Another cultural institution has fallen to the woke militia: the LA Dodgers. Apropos of its locale, this episode of corporate capture has a twist—even if the ending is entirely predictable.
The MLB team announced in May that it was going to honor a group called the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” as part of its celebration of “Pride Night” at Dodgers Stadium. The “sisters” are a group of men who dress up as grotesque caricatures of Catholic nuns for the purpose of mocking Christianity in general and Catholics in particular. Upon learning about their inclusion in the event, many Catholics publicly expressed dismay, which—in a surprise move—led to the Dodgers issuing an apology and disinviting the hate group. Yet after predictable foot stomping from the LGBTQ+ lobby, the team did an about-face, apologized for its apology, and reinvited the group in a statement that is difficult to distinguish, in both tone and substance, from a hostage video. Despite fresh backlash, the Dodgers now seem to have made up their mind: They’d rather gratuitously humiliate Catholics than displease the rainbow mafia.
What to do? The most tempting response is also the most useless: get angry and indulge in defeatism. Shake your (lowered) head. (Re)post, (re)tweet, and whisper your consternation among other believers. Feeling a bit bolder? Write a whole article about this new absurdity (same verse, just like the first) in tones of deep indignation.
But none of it matters. It won’t change a thing. The reason is because no one who has the direct power to stop this carnival of prejudice and depravity cares what any of us think. They do not care about logic, about arguments, about science, about hypocrisy, about civilizational stability, about tradition, about religion, or even about whether, outside of their peer group, they are widely disliked.
Imagine if a fraction of us started spending differently.
Think of it this way: there has never been a more absurd, easily disprovable lie than the assertion “Men can have babies.” Yet the centers of civic and cultural power have now made the confession—the public confession—of that statement a litmus test for acceptance into polite society and its social and material benefits. We are, in short, beyond the debate stage of this conflict. There’s no reasoning with(in) Pride ideology. There’s no compromising with it. There’s no splitting the difference on whether it should be celebratorily legal to cut off a healthy boy’s genitals and carve a “neo-vagina” into his flesh. Either we allow that savagery, or we don’t. As Christians, we don’t. We can’t. The whole movement that pushes this sadistic madness must be overcome. It must be marginalized and assigned pariah-status like the Ku Klux Clan or suicide cults.
So what to do? As Bishop Barron has suggested, we make them pay. We boycott and we protest.
These are hard words for me to write. I have long considered myself above boycotting and protesting because I believed it to be naïve and self-righteous. I’ve got a job to do, a family to take care of, and things to buy at good prices and in convenient locations. But that belief is context dependent. The cultural, political, and economic grounds have radically shifted. Living as if it were 1998 or even 2018 is not only imprudent. It’s delusional. Things will not get better on their own. No one is coming to save us. The institutional powers will not cease degrading and harassing us unless we stop them.
So we make them pay.
How? Stop giving money—any money—to businesses that support Pride ideology. Is there a rainbow flag displayed inside or outside the business? Don’t go in. Is the company’s website covered in LGBTQ+ propaganda or does it, like Target, contract with openly Satanic designers and sell pro-trans products, like chest binders (made “to hide” girls’ breasts)? Don’t order from them and cancel your memberships. Do they, like the Dodgers, unapologetically support anti-Christian hate groups? Turn your back and walk away for good.
These actions are not only grounded in sound moral principles. They can be extremely effective. As the boycott of Bud Light for its feting of the fake woman Dylan Mulvaney has happily revealed, simply not buying a company’s products can send it into a tailspin. Our goal should thus be to make the Pride Flag as commercially repellent as the Confederate Flag. There are over 200 million Christians and like-minded allies in the United States. Imagine if a fraction of us started spending differently.
We should also peacefully take to the streets. Look at what the March for Life has accomplished. Abortion is now illegal or highly restricted in nearly half the country. How about a March for Childhood Innocence (No to sexualizing children!) or a March for the Natural Family (Every child has the right to a mother and father!)? We can do this (Yes we can).
Jesus Christ commanded us to love our enemies, not to guide their boots onto our necks.
Religious leaders who have a soft spot for Pride also have an essential role to play moving forward: Stop making excuses or, worse, promoting this poison with strategically ambiguous, deceptively incomplete claptrap of being “welcoming” and “affirming.” You are facilitating the persecution of the Church. You are the wolves in sheep’s clothing. As Pope Francis has said, Pride ideology is dangerous. It is a menace to the mental and physical health of young people. It is abhorrent to the natural law and to the Gospel. There is no uncertainty about this, despite what preening rogues in robes might be tweeting. Whatever truce may have once existed in the name of mutual tolerance has been unilaterally broken by a raving mob of heterophobic trans supremacists and their state and corporate collaborators. They wish to kidnap your children and throw you in jail for daring to resist. Responding to this threat should never entail treating those outside of traditional sexual and gender categories with disrespect. But it must include regarding LGBTQ+ dogma with unmitigated scorn. Every person is welcome in the house of the Lord. Every idea is not.
We need sensible politicians on board as well. End the blind deference to corporations. They can be forces for good. And they can be forces for evil. Many—most of them—are forces for evil now. Be on the right side.
Jesus Christ commanded us to love our enemies, not to guide their boots onto our necks. So let’s put away our wallets, pick up our cross, and make it clear to every marketer, accountant, and CEO who still cares about staying solvent that they now have a choice to make: it’s either us (people who are content giving you money and being on our way as long as we aren’t excluded and insulted) or them (people who have no qualms running your business into the ground if it serves the totalitarian elite).
Choose wisely.