Fatherly published a parenting article asking the question, “Should you take your kids to a Pride parade?”
The reporter, Heather Tirado Gilligan, writes:
Pride Parades and the Pride festivals that follow are noisy and crowded. They’re filled with sights that may be new to kids, like public nudity and kink. Not to mention that Pride parades aren’t the most sober of places. So is it appropriate to take your young kids to Pride?
Her enthusiastic answer to exposing kids to “public nudity and kink”? Absolutely!
She says:
Considering the benefits for all families – including seeing other LGBTQ+ families like yours, or showing up as an ally if your family members are straight and cisgender – the answer is absolutely. Not to mention that these educational aspects of Pride are paired with joy and celebration.
“Benefits for all families”? “Education aspects”?
She does offer one caveat, “But it is necessary to talk to kids about new things they may see at Pride before diving [into] it.”
“If you’re straight and cisgender or just haven’t exposed your kids to much of the LGBTQ+ community yet, prepping your children beforehand can ensure that your family is respectful of queer people while at Pride,” she explains.
This is not surprising advice, coming as it does from a reporter with a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University.
But it’s not just a reporter telling people to take children to an adult bacchanalia with diverse sexualities and sexual activities on display. Gilligan spoke with Jessica Fish, Ph.D., an associate professor of family science at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
She’s “a human development and family science scholar whose research focuses on the positive development and health of LGBTQ+ people and their families.” Her advice on taking kids to LGBT Pride events?
Talk to your children about Pride as if it’s not just this big party, but it’s a celebration of being – that it’s a recognition of historical oppression and uprising. Understanding the roots of that celebration of Pride is just as important as your child understanding that LGBTQ people exist and thrive within their communities.
Jenifer McGuire, Ph.D., is yet another associate professor of family science, this time at the University of Minnesota. McGuire is a “lesbian parent” who “has been to Pride celebrations across the world with her family, from Tucson to Amsterdam.”
She “always preps her kids for possible adult content beforehand. After a few events, the kids knew to expect nudity and other surprises.” She said:
They just had to learn to laugh and enjoy things. Like there were these Beanie Babies with giant penises on them. For a fourth- and fifth-grade kid, that’s super funny.
Yes. We’re rolling on the floor laughing out loud at the very thought of nine- and ten-year-old children seeing this.
Something is desperately dark and wrong when adults want to expose their own and others’ children to adult nudity, sexuality, identities and behaviors.
But Fatherly, “a digital lifestyle brand that provides news, expert advice, product recommendations and other resources for parents,” isn’t the only one promoting this. If you’re paying attention to what’s happening in our world, you know that these individuals aren’t outliers.
This push to expose children to adult sexuality is happening across our country. See all the degrees these people have? This is the end result of much of our educational system – people with letters after their names and no moral compass.
Drag queen story hours. Comprehensive sexual education in public schools. Television and film. Pretty much every social media outlet. Schools and libraries.
They’re all promoting a broken sexual agenda that says, “All that matters with regard to sexual expression is consent and pleasure.”
And it’s not just from LGBT activists and their allies, although Pride month (which has now grown into a year-long celebration of LGBT behaviors and identities) is probably one of the most visible manifestations of this effort to sexualize and confuse children.
This is not fun to write about. My stomach aches thinking about our country’s children, and I’m close to tears. I hesitated to write this article, and it was difficult to finish, because I don’t want to give pat Christian answers or end with anodyne advice.
I’m also well aware of my own sexual sins and the darkness in my heart that Christ has redeemed, so I’m not writing from a place of self-righteousness. All of us have sinned and all have fallen short.
Christians should grieve and hurt to think about people so broken they want to inflict their brokenness on their own children. We should grieve and hurt even more for their children.
But this is where much of our country is, after years of sexual revolution, cultural decay and postmodern rejection of truth, beauty, wisdom and goodness.
This kind of evil calls for more than just an angry response or sad emoji on Facebook. We should be angry, yes, but that’s not me main reason for writing this article.
The realization of the decadence and depravity of our culture should call us to repentance and prayer for mercy. And action, yes, but that should come after grieving and prayer.
Like Daniel, crying out on behalf of his people, we should pray, acknowledging the greatness and love of God, our own sins, and the sins of our nation.
O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. …
To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.
So we grieve. And we cry out for mercy, again like Daniel. While he was praying for Jerusalem and the Israelites, we can pray for our own nation:
Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy.
And Lord, especially have mercy on these little ones, who are seeing what ought not to be seen.
Photo from Shutterstock.
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