Dan Phillips, a Christian pastor and sometimes blogger, recently posted a letter he sent to his congregation to help parents explain Pride Month to their children.
The letter (read it in its entirety below) was posted on June 5 on the Pyromaniacs blog, which is hosted on the Google-owned Blogger platform. It was a thoughtful letter with sound biblical advice for families trying to navigate the rainbow-saturated month of June. In fact, I forwarded it to my son and daughter-in-law and told them to bookmark it for when those questions come up with our granddaughter, as they inevitably will.
Not long after the letter was posted, Google/Blogger stepped in and censored the post. If you try to access the page now, you will see this:
That’s because the powers that be at Google deemed it hate speech:
Except now Blogger has deleted my 𝗣𝘆𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗰𝘀 post "𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘯 '𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩' — 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯," because they deem it "𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵." https://t.co/ga62b5VydH pic.twitter.com/dJ83afLgEc
— Dan Phillips (inspired by a largely true story) (@BibChr) June 8, 2023
Not only that, but the post has been scrubbed from archiving sites like the Wayback Machine and Archive.ph. It has also been disappeared from Google Search. And Blogger apparently even removed it from the backend of the site—a scary development that I’d not heard of before.
Phillips told PJ Media:
After about seven years without a post, I posted a copy of a letter I sent to the congregation I serve in Houston, Texas. I wanted to help parents talk with their children about the ubiquitous “Pride Month” intrusions. Then I followed up with a sermon. But someone flagged it to Blogger, where it was ruled that my post was “Hate Speech.” Their definition: “content that promotes or condones violence against or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against an individual or group on the basis of their …sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.” This, of a post that literally says “we don’t hate people who want bad things…. We love people who don’t know Jesus…” But today, to believe in the actual Jesus is to be called a “hater.” You will find my letter posted elsewhere, unedited.
He also had some salient questions for Blogger/Google:
Here's the Q I'd like to ask Blogger.
Given that th Christian pos'n is:
-Homosexuality is sinful, and therefore ultimately deadly;
-Jesus Christ saves any and all repentant sinners; and
-It is hateful to tell homosexuals they have no hope
…is Christian speech forbidden?— Dan Phillips (inspired by a largely true story) (@BibChr) June 8, 2023
In follow-up tweets, Phillips said,
The letter I wrote specifically forbade hatred and specifically enjoined love, prayers, and willingness to help. If a simple statement of the old-as-the-Bible Gospel of Christ — that sin kills, that we are sinners, and that Christ saves repentant sinners — is “hate speech” requiring censorship, then Christianity must be censored. What is real hate speech? Real hate speech is telling people that they are doomed to live hopeless lives as slaves of destructive sin. It is telling them that other sinners can be redeemed and freed in Jesus Christ, but not them. It is telling them that their only hope is paper-thin rationalization and censorship of all contrary views. That’s hate-speech. To say nothing of the speech that condemns and slanders Christians for simply telling the truth about Christ’s dying, redeeming, saving, transforming love.
(You can listen to Phillips’ sermon on the topic at Copperfield Bible Church here.)
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Google and the other Big Tech giants are happy to promote content with a scrubbed-down version of Jesus — a hippie-dippie who only cares about love and winks at sin. But the real Jesus of the Bible? The one who condemns sin and talks about hell? He has increasingly become verboten.
We’re in a very scary place right now in America, where the “faith once for all delivered to the saints” is considered hate speech and censored by the world’s most powerful tech company. Christians are told to “contend” for that faith,” yet we are increasingly sidelined by the culture and its rainbow idols.
But please understand: This is nothing new. Jesus warned that the world would hate Christians just as it hated him. Throughout the history of Christendom, persecution has been the rule, not the exception. Now that pagans, heathens, and other God-haters are running the country (and that includes many in the so-called conservative movement), expect the attacks, censorship, and discrimination to get worse.
But take heart, Christians. The God who said that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” also said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He also said that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” upon the church of Jesus Christ.
Parents, your job is to inculcate your kids with the truth of God’s word. Saturate their lives with it. Memorize scripture with them, take them to a Bible-believing church, and model your faith boldly and without apology. The world wants your children. Do everything in your power to protect them from the “flaming darts of the Evil One.” The sword of the spirit—the Word of God—is your most effective weapon.
Here’s the letter that Google doesn’t want you to see:
Dear CBC parents,
We all wish we could shelter our children from the harmful and corrupt elements of our God-hating culture. Apart from living under a rock, this is becoming increasingly impossible. The homosexual-and-much-more agenda has increasingly intruded itself into every area of American life, from the media to sports to department stores to fast food restaurants and coffee shops.
I am writing to try to help you talk to your children. I’ll write it as one side of a conversation. Use any part that helps you address matters that arise in your children’s world.
You asked me what “gay” and “homosexual” and “trans” means, and why you suddenly see the word “Pride” everywhere. I’m glad you asked me! Let me try to explain it to you.
We’ve read Genesis together. You know that God created the world as a perfect, wondrous place. And you know in Genesis 1 He created Adam and Eve without sin, or any of the awful things sin does when it gets inside someone. Adam and Eve loved God and were happy with themselves, with each other, and with their world.
But then Satan came along in Genesis 3, and he got them to be dissatisfied with what God gave them. He tried to make God look like He didn’t care, and like He didn’t really want what was best for Adam and Eve. Satan tried to convince them that they knew better than God what was right and good, and what was best for them. Now you know, that is pride. Pride blows us up like balloons — all big and impressive looking, but with nothing but air inside. So in their pride, Adam and Eve rebelled against God.
When they did, they died inside. The happiness and wholeness they had were gone. They weren’t happy with themselves, or each other, or their world — or God. So they had to find ways to try to make themselves feel happy, and to hide the guilt they had inside. They felt guilty, because they were guilty. They had sinned against God, their Maker.
All those words you asked me about come out of this. They are all about people dead and broken by sin, still trying to find happiness by defiantly shaking their fist in God’s face and pretending they’re smarter than God.
You remember that God made Adam and Eve, a man and a woman. That’s what sex means — it means being a man, or being a woman. People say “gender” today, but gender is really a grammar-term, about words, not people. “Sex” is the better word here. How many sexes did God make? That’s right: two. And when God saw it wasn’t good for the man Adam to be alone, what did God make for him, in Genesis 2? That’s right, a woman, named Eve. So God invented marriage, when a man wants to be with a woman in a special way, and a woman wants to be with a man — only the two of them, with each other.
But all of us children of Adam are sinners, and sin ruins all our good desires and feelings that God gave us. Sin makes us want what we shouldn’t want, and it makes us not want what we should want.
So some poor sad men don’t want to have a woman as their wife. They want another man. And some poor sad women don’t want a man, they want another woman. They are ashamed to want these things, they feel guilty. When we feel guilty, we can only do one of two things. We can go to God, confessing our sins and finding His forgiveness and help. Or we can pretend that we’re okay, and just keep holding to our sin. When people want to pretend these broken, wrong desires are okay, they call it being “gay,” pretending to be truly happy. But they don’t have peace with God, and they won’t be happy when God’s patience comes to an end and He judges them.
And then there are other people so broken by sin that they aren’t willing to be what God made them. God made them a man or a woman — remember, He only made two sexes — but they want to pretend to be something else. Men want to pretend to be women, and women want to pretend to be men. Of course, we are what God made us, and no one can really become the opposite sex. They may try very hard, and even hurt themselves, but it just can’t be done. Still, sometimes we keep pretending, even though it really harms and shames us to do so. And when men or women pretend to be the opposite sex, they call it being “trans.”
So they took the whole month of June to pretend together that all these wrong and harmful things are good, and they call June “Pride” month. Like the Bible says, their “glory is in their shame” (Philippians 3:19).
But things are what God calls them, aren’t they? Not what we call them. So men are always just men, women are always just women, and we can only really marry someone of the opposite sex from us. A man marries a woman, a woman marries a man. Anything else can never really be marriage.
Isn’t it sad to think about people so badly wanting things that are bad for them? Isn’t it awful that what people think will be good for them is really bad for them? But that’s what sin does. It does that to all of us! It’s why children want to disobey their parents. It’s why parents sometimes fight each other, or don’t do such a great job being parents. Sin is behind everything bad that we do or feel.
But remember, God so loved sinful men and women that He sent Jesus to save sinners. Jesus can save any sinner! There is no sin too big for Jesus. He shed His blood so that His people could be forgiven and freed from every last sin of every size! When we turn from our sin and believe in Jesus, we can know that all our sins are forgiven. Isn’t that just the most wonderful news there is?
Even more, Jesus died so that His people could be given new hearts, and so that God’s Holy Spirit could live in our hearts. So God removes our old heart that wanted awful and bad things and hated God, and He gives us a new heart. That new heart wants to love God, and believe Him, and walk in His ways. So all of us, whatever our sins were, can be made new people, children of God, learning to love what God loves and hate what God hates.
So we don’t hate people who want bad things. We would be exactly the same if it weren’t for Jesus. We love people who don’t know Jesus, we pray for them, we want to help them, we want to tell them about Jesus. And when they believe, we accept them and love them and help them to learn to walk with Jesus, just like we’re doing.
Thank you for asking me. Always feel free to ask me any questions you have!
I pray this is helpful to you.
Pastor Dan
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