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In this episode, Trent discusses how Catholics who say LGBT Pride doesn’t involve dissent end up contradicting the Faith as well as their opposition to other evil symbols.
Transcript:
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers’ apologist, Trent Horn, and we’re about a week into Pride Month, the month that never seems like it’s going to end, but in today’s episode, I want to talk about Catholics who are proud to celebrate LGBT, but also claim they don’t dissent from any of the church’s teachings on sexuality. This, of course, includes Father James Martin, but it also includes all those Catholic social media accounts you see that put the Pride flag up for June, or sometimes all year long, but say they’re also completely faithful to the church’s teachings, but in using this imagery and these symbols, they’re actually betraying the Catholic faith. Before I explain why that’s the case, though, I want to give the big shout-out to our supporters at trenthornpodcast.com.
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That’s available at trenthornpodcast.com every Wednesday night, 8:15 PM Eastern, 5:15 PM Pacific. So if you want to join the open livestream for patrons only, go to trenthornpodcast.com. Also, before today’s topic, I get into it, I want to talk about the whole L.A. Dodgers Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence controversy. So if you haven’t heard it, I’m sure you have, the Dodgers promoted this drag group that promotes debauchery and blasphemy. I’ve known about the Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence for a long time.
They were always at the West Coast Walk for Life, for example, mocking the Christian pro-lifers there in San Francisco. Now, thankfully, the Dodgers got backlash. They’re trying to win back Christians with a night of faith and family. Good luck with that. Well, I wanted to address an article at the National Catholic Reporter and an interview with their Executive Editor, Heidi Schlumpf, where she calls the sisters a charity group that parodies religious women by addressing in drag and habits, and she calls them a charity group as well in this CNN interview.
So it seemed to me that the critics were less about anti-Catholicism and more about having problems with people in this group because of their LGBTQ status, or at least some of the critics. The sisters I spoke to had different opinions about whether they were offended about the use of the habit, but they all agreed that the work this charity group does is really important.
First, with the National Catholic Reporter, call a group that mocks African-Americans, a group that merely uses Blackface to engage in parody. Would she say the same thing about frat boys mocking Muslims by putting on Muslim garb? This isn’t parody, it’s just straight up blasphemy. If it were any other group besides Christians, there would be widespread outrage. Also, I keep hearing that the Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence are a charity group, so I checked out their Form 990 to see what they actually give their money to.
It turns out, their largest expense is spending $82,000 for the Bearrison Street Fair. It’s basically a place where large, hairy, self-identified gay men bears go to hook up with each other while wearing leather thongs. If you look it up, have bleach on standby to pour in your eyes. It also says that the sisters gave $35,000 in grants, but not to who. On their website, some of the past recipients include VALID USA, which provides chest binders to minor females with gender identity disorder.
They give money to a Two Spirit Sweat Lodge and Maya’s Magic Shop, which calls itself a quote, “Do-it-yourself botanica establishment frenzy that cultivated mass success through connecting humanity to other worldly entities,” which I’d be willing to bet are demons. I don’t mention demons often on the podcast, but this seems to be right up their alley. Charitable group, try again, NCR. All right, so let’s talk, though, about the idea of Catholics celebrating LGBT Pride Month while saying they’re not dissenting from the church’s teaching. Here’s Father James Martin on this approach.
The catechism of the Catholic Church asks us to treat LGBTQ people with respect, compassion, and sensitivity, and participating in Pride events, or at least supporting our LGBTQ friends is one way to do this. Just because you celebrate Pride doesn’t mean you have to agree with what every video, every article, or even every float in a parade has to say. It’s more about supporting the fundamental human rights of this community.
There was also a big controversy recently with the TV series, The Chosen, which is a historical drama about the life of Jesus and His disciples. An LGBT Pride flag was seen in the filming area behind the camera, so it wasn’t on set for filming, but it still upset many people who wonder why this kind of ideology is anywhere on the movie set at all when they’re supposed to be faithfully portraying the Biblical Jesus. Later, the actors who play James the Less and Thaddeus defended the Pride flag, saying, “Another one of the actors on The Chosen here. Anyone who is going to go at one of our family members for something like this is no fan of ours. They can close the door on the way out.”
“Love one another as I have loved you. We stand with our brother, Pride flag, heart, and also, my brother, GCairo06, isn’t the only one who stands by the LGBTQ members of our chosen family. Bicep Pride heart. Get out of here with your hate, homophobia, and ignorance. Not very Jesus-like of you. Johnny,” and that’s criticizing someone who said, “Hey, why do you have this pride flag up?”
So some of this is just not compatible with Christianity, saying there’s nothing wrong with same-sex relationships. Now, other actors and others, part of this movement, would say that by showing the Pride flag, they’re just showing love and compassion to those who identify as LGBT, even if they don’t agree with the behavior, but using the Pride flag or one of the versions of it, there’s multiple versions now, is not the way to show love and compassion to other people. So let me summarize the argument they’re making. It basically goes like this. When Christians celebrate Pride month or show the rainbow Pride flag, all it means is that people who identify as LGBT are created in the image of God, they should be loved, they should be treated fairly.
If a Catholic celebrates Pride month, that does not mean they endorse the evils of other people who celebrate Pride month, like that sodomy is good or that marriage is not essentially a male-female union, when Catholic can just put up the rainbow flag saying they love all people, and that’s all it means for that person, but the major problem with this argument is that Father Martin and liberal Catholics and Christians, they’re being inconsistent. They reject other controversial symbols no matter what it means to the individual wearing the symbol. When it comes to the Pride flag, for them, they’ll say the fact that some people use the rainbow to justify evils like sodomy doesn’t mean the flag has that meaning for everybody so they can fly it to promote compassion, but let me give you two other cases where these same people would say that the symbol is just evil. Even if some people use it for an apparently good purpose, the fact that some people use the symbol for an evil purpose means that nobody can ever use the symbol for any reason. Two examples.
The first would be the Confederate flag. Now, this flag I’m showing you is not the flag of the Confederacy. It was the battle flag of the Confederacy, because the official Confederate flag looked too much like the Union flag, and that led to things like friendly fire. In 2015, the National Catholic Reporter ran a story about a young activist who tore down a state courthouse’s Confederate flag. The article noted that the flag, “Represents for many, a war to uphold slavery, and later, a battle to oppose civil rights advances.” After the death of George Floyd in 2020, a Catholic school and church in Alabama removed images of the Confederate flag.
New at 6 Parts of the Mural, in the lobby at McGill-Toolen High School had been painted over. The Archdiocese of Mobile ordered the Confederate battle flag section removed.
Aluma Lauren Bettis had tears of joy claiming this should have happened a long time ago.
‘Cause I had to walk under it for four years.
The organizer of the petition circling on social media says the Confederate flag is a symbol of institutionalized hatred and racism, which goes against the Catholic faith. The goal was to make sure students are in an environment where everyone is respected equally. Junior Margaret Woods-Crawford says she was one of the first to sign it and has been pushing for the removal of the flag for two years.
It shouldn’t have been there now, especially during recent times, though.
One contributor in the Jesuit-run America magazine recalls how, as a teenager, his high school in Southern Detroit would wave a Confederate flag at football games when they competed against their rivals in Northern Detroit. So he wrote the following, “What were all these wealthy white kids doing, waving a Confederate flag? We who boasted one of the best public school systems in the country, including an innovative American studies curriculum, what the hell were we thinking? What message did we send to the opposing teams and communities, some of which were more diverse than ours? What kind of damage did we inflict on others and ourselves?”
So notice the argument. It doesn’t matter what the individual waving the Confederate flag thinks about that flag. What matters is that the flag has been associated with some evil by some people, therefore, no good people can ever be associated with it, end of discussion. I mean, imagine if on the set of The Chosen, there was a confederate flag. The left would say the show should be boycotted for being racist, there would be a giant apology, people would be fired.
Well, they would … They’re not going to say, “Well, we just have to love people from all geographic regions.” That’s not what would happen. In their 2018 pastoral letter, Open Wide Our Hearts, the U.S. bishops speak about racist symbols. They say, “The reappearance of symbols of hatred, such as nooses and swastikas in public spaces is a tragic indicator of rising racial and ethnic animus.”
In response, the Catholic activist and religion Professor Eric Martin, wrote an article for Sojourners about this, and it was called, “The Catholic Church has a visible white power faction.” Charming, right? Martin’s article was temporarily removed, however, because it wrongly stated that the bishops were silent on the swastika, the noose, and the Confederate flag. The Bishop’s 2018 report, Open Wide Our Hearts does mention the swastika and the noose, but the final draft of Open Wide Our Hearts doesn’t make any mention of the Confederate flag. Although, the bishops did explain in a statement before the documents release that, “While for many, the Confederate flag is also a sign of hatred and segregation, some still claim it as a sign of heritage.” Martin only quoted the latter half of this statement about the heritage of the flag before he gave this response.
“This logic, indefensibly hand-waves the history of slavery, murderous opposition to civil rights, and violence, such as the 2015 shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina as a vaguely benign heritage.” So here’s what’s important to remember in this case. Liberal Catholics and Christians say it doesn’t matter if the Confederate flag only meant that a person is proud of their southern heritage. What the individual flying the flag believes, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that some people use the Confederate flag to promote the evil of slavery and segregation, and since some people use this symbol to justify evil, no Catholic can ever be associated with it because of the scandal around that symbol.
Now, to be clear, I’m not defending the Confederate flag. I’m not getting into that issue. I’m just saying that if liberal Catholics and other Christians condemn the Confederate flag, because some people use it to justify evils like slavery or segregation, then they must also condemn the Pride flag, because some, if not, almost all people who fly that flag use it to defend evils like sodomy. In fact, here’s a retrospective on the origin of the first Pride flag and the meaning behind it.
In 1974, Gilbert Baker, a gay artist, met Harvey Milk while living in San Francisco. At the time, Milk owned a camera shop, but he would go on to become the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. Milk pressed Baker to create an emblem to represent and empower the LGBTQ Community. Eight colors for years and a mere $1,000 later, the first Pride flag made its debut. On June 25th, 1978, the rainbow Pride flag was unveiled.
Its colors were hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, and violet, with each color representing something different. According to the Gilbert Baker estate, pink was for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit. A year after its debut, the flag’s design was changed to only include six colors, which is the best known version today.
The primary meaning of these Pride flags is that the behaviors and larger worldview behind them are morally acceptable, if not, morally praiseworthy. This is the opposite of what the Church teaches, when it says in the catechism that basing itself on sacred scripture, which presents homosexual acts is acts of grave depravity. Tradition is always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They’re contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life.
They do not proceed from a genuine, effective, and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. The Pride flags basically say the Catholic Church is wrong, at least on sexuality, and if the church is wrong on a fundamental teaching like this, then it cannot be the Church Christ established because God would not allow His Church to universally teach such an error. Should Catholics really be supporting a symbol that essentially says the Catholic faith is false? No, they shouldn’t.
For example, if liberal Catholics say that the Confederate flag is incompatible with the Church’s teaching on racial equality, and so Catholics can’t promote it, because that would be promoting something that says the church is false. They must, by the same logic, say Pride flags are incompatible with the Church’s teaching on sexual complementarity, and so Catholics can’t support it, unless they basically say the Church is wrong. Here’s one more example to make my point. A lot of liberal Catholics say, “You can’t be a good Catholic and wear a red Make America Great Again hat,” or a MAGA hat made popular by President Trump. In a 2019 article for Commonweal, Mollie Wilson O’Reilly said that wearing a MAGA hat was the equivalent of, “Suiting up for team racist.”
She calls Catholics to reject the symbol wholesale and says, “If you welcome some of what President Trump has done, but abhor his racism, it’s up to you to figure out how to express those convictions. Wearing MAGA gear says you’re not bothered,” but imagine I told Wilson O’Reilly that wearing a MAGA hat doesn’t mean I support every Trump policy or every person that votes for Trump. Wearing a MAGA hat just means I want America to be great again. Her response would probably be that my scandalous choice of a hat says more than any after the fact explanation, that I cause scandal and confusion because some people who wear this hat justify certain evils, and that’s what we should say to people like Father James Martin and others who say that, “You can celebrate Pride month.” It doesn’t mean you agree with what every person or every organization has to say.
The fact that these symbols are intimately connected to advocating for grave evil, so the church condemns, shows that Catholics can’t support them. So if they say it’s wrong to fly a Confederate flag or wear a MAGA hat, because some people use those symbols in the service of evils like racism, from their own logic, it would be just as wrong to fly a Pride flag because some people use that symbol to promote evils like sodomy. They can’t have it both ways. If a symbol is wrong to use, because traditionally, it’s associated with evil, or some people use it to justify evil, then that’s the same for every symbol, especially the Pride flag. Once again, I’m not getting into an argument about the Confederate flag or MAGA hats, whether they’re evil or not.
I am just saying that this logic about Pride flags from liberal Catholics and Christians, if they use it to oppose symbols that they say are racist or advocate for the evils of racism, naturally they’re going to have to oppose … If they’re faithful to what the Church teaches, they’re going to have to oppose Pride imagery and symbols that advocate for other evils the Church condemns, like sodomy or counterfeit marriage. Let me close by saying that Catholics who really promote LGBT Pride, it sidesteps the main issue. Yeah, we should be loving and kind, even to those who disagree with us on key moral issues, but what’s keeping most people who identify as LGBT or their allies who see nothing wrong with same-sex relations from being fully in communion with the Church, it’s not a lack of kindness, it’s that they just think the Church is wrong or they’re mistaken about what the teaching actually is. What we have to do, all of us then, is draw closer to Christ, and in the light of His impenetrable gaze, see the truth that emerges and the falsehoods, which melt away.
That’s why I think that the best thing Catholics can do during Pride Month when it comes to witnessing our faith is to wear a shirt or clothing, or a social media icon that promotes the fact that June is the month of the Sacred Heart. Matt Fradd has great shirts on that over at Pints with Aquinas so you should definitely go and check them out. A few years ago, when the Toronto Catholic School Board voted to fly rainbow Pride flags at their Catholic schools, the Archdiocese of Toronto released a statement saying, “A more appropriate symbol of inclusion and love at a Catholic school is the cross of Christ.” They say, the cross outside of Catholic schools and any Catholic church, hospital or institution signals our commitment that all who enter the building are welcomed and loved in their beauty and uniqueness as children of God. Amen to that. So I hope that this episode is helpful for you all, and I hope that you have a very blessed day.
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