Forget the screaming children on the Rio Grande, the cyber attacks on our meat plants and pipelines. Don’t worry about the overseas unrest or the price hikes on gas and food. The serious issues will have to wait. Because there’s only one thing on the president’s mind right now — and that’s Pride month.
It’s been four years since Americans have had to live through an administration’s month-long rainbow love fest. Of course, Joe Biden, who made LGBT activism his number-one priority, didn’t wait for June to start his radical government revolution. From the minute he stepped into the Oval Office, the perversion of education, health care, our troops, foreign policy, taxpayer spending, facilities, school sports, and social services has been at the top of his to-do list. Already, the president brags in his proclamation on LGBT Pride month, he’s managed to saturate his administration with an army of LGBT extremists. “Nearly 14 percent of my 1,500 agency appointees identify as LGBTQ” — giving the radical agenda a foothold in every level of government.
Making matters more outrageous, Biden has decided to order everyone in a military uniform to play along. The Pentagon, which is so busy grand marshaling the president’s Pride parades that it barely has time for real work, announced Tuesday that it might consider allowing rainbow flags to be flown on installations along with the stars and stripes. It would be a dramatic departure from the Trump administration, which banned bases from flying anything but Old Glory and the POW/MIA colors. Apparently, the White House wants to add to the controversies it started in the State Department by unfurling the rainbow at embassies around the world where the symbol is seen as offensive.
In 2020, under Trump’s DOD, the policy was simple: “The flags we fly must accord with the military imperatives of good order and discipline, treating all our people with dignity and respect, and rejecting divisive symbols,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said. Now, with Biden launching a full-scale rainbow offensive, some members are pushing back. The idea of turning our flagpoles into an LGBT infomercial is so contentious that Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) introduced a bill called the Old Glory Only Act. “The United States flag is the single greatest symbol of freedom the world has ever known, and there’s no reason for anything but Old Glory to be flying…” he insisted.
But the flag is just one of Biden’s targets. The military chaplaincy is another. In a sign of just how radicalized our branches have become, some Leftist leaders are calling for the ouster of anyone in a religious role who doesn’t affirm the sexuality or identity of any soldier. “I believe the Army Chaplain Corps has failed to safeguard the wellbeing, dignity, and value of our LGBTQI+ soldiers,” wrote Major David Evans in the Army Times. “A chaplain is not a government-paid missionary, and an individual chaplain’s right to religious freedom cannot override any soldier’s right to be valued and cared for.”
It used to be that people who identified as LGBT had to hide their illicit sexual relationships in the military. Now, this administration thinks it’s time for chaplains to hide theirs — with God. “This is all about having a woke military,” FRC’s Lt. General (Ret.) Jerry Boykin said. “From the beginning of the chaplain’s corps in our military — which started all the way back in the Revolutionary War — chaplains have never been asked as a policy of the Department of Defense or of the military to violate their own conscience or to compromise on fundamental issues of their faith, regardless of whether they were Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, or whatever they were. And now, because we’re bringing in this Marxist theology,” he warned, we’re taking away the spiritual tools these men and women need to do their jobs.
In order for that extreme ideology to take root, these Leftists understand that they have to remove religious convictions and views. And that’s what is afoot here, as it pertains to the military chaplains. People like Major Evans want you to believe that the primary job of a spiritual leader in the ranks is to celebrate or encourage the troops’ harmful behavior. That’s absolutely false. Chaplains are there to attend to the spiritual needs of our soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines. And that oftentimes means telling them the truth — whether they want to hear it or not.
Regardless, the military’s job isn’t to champion causes. It’s to fight and win wars. So the more of this LGBT advocacy that we see, the more vulnerable our country becomes. Just this past week, a group of almost 40 House Democrats introduced a piece of legislation that would stop the DOD from stationing military members with trans-identifying children in any state or country that doesn’t give them access to mutilating surgery or hormone treatments. That would include places like Arkansas, where they’ve outlawed experimentation on minors. In other words, the Pentagon would let a son or daughter’s LGBT preferences get in the way of a servicemember’s deployment! How on earth does that improve military readiness?
Barack Obama spent eight years using our military as a mule for his social agenda. Now, his second-in-command is picking up right where he left off — wasting time and money on political distractions that aren’t just devastating for people in uniform, but for America’s mission at large.
Originally published here.
Conservatives Score Big against the NCAA
For the refused-to-be-canceled crowd, it was a headline to celebrate. “The NCAA threatened states over anti-transgender bills,” the big print of the Washington Post read. “But the games went on.” It was the surest sign in a post-Georgia, Coke-boycotting world that fed-up conservatives were the newest force to be reckoned with. It’s also the most recent evidence — out of piles of examples — that the Right side may be winning the woke wars.
For the far-Left, the retreat of a major sports league is a public defeat that they can’t seem to reconcile. After 2016, when the NCAA was the most powerful leverage liberals had in states like North Carolina, they’d begun to count on these hard-core allies to help them beat back local attacks on their often dangerous LGBT agenda. It worked until recently, when Americans — sick of being force-fed transgender politics — suddenly decided to take the momentum from their stand on election reform and start applying it across the board. Their unofficial mantra — refuse to be intimidated — began working. Suddenly, the tough talk about retaliation from corporations and other organizations were being exposed for what they were: empty threats from big-mouthed bullies.
Just two months ago, the NCAA had promised to boycott states that protected girls’ sports or banned gender experimentation on minors. That all fell apart just a few weeks later, when so many states had passed conservative legislation that the league finally realized it had nowhere to go. Suddenly, tournaments that weren’t supposed to be awarded to places like Arkansas, Alabama, and Tennessee got the news that they would still be hosts after all.
GLAAD and other LGBT groups, who are used to these leagues’ blind allegiance, have been hysterical ever since. They’ve accused the NCAA of “going back on its word” to choose locations that were “safe, healthy, and free of discrimination.” Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David had even harsher words, insisting that the “NCAA should be ashamed of themselves for violating their own policy…” Their “failure to take action here,” he went on, “means that they are part of the problem.”
Internally, the hand-wringing at places like HRC has to be even worse. For years, the LGBT crowd has relied on scare tactics to move their agenda forward since it’s always lacked broad public support. If the NCAA won’t do its bidding, then the damage — especially now, as the demand for these bills keeps growing — is severe. In a letter from far-Left activists to the NCAA, Athlete Ally asks, “What changed?” One thing did, the Washington Times points out: the states that are passing these laws “are no longer outliers.”
In Florida, the latest state to protect girls’ sports, the threat from the NCAA more than backfired. Instead of frightening leaders away, it motivated conservatives to pass a bill even faster. The governor told one news anchor that he remembers the day the letter from the sports league was issued. “I called the speaker of the House in Florida and said, ‘Did you hear what they said?’” And he replied, “Now we’ve definitely got to get this done.” There, as in other states, the rally cry seemed to be, “We’ll show them!”
And to the delight of common-sense Americans all across this country, they have. Last week in Louisiana, despite the governor’s warnings, the legislature passed another bill to save girls’ sports by bipartisan, veto-proof majorities: 29-6 in the Senate and 78-17 in the House. Then, in a major punch to the Left’s gut, Oklahoma — one of the few states that was openly worried about the NCAA’s threat — realized the league was bluffing, went back to the drawing board, and passed its proposal out of the House.
When Oklahoma Rep. Justin Humphrey (R) realized that the NCAA was scheduling tournaments in states with policies based on biology, he said, “I kind of laughed.” LGBT activists were appalled. “It was really scary to know that so many lawmakers in Oklahoma [saw] this as a reversal to the NCAA’s earlier statement,” one said. “That had been the only thing that persuaded folks [to back off these] girls’ sports bills.”
When the NCAA announced that Florida would host a softball championship this spring, Republicans could barely contain their glee. “I guess the NCAA boycott of Florida is over after two weeks,” state Rep. Chris Latvala tweeted. “Go Knights!” The news for conservatives was even sweeter when the state’s bill became law on the first day of LGBT Pride month. Turns out, the tug of the Left may be strong, but so is the $730 million in revenue from the Southeastern Conference. Our influence as red states, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) pointed out, is bigger than we think. “Will they even be able to have sports events anymore in the United States [if they boycott us]? I don’t think so.”
In the end, Beth Stelzer, president of Save Women’s Sports, says, most of these states would have moved forward even if it did cost them a few collegiate events. They, like the majority of Americans, had already made up their minds: “We need to do the right thing and stand up for females. People over profits. Facts over feelings.”
Who would have thought at the start of this legislative season that protecting girls’ sports would be the issue that separated the leaders who had courage and the leaders who are cowards? But it did.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
