They're Here, They're Queer, and Now They're Coming for Christians — and for Our Jobs

A handful of recent news items highlight the dangers Christians face as the moral revolution fully takes hold in America:

CrossFit executive Russell Berger was fired for tweeting that “pride” is sinful in the context of planned LGBTQ “Pride Workouts” at CrossFit gyms.

Berger tweeted: “As someone who personally believes celebrating ‘pride’ is a sin, I’d like to personally encourage #CrossFitInfiltrate for standing by their convictions and refusing to host an @indypride workout.” He was referring to a CrossFit gym in Indiana that canceled the Pride event. “The intolerance of the LGBTQ ideology toward any alternative views is mind-blowing,” he added. “The tactics of some in the LGBTQ movement toward dissent is an existential threat to freedom of expression. The lack of tolerance for disagreement, which has been replaced with bullying Twitter mobs promising ‘consequences’, should be a concern regardless of your political stance.”

Berger is right, of course, but that didn’t stop the New York Post from accusing him of going on a “homophobic Twitter rant.” CrossFit immediately distanced itself from Berger’s tweets and fired him on Wednesday. CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman told BuzzFeed News, “He needs to take a big dose of ‘shut the f–k up’ and hide out for awhile. We do so much good work with such pure hearts — to have some zealot in his off-time do something this stupid, we’re all upset.” Note the harsh language used. Glassman didn’t just say something corporate like, “his comments are a distraction” or “his comments have no place at CrossFit” — he told Berger to “shut the f—k up.”

Not coincidentally, the gym Berger tweeted about that decided to cancel the Pride event has been closed, apparently because a few people canceled their memberships and employees complained and refused to show up for work. A note left on the door said the location would “no longer operate.”

[Note: Because so many people have mentioned this in the comments, I want to make clear that CrossFit had every right to fire Berger if they believed his social media comments directed at CrossFit reflected poorly on the company. I’m merely pointing out the trends we’re seeing and making some predictions about where I think the cultural revolution is taking us.]

Also in the news this week, a Catholic church is being sued for having a morals clause in its event center contracts banning LGBT events. 

The church turned down an application by a group of LGBT activists who demanded to use the event center in Portland, Oregon. The Holy Rosary Catholic Church is now being sued in Multnomah County for $2.4 million in damages for breach of faith, discrimination, and violations of Oregon’s civil rights and business laws.

In California, a bill recently passed in the California Assembly with the express intent of silencing Christians on LGBT issues.

The bill, which is now working its way through the Senate, could result in the following, according to the Family Policy Alliance:

• A therapist or pastoral counselor could be prosecuted for helping a 20-year-old who is struggling with her gender and pays for counseling to help her accept her God-given birth sex.
• A Christian college could face punishment if a professor teaches about God’s design for sexuality.
• Even a Christian bookstore owner or non-profit ministry that sells a book that contains similar messaging could face the long arm of the law.

This bill could also affect writers and publishers — and even Amazon sellers who reside in California — in an attempt to silence anyone who doesn’t toe the line on the privileged LGBT narrative in the state.

Finally, &pizza jumped enthusiastically onto the LGBT bandwagon this week.

The popular pizza chain announced that the company will be supporting a whole host of LGBT initiatives and will even pay employees to attend Pride protests.

Wow- @andpizza is giving their employees PTO to participate in pro-LGBTQIA in their communities. Well done! pic.twitter.com/kTW1r5b0BA

— Aru (@IAmAru) June 7, 2018

They don’t say what will happen to dissenters who choose not to take to the streets in support of aberrant sexual practices, but you can bet they’re not going to be rewarded with paid time off. More likely they’ll be singled out as “bigots” who don’t deserve to work at the woke pizza parlor.

To be sure, Christians didn’t choose this war—we were conscripted into it by the cultural aggressors on the left. The LGBT militants are on the ascendency in the American culture and they’re coming for us with everything they’ve got. They won’t stop until we’re silenced, cowed, and unemployed. They don’t want a  truce in the culture wars — they want compliance. They won’t settle for detente or even a cold war. They won’t be satisfied until we’re all enthusiastically applauding their sexual proclivities and perversions.

Make no mistake: this is about power. There are powerful lawmakers and cultural influencers who want to shut Christians up—to make it illegal for us to speak openly about the biblical view of marriage and sexuality.  They truly believe that Christianity is not only hateful, but harmful. Something that should be classified as hate speech so that the full force of the American legal system can be used to snuff out public Christianity.

You may think I’m being hyperbolic about this and that I’m engaging in fear-mongering, but it wasn’t too many years ago that LGBT activists insisted there was no slippery slope—and they mocked us for worrying about the consequences of the moral march to the left. They said they would stop at civil partnerships. Then it was gay marriage. Then it was transgender bathrooms. Now they have free speech and the freedom of religion in their sights. As my colleague Michael Walsh likes to say: “They never sleep, they never stop, they never quit.”

And lest you think cooler legal minds will prevail in the courts to protect us, think again. Rod Dreher, writing about the CrossFit dustup at The American Conservative:

I would urge Christians who are pleased with the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision to keep in mind that there is nothing in that decision that would protect a business from the fate of the Indy CrossFit gym. We may have the legal right under some circumstances to refuse to do certain business practices that violate our religious belief, but we have no right to be protected from the economic consequences of exercising that belief.

In conservative Catholic circles, the informal network of gay priests is sometimes called, derisively, “the Lavender Mafia” — a term that expresses the belief that they conspire together to look out for their own interests, and to punish anybody who disagrees. In real life, the mafia often imposes “protection money” on small businesses, in which the business owner pays a kind of tax to the mob to keep bad things from happening to his business. Coming soon: businesses that don’t have Pride celebrations, or in some sense fail to acknowledge the High Holy Month of Pride, will see bad things happen to them — boycotts and suchlike. Forewarned is forearmed.

Sure, there are still some battles yet to be waged in the courts and in legislatures, but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. The culture has turned dramatically on the issue of sexuality, with a majority now agreeing with the LGBT agenda and a growing number of Americans considering opposition to that agenda to be every bit as evil as racism. A generation of schoolchildren has been indoctrinated to accept any and every sexual proclivity as normal—even superior to the heterosexual norm.

The move by &pizza to give preferential treatment to employees who agree with them on LGBT issues—something they have every right to do as a private company—brings to mind a story Nobel Prize-winning Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told in The Gulag Archipelago describing how the Soviets singled out dissidents. It’s worth quoting at length:

At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). The small hall echoed with “stormy applause, rising to an ovation.” For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the “stormy applause, rising to an ovation,” continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare be the first to stop? The secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform, and it was he who had just called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see whoquit first! And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly — but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them? The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter…Then after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.

That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of his interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:

“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”

Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, Christians (and Jews and everyone else who holds to the biblical view of sexuality and marriage) will be asked to cheer for the cultural revolution—with gusto. And for many, their enthusiasm (or lack of it) will determine whether they’ll be able to keep their job. How will you choose? Will you obey God rather than men? If you choose to be obedient to God, there will be a price to pay for your faithfulness. This is nothing new for Christians, of course. We’re called to take up our cross and follow Jesus, no matter the cost. Joshua’s charge the Israelites should be a sobering reminder to people of faith:

Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.  And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:14-15)

Choose today which side you’re on in the cultural revolution.

Christians needn’t be afraid of what’s to come—and we’re not called to be militant. Rather we should rest in God’s promise that He will “provide the way of escape” that we may be able to endure suffering when it comes. Begin now to prepare your heart and mind for the inevitable consequences that come when we choose to follow Jesus instead of the world.

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