Introduction
So Idaho seems to be gearing up to be a real flash point for the culture wars in our land. For which I am very grateful. Biden’s abortion cronies have targeted Idaho’s trigger laws to perhaps make a lesson out of us or perhaps because they think our RINO leaders are easy targets for corruption or compromise. But now the PRIDE jihad has come to Idaho over the last few years, and as they have done virtually everywhere else, they’ve moved right along to sexualizing and grooming children through drag shows aimed at children and minors.
This year’s Boise PRIDE festival is scheduled for this weekend, culminating in a pseudo-worship service on Sunday, September 11th – the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Talk about dissonance and tone deafness. What should be a weekend remembering heroes, mourning the devastation, and uniting in gratitude and repentance as a nation, Boise PRIDE turns into a spectacle taunting the God of Heaven and throws down a gauntlet calculated to divide our communities. Why they didn’t plan this for PRIDE month, we don’t know, but we can confidently say that PRIDE month was never intended to remain merely one month. They are evangelists with their “gospel,” and they will not stop until they have PRIDE year.
But the early returns suggest that the pride and hubris have gone to their heads (as it always does), and drunk on presumption, (“nothing can stop us now!”), they went full bore on targeting children and minors in Idaho this year, with a superhero motif and full-blown preteen and teens drag show. A number of sane people pointed this atrocity out and rightly objected, and began making noise this last week, including the leader of the Idaho Republicans, particularly putting pressure on the list of businesses sponsoring the event, and Zion’s Bank pulled their sponsorship along with Idaho Power. Idaho legislators also pointed out that tens of thousands of dollars from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare was pledged to this creepy sexual circus, leading to a letter released on Thursday announcing that IDHW was withdrawing sponsorship of the event. Coinciding with the sponsorships being dropped, Idaho PRIDE announced that they are “delaying” the drag show for kids, due to “increased safety concerns.”
Can We Make Any Distinctions?
As I have followed some of the chatter surrounding the event and now the cancellation of sponsorships and at least a “delay” of the kids drag show, tensions run high and accusations run immediately to extremes. One reply in my feed suggested that this was just like Nazi Germany’s ramp up to cancelling the Jews. Apparently, right wingers cannot see the slippery slope we are on. Protecting children from leering and gyrating men in leotards and gaudy makeup is equivalent to Nazism? But the question really needs to be pressed: how do we determine which groups of people can and should be restrained and regulated?
And if you think it’s undemocratic or medieval to even ask the question, you’re simply being disingenuous. Should we encourage white supremacists and KKK rallies in our state? Should we have the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare sponsoring female genital mutilation parties in our state? The question is not whether certain groups will be restrained, the question is which groups? If Boise refused to allow openly racist groups to use public space for a KKK rally, would you also accuse Boise of embracing a pseudo-nazism? Of course not. Why not? Because you are assuming that white supremacy is obviously wrong. The fact that IDHW and many family friendly businesses don’t want their dollars or name going to promote the sexualization of minors because it is obviously wrong to them is also obvious to many Idahoans. But it is not enough to say, “well, it’s obvious.” Because, obviously, it isn’t so obvious to many of us anymore.
But let us be clear: Christians condemn all vigilante violence to homosexuals, transgenders, queers, pedophiles, or white supremacists. The question is whether we want to support public debauchery, public celebration of corruption, grooming, and sexual exploitation. The question is also whether public dollars should go to an extreme leftwing agenda. If these same people would object to public health dollars going to support a pro-life, pro traditional family rally, why should these same dollars go to sponsor lifestyles that most Idahoans do not approve of?
We affirm the rights of all Idahoans to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and while we disagree that this sexual confusion will bring the happiness they are seeking, our primary objection is to the public display of indecent acts, the public celebration of perversion targeting young people, and the public sexual exploitation of minors, which incidentally, is actually prohibited in Idaho State statute, for example Title 18, chapter 15 which reads in part:
“18-1506. SEXUAL ABUSE OF A CHILD UNDER THE AGE OF SIXTEEN YEARS. (1) It is a felony for any person eighteen (18) years of age or older, with the intent to gratify the lust, passions, or sexual desire of the actor, minor child or third party, to:
(a) Solicit a minor child under the age of sixteen (16) years to participate in a sexual act;
(b) Cause or have sexual contact with such minor child…
(c) Induce, cause or permit a minor child to witness an act of sexual conduct.
(2) For the purposes of this section, “solicit” means any written, verbal, or physical act which is intended to communicate to such minor child the desire of the actor or third party to participate in a sexual act or participate in sexual foreplay, by the means of sexual contact, photographing or observing such minor child engaged in sexual contact.”
This is not some kind of radical right wing stuff. This has been in the Idaho criminal code for decades.
But Why Here?
I want to key off of something that the Zion’s Bank statement said. In their announcement and in the announcement from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, the real line that seems to have been crossed is the involvement of children and minors. Both statements affirmed their happiness and willingness to sponsor PRIDE events in general. They made it clear that they were not objecting to public simulations of sodomy or crossdressing drag shows. They don’t mind men doing blackface for women. They don’t mind women being objectified, insulted, and mocked like that. They don’t mind men pretending to sexually abuse one another in public. They don’t object to that all. They are happy to support those kinds of public spectacles and assaults on decency. The only thing they object to is dragging kids into it (pun intended).
Now, from one angle, that makes sense. There is a natural defensiveness for children, but there’s also a reason why leftists and the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t understand that line at all. And I actually want to press this. One liberal Idaho journalist I follow wanted to know why conservatives object to children doing drag shows if their parents give permission. Isn’t that one of the conservative talking points? Aren’t parents the primary care-givers and have primary responsibility for children? If parents give permission, shouldn’t that be enough? I don’t know how honest or disingenuous the question was, but it’s actually a good one. Everyone understands that the rights of parents have limits. A parent does not have the freedom to abuse her child. But again, we are back at the need for a standard. Who gets to define “abuse?”
Abuse is mistreatment. Abuse assumes a “right use,” a standard, a right and a wrong. And the right use of parental responsibility assumes that we know what we’re aiming for, it assumes we know what happy, flourishing adulthood looks like, which is what we’re raising our children to become, right? But conservatives in Idaho and everywhere really do need to decide what that standard is. Is what Dave Rubin is doing with his kids, intentionally depriving them of mothers, and raising them with the delusion that two fathers is a reasonable option – is that abuse? Is spanking a child abuse? Any sort of corporal punishment? Why or why not?
Another tweet I saw on this whole situation claimed that this isn’t really just about children doing drag, and what conservatives are really after is the whole LGBTQ movement. And if conservatives say, “no, not all; we just object to sexualizing children,” the obvious question the drag supporters need ask is: By what standard? What is the moral standard that allows for LGBTQ lifestyles and then says, “but you better not teach your children anything about this.” The PRIDE festivals are frequently more consistent than many conservatives. The LGBTQ celebrants want to insist that if something can and should be celebrated by adults then it can and should be celebrated by children. If their parents want them to celebrate drag, on what basis can you object? By what standard, will you tell parents that they may not permit or encourage their children to explore those lifestyles and identities? And the only answer that will standup to this sexual storm is the Word of God, the Bible.
Conclusion
It’s actually very encouraging to see the pushback, and I’m very grateful that the drag kids show has at least been postponed. But this is the moment to pursue, not to sit back in satisfaction with some very minor victory. But in order to pursue, we must have a very clear objective in mind. The reason conservatives have so consistently lost to liberals is because liberals typically have a far clearer objective in mind. They are fighting for complete autonomy. They are fighting to choose their own identities, to define their own realities, to remake themselves into whatever they desire. According to their worldview, all constraints and restraints on that are dehumanizing and enslaving, and so they are pressing for complete indulgence, complete sovereignty of their choices.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are fighting for what? According to Zion’s Bank it’s fine to redefine human sexuality, fine to be completely autonomous when it comes to designing your own sexual realities, your own meaning, your own family, so long as you don’t tell your children. According to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, it’s fine to practice sexuality that is known to be destructive to human health and welfare, so long as you don’t encourage children to?
No, conservatives want to teach their children that God made the world, and He created us male and female in His image. Jesus said that our bodies are sexual assignments from God the Creator, and because we are made male and female, marriage is only the joining of one man and one woman (Mk. 10). And just as a bird is most free in the air, and a fish is most free in the water, so too human beings are most free and happy when we receive these gifts with gratitude from our Maker.
This nation and the state of Idaho were founded on Christian values. Those values come from the Bible. Until conservatives in Idaho and throughout the nation simply insist that we want the freedom our fathers established for us, the kind of freedom found in following the God who made heaven and earth, the kind of freedom that comes from being created equal, created in His image, male and female, with unalienable rights, we will not make much progress and we will keep being chased by our enemies.
Our Declaration of Independence acknowledges a Creator and insists that we have our unalienable rights from Him. We cannot fight for life, liberty, or the true pursuit of happiness if we do not ground what those things mean in a fixed standard, in what our Creator has said. Christians must stop being embarrassed of Scripture. God has spoken, and He has spoken to all men everywhere, that includes Idahoans, that includes all Americans, citizens and those entrusted with authority. They will call us extremists, but let them. Yes, we are extremists just like George Washington and John Adams and John Witherspoon. The winners of this war will be those who believe in their standard and are not ashamed in the slightest.
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