways.
Wait. That’s it? The AiG research team
wracked their brains to come up with some hypothetical traumatic consequences of Pride Month, and that’s the worst they could do, so they wind up with that pathetic “list goes on” conclusion? Sure, the list goes on, but most of what the homophobes would come up with would be such patent bullshit that they had to stop.
They then take a stab at answering how they would address those ‘problems,’ but they’re so chickenshit that they can’t even hint at what should be done, so they turn it into a series of questions.
Do we add the pronouns to the bio?
Sure, why not? If you have a clear preference, why not help others address you as you want to be addressed? I put my preferred pronouns in my syllabi and on social media, especially since “PZ” is gender ambiguous.
Do we use the preferred pronouns?
Of course! If someone tells you their name is “John,” it would be discourteous to call them “Fred.” Same thing, if they ask you to use “she/her”. Is this even a question? Does AiG expect their employees to be rude to visitors?
Do we attend the picnic?
If you like picnics, yes. Don’t be afraid of a little rainbow bunting. Personally, I’m more intimidated by the expectation that I’ll have to engage in conversation.
Do we confront our family members about their “allyship”?
Confront
? Finally, the mask slips a little bit. There’s nothing to confront in that scenario, unless you’re a deeply bigoted asshole who wants to yell at a family member you supposedly love. You don’t have to do anything, other than maybe privately agree with them.
When a family member does the opposite, making homophobic statements, I either stop following them or, if it’s particularly egregious, blocking them. I don’t confront, unless maybe they show up at the rainbow picnic or start addressing me with the wrong pronouns. I’d love to know what the AiG research team
or Ken Ham do when their loved ones show more tolerance than they do.
Where do we draw the line? The thought of losing one’s job or being sued in the courts is heart-wrenching for us, but like Daniel, there is a line that we as Christians do not cross.
To this brand of evangelical Christian, I guess being polite or attending a picnic with colorful decorations is tantamount to being martyred in a lion’s den.
I do wonder if the AiG research team
intentionally gave Ken Ham a list of the most feeble conflicts they could imagine as a way to poke fun at the old man, or if they really are such a bunch of puckered sphincters that they actually believe those are mortal offenses.
“Pride Month”?
That’s when we feed annoying christians to a pride of lions, right?
It’s TRADITIONAL!
Only to the soulless ones who are already damned to eternal torment. The rest, they just lie to.
You might even being to understand how heart-wrenching it must have been for gay people to lose their jobs simply because of who they love.
Probably not.
It is a lot worse than just AIG pretending to be persecuted martyrs.
When you actually look at who is being persecuted and who the persecutors are, it is LGBTQIA+ kids and they are being abused and victimized by their parents, among which are fundie xians like AIG.
There are millions of homeless kids on the streets of the USA.
A huge number of them are gay or Trans!!! The numbers run at 20-40%.
A lot of these kids aren’t even runaways, they are pushouts. No one is looking for them and no one wants them back.
This is what happens when your cult ideology says you have to hate gay and Trans people and your kids turn out to be…gay or Trans.
Where I live at least the city has done something right. They have a residential youth shelter program that gets the kids off the street and gets them back into school. And, yeah, a lot of the kids are gay or Trans.
It’s been highly successful and the kids they rescue like it.
So, who are these parents who toss their own kids out into the street?
This is I’m sure, exactly what jesus would do. (Sarcasm here.)
This source, a shelter, is run by Catholics.
They say that 90% of those parents do so based on their religious beliefs.
Even a lot of xians aren’t this vicious.
(“Pope Francis has told parents explicitly not to condemn children with “different sexual orientations.””)
Why they didn’t even mention the trauma of being forced to go a block out of your way to Wallyworld to avoid even seeing the Gay Pride parade going right through the town.
The oppression of the Christians by the Gay is exactly like the bondage of the Hebrews in Egypt – both are imaginary.
Very similar to Stupid Idiot Dump crediting himself as the author while actually hiring someone else to write his pathetic books, such as “The Art of the Deal”, Twitter/X posts, and magazine articles for him.
If God hates gays and lesbians, why does God create so many of them? Checkmate, religious bigots!
The beam of Ken Ham giving a metaphorical handjob to an omnipotent being that can’t foresee its foremost enemies hijacking its symbol of future good intentions toward humanity as a symbol of pride. The performative spew is what his followers are looking for to wash away the motes of LGBTQ+ dancing in front of their eyes.
… rainbows? Like the entrance to Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter?
But the AE entrance uses a seven-colored rainbow, while the Sodom ‘n’ Gomorrah flag has only six (corresponding with the color-perception mechanisms of the human eye).
The seven-color spectrum description was nailed down by a Puritan named Isaac Newton, who picked that number for mystical/biblical reasons (and possibly folk tradition) even though it required inserting indigo between blue and violet (not actually seen in physical reality unless your perception prefers to divide up the shades of each primary color).
Anyway, Ken H & crew use the traditional/imaginary rainbow, obviously not the same as/better than the visible/gay one, so their entrance archway symbolizes “No
LGBTQIA2SPK&cpreverts welcome here!”Oops – apologies to all for closetag fail (shoulda been after “seen”) @ my # 11!!
Personally, I restrict my persecution of christians to sacrificing them to the aesir/vanir. Ukko, not so much; the gods of Finland do not require human sacrifices.
I’m sure Ham would be horrified to learn that there are gay and trans Christians and Christian churches that support them. Last time I went to the San Francisco Pride Parade, there were several Christian gay contingents. Glide Memorial’s Rev. Cecil Williams rode in the parade. The Tenderloin where Williams was the minister was one of the epicenters where homeless gay and trans children who were kicked out of their homes by their parents would end up. Glide provides food, shelter, drug counseling (a common adjunct problem), and suicide prevention. Holy Redeemer Church, the Castor’s Catholic parish church, also provides food, shelter, and counseling for homeless people, some of whom are gay and trans youths kicked out of their homes.
“NOBODY expects the Rainbow Inquisition!
“Fetch…the plush unicorn!” (Cue screeching ominous music)
If you ask me — but of course you don’t have to — I think the whole “Death in Venice” whodunnit singspiele subtext context conviction fiasco and whatnot from las papas fritas has (generally) been a real show of support and respect … lately. But please excuse all of the unintentional puns, at least more than you would excuse some of the intentional ones. They serve a higher purpose, purportedly. I mean, people are always late to one party or another, especially when their whole life’s work is apparently partying, but you can’t do much about the past other than see it for what it is. (“Water under the bridge” … sometimes, or not?) Whatever you say or don’t say, most people know they’ve got to manage their own affairs somehow, with or without others’ help in kind. As long as we can better recognize that sort of thing about each other more, I think that’s progress, lots of baby steps for billions of grown adults who love to be babies and treat each other like babies and take care of babies….
I guess we often do need to accept some combination of rough life lessons and encouragement from each other, no matter who we are, but I also understand that I’m often not going to be in the right mood to do it or the right person to talk about it, like everyone else. I suppose if you’re not getting something return that you think you need, let them know, whoever they are. If you are getting, let them know that you appreciate it! Easy. What else do you expect anyone to do with their lives, and how hard is it for this giant group of overgrown kindergartners to understand and clean up their behavior? We already have that answer prepared for you: it’s very hard. Don’t ask me what to do with that. Maybe all you have to do is just keep going through your daily grind, but please try not to get the rest of us killed in the process.
Personally, if I was in a mandatory sexual outing state and my outing of a student led to them ending up on the streets, I’d be horrified.
@9/cheerfulcharlie
Because, and I am not making this up, Calvinists justify dual predestination by asserting (with no proof as usual — and spot the false analogy here!) that “Just as God saves the Elect to demonstrate His mercy, he also fully, justifiably, and irrevocably damns the reprobate as a demonstration of His absolute holiness, purity, and goodness.”
Not. Making. This. Up. I really wish someone would light these people on fire as a “demonstration” of what they insist most of humanity will suffer for all eternity.
Give them something to really complain about: tax churches.
I take it that was meant to be a rhetorical question?
@ 18
Meh, I doubt it would do any good. Even as they were being debrided and fitted for skin grafts, they’d claim that not only will the torments of their Hell are worse than the real-life immolation they endured, but INSIST that the sinners will still deserve it while they they get to go to paradise.
You can’t win, and it frustrates me that atheists waste their time trying to debate these superstitious fucks or convince them to accept reality. They just don’t care.
Ah, but Gawd didn’t create homosexuals, that was Satan’s doing! At least that’s what I’ve gleaned from the Jesus-freaks.
As many have pointed out, Christian Gawd is such a contradictory creature. He is all-loving, yet will have you tortured forever if you step out of line, and that’s only because they “love” you so much. He is all-powerful and capable of bending reality to their will, yet he can be confounded by human free will and/or the machinations of his more likable opponent, Satan. He is supposedly all-knowing, yet he can’t conceive of a way to make his very existence irrefutably demonstrable to all of humanity beyond apocryphal stories and the claims of
grifting con artists and insane lunaticshis alleged clerics.I went to a gay bar once-it was horrible. They dressed me up like Judy Garland and forced me to sing show tunes!
@ 22
Oh, but you were adorable in that Dorthey Gale costume. Those pigtails were so cute.
“Where do we draw the line”? Around AiG, to keep these mad-brained religio-fascists away from the rest of us.
@ Akira McKenzie
“Ah, but Gawd didn’t create homosexuals, that was Satan’s doing! At least that’s what I’ve gleaned from the Jesus-freaks.”
And why does God tolerate Satan and his devils? If I was God, I would waggle my magic beard and make Satan and his devils do gooders, not evil doers.
Checkmate again, goofy Chrristians! If you were God, how would you deal with Satan?
{sarcasm} But it’s obviously Satanic. Rainbows are patterns of light. Satan is the Lord of Light. Therefore, rainbows are Satan’s work, and anyone adopting rainbows as their own symbols is proclaiming allegiance to Satan.{/sarcasm}
Or one could just remember that Jesus accepted Mary Magdalene as one of his immediate followers and remember her chosen… “profession.”
The only reason Pride Month exists is because of people like them!! I’m sure the irony is lost on them.
@ 1 Snarki
No we feed them to the cast of Cats, dahling.
I’m no expert in dogmatics but if homosexuality is a sin and homophobia is not, then God can’t possibly be all good.
Sorry, it’s a nice idea, but nothing in the NT actually implies that she was a sex worker.
The good thing is that you can avoid losing your job by not intentionally being an asshole to people you work with because you don’t like their identity or lifestyle. You can avoid being sued by not intentionally violating people’s civil rights. Treating people with basic respect is pretty easy, actually.
@Akira MacKenzie, #23: : )
I didn’t expect all the Girl Scouts marching in my smallish Washington town’s Forest Festival Parade to be waving rainbow flags this weekend, but they were. ‘Twas adorable. Also horrifying and sinful, of course.
What the heck is a “Sinful identity?” Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” So is it sinful to identify as a proud American man or woman from the land of the free?
Can we at least identify as eunuchs? That’s a Jesus-approved term.
I mean, I’m pretty sure Juneteenth is rather inspiring for certain Christian demographics. AiG might not have much to do with them though.
That’s recommended by almost every school at which I’ve taught. Mutual respect isn’t just polite, it makes teaching more effective. If you don’t bother to listen to your students’ preferred names and pronouns, why would they listen to you?
You probably don’t need to? If you’re an AiG fan, I’m pretty sure your family members already know how you feel about queer people. But if you’re hoping for a no-contact order to enhance your feeling of martyrdom, confront away!
Shouldn’t the rainbow really be at the exit of Ham’s Big Boat Mass Drowning genocide myth celebrating centre?
Oh and since a rainbow is a natural spectroscope how could they not have occurrred before the Holy Genocide by Flood event?
Also, yeah, what pretty much everyone else ahs already said here.
@33. Prax : Does the word ‘identity’ even appear in the Bible at all? Let alone in the snse of sexual identity or orientation?
The sin of Sodom as everyone here probly already knows was pretty much having Repugliklan / LNP / UK Tory party policies and approaches to those worse off in society :
Source : https://reformationproject.org/case/sodom-and-gomorrah/
A friend of mine in Pittsburgh sent me some pictures of the Pride Parade. Those evil gay people had a truck with a BUBBLE CANNON shooting BUBBLES all OVER THE PLACE!
This fun must not continue!
Christians have a bubble truck gap.
@Marcus Ranum #36
does that count as a technical?