The new martyrs: Christians being tortured with rainbows

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.

So what Ham’s equally deluded PR flacks wrote about was the horror of acknowledging the existence of human beings who don’t believe in evangelical Christian nonsense.

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.