"In view of the close links between the sexual dimension of the person and his or her ethical values, education must bring the children to a knowledge of and respect for the moral norms as the necessary and highly valuable guarantee for responsible personal growth in human sexuality. For this reason, the Church is firmly opposed to an often widespread form of imparting sex information dissociated from moral principles. That would merely be an introduction to the experience of pleasure and a stimulus leading to the loss of serenity - while still in the years of innocence - by opening the way to vice." --2015 Pope St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio
Some people are calling it the "Bud Light Effect." The phrase refers to an encouraging phenomenon this year of people standing up and saying, "enough is enough" to the increasingly heavy-handed demands of the LGBT movement, particularly during so-called "Pride Month."
In a way, it all began a few months ago, when Bud Light released a video featuring the self-described transgender "influencer" Dylan Mulvaney. In the video Mulvaney holds a special edition can of Bud Light with his likeness plastered on it, gushing about the "gift" from the beer company.
Mulvaney, who is a man, has spent the past year donning preposterously flamboyant "feminine" outfits, and then prancing before the camera, all in a project that he called "365 days of womanhood." Anyone who has paid any attention to Mulvaney's masquerade is unsurprised to discover that he is a long-time musical theatre student. In other words, his alleged "transgenderism" appears to be little more than a drawn-out theatrical act to gain attention, carried out in mockery of authentic femininity and womanhood.
For the many Americans who have endured year after year of "Pride" propaganda, including from favorite brands like Bud Light, the Mulvaney video was a giant leap too far. A grassroots boycott effort began, which was then super-charged by the endorsement and publicity offered by some of the leading stars at The Daily Wire.
In the weeks since, Bud Light sales have plummeted. In the face of predictions that the Bud Light boycott would fizzle out, as most other boycotts do, it seems to only be gaining steam. Just this week, it was announced that for the first time in two decades, Bud Light is no longer the top selling beer in America. In fact, the beer has become so toxic that in many companies just drinking the beer is likely to earn you derisive comments.
However, there are arguments that the "Bud Light Effect" began much earlier than Mulvaney's video. In reality, Mulvaney's absurd video was merely the straw that broke the camel's back, unleashing feelings that have been building up for years.
In recent years, so-called "Pride" celebrations have moved from a peripheral event restricted to a few days in June, to an ubiquitous, drawn-out, months-long propaganda festival, to which everyone is expected to respond with unbridled support and enthusiasm.
The extravagance of the attention showered on "Pride" celebrations by governments and businesses has come to far out-strip that given even to traditional holidays like Christmas and Easter, to the point that to many it has come to appear as if "Pride" is now our culture's de facto religion.
Many people have learned that on the first day of June (so-called "Pride Month"), we can expect practically the entire Internet to turn rainbow, as brands race to outdo one another in their enthusiasm for all things "Pride." In many cities, entire streets are draped with rainbow flags, which seem to change every year, as more and more colors and shapes are added to express solidarity with ever more bizarre sexual "minorities."
"Pride Festivals" take place over key summer weekends, with streets gridlocked with floats featuring adults engaging in all manner of grotesque and sexually-explicit behavior, all disingenuously labeled "family friendly" and "fun."
Whereas "Pride" was once sold as a movement in support of the "right" for certain individuals to pursue certain lifestyle choices in private, it has become an occasion to publicly shame and force individuals to support those lifestyle choices. Dare to refuse to put the "Pride" flag on your desk at work, or to attend the corporate "Pride" celebration, and you can be sure that your company's HR department is taking notice.
Meanwhile, more and more extreme sexual identities and practices are finding a home under the "Pride" banner, including horrific practices such as BDSM. Particularly appalling in recent years, has been the extremely rapid and heavy-handed introduction of gender ideology. Many people who were perfectly willing to support the supposed "right" of homosexuals to engage in certain sexual behaviors, are now being told that if they don't agree that women can have male genitalia, or that men can give birth, or that children should be given powerful puberty blockers or have healthy body parts cut off, are "bigots."
In some quarters, there has even been a concerted movement to expand "Pride Month" into so-called "Pride Season," spreading "Pride" propaganda and paraphernalia across the entire summer months, ensuring that people are forced to think about people's sexual proclivities for significant chunks of the year.
And many people are simply saying, "enough is enough!"
But for many people, the bridge too far has been the rapid domination of "Pride" within schools, including down to the very youngest ages and grades.
On June 1, for example, a video went viral on Twitter, showing the obscene "welcome" given to children at one publicly-funded school. Children entering the school had to walk between a veritable gauntlet of adults dressed up in rainbow costumes waving rainbow flags. The children then walked through a giant rainbow doorway and were all given their own rainbow flags, which they were filmed waving in the hallways. Most of them were far, far too young to know what all the fuss was even about.
The video is heartbreaking. Good luck trying to be a faithful Christian child in such a school, in which all the adults have ruthlessly sent the message that there is only one acceptable response: complete and total support. In some cases, this message has been made very, very explicit. As Rachna Singh, the government's top education minister in one of the largest provinces in Canada, put it in a recent statement to mark "Pride Month:"
The month of June is a time for all in K-12 education throughout B.C. to hear more about Pride month, recognize and celebrate the contributions of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and learn more about the significance and origins of events that started out of protest, Flike the Pride parade.
Singh made sure to explain that dissent would not be tolerated and that "Pride" celebrations in schools are mandatory. "In 2016, the B.C. Human Rights Code was amended to ensure that gender identity and expression are protected under the code," she noted. "All schools must comply with the Human Rights Code and demonstrate they are creating safe, welcoming and inclusive environments for our students and staff."
Got it? Create a safe and welcoming environment...or else.
Unfortunately, such a threat was largely unnecessary, since almost all schools in many U.S. states and Canadian provinces have already complied, dutifully flying the "Pride" flag next to the national or state flag, as if this political movement is somehow on par with our national identity. Alas, even in many religious schools, the "Pride" flag is far more visible than any indications of the school's alleged religious affiliation.
Encouragingly, the dramatically effective boycott of Bud Light was one of the first signs this year that people are reaching some sort of a breaking point. For Bud Light sales to drop off a cliff like that means that literally millions of people decided that they would no longer drink a beer that was willing to sell-out to recent LGBT trends and its ridiculous and destructive ideology.
Gender ideology is not just preposterous, but deeply dangerous. Take, for instance, this heartbreaking story about a young girl who is suing the "medical health professionals" who prescribed her puberty blockers and then removed her healthy breasts at the age of thirteen.
Most ordinary people know this. But they also know that they have no voice. Practically every major media outlet (including supposedly "conservative" Fox News) has caved to LGBT demands to refer to self-evidently male individuals as "she" or "her," or routinely uses phrases such as "her penis" or "pregnant man." And most business HR departments are controlled by LGBT activists, ensuring that few people feel able to express their true beliefs, even in private, without fear of professional consequences.
In the Bud Light boycott, these people found a voice. And numerous brands and media are sitting up and taking notice.
In recent weeks, numerous mainstream media outlets have run articles decrying the "homophobic backlash" against "Pride" celebrations in 2023. They point to a growing number of protests, particularly outside schools, as well as another wildly successful boycott against Target, after the store started stocking swimsuits and other apparel aimed at "transgender" children.
Some of these articles have noted that in the wake of the Bud Light Boycott a surprising number of brands did not mark "Pride" month in the usual ways, such as changing their logos on social media to rainbow colors.
However, as pro-family author Jonathon van Maren points out, what the media calls a "backlash" is often simply individuals and institutions refusing to kowtow to LGBT demands, to loudly and prominently celebrate the increasingly extreme form of their ideology. Such a "backlash" isn't really a "backlash" at all. Rather it is just commonsensical, reclaiming of the rightful autonomy and identity of such places as schools, which are supposed to be venues for education, not propaganda outfits for any particular political ideology.
However, to the extent that there is a backlash, particularly in schools, it is long overdue.
Catholic teaching outlines ideals for education, particularly sex education, in which "Pride" celebrations have no place whatsoever. As Pope St. John Paul II powerfully outlines in
Familiaris consortio(no. 37), in the face of the narcissistic, hedonistic modern worldview, "children must be enriched not only with a sense of true justice, which alone leads to respect for the personal dignity of each individual, but also and more powerfully by a sense of true love, understood as sincere solicitude and disinterested service with regard to others, especially the poorest and those in most need."
"Education in love as self-giving is also the indispensable premise for parents called to give their children a clear and delicate sex education," he continues,
"Faced with a culture that largely reduces human sexuality to the level of something common place, since it interprets and lives it in a reductive and impoverished way by linking it solely with the body and with selfish pleasure, the educational service of parents must aim firmly at a training in the area of sex that is truly and fully personal: for sexuality is an enrichment of the whole person-body, emotions and soul-and it manifests its inmost meaning in leading the person to the gift of self in love."
The LGBT movement, with its heavy emphasis on "pleasure" as the highest sexual ideal, and celebration of various destructive sexual lifestyles, utterly fails to meet these basic criteria. For Catholic schools (and in my opinion, for any school) to hold "Pride" celebrations, or to promote LGBT ideology, is a massive failure in their moral responsibility towards parents and children. And this, not because it teaches too much about sex, but rather far too little. LGBT ideologues at most teach the mechanics and techniques of various types of sexual behaviors, without any of the rich thinking about the role of sexuality in marriage, family life and the life of virtue that makes Catholic teaching so life-giving and soul-enriching.
In my estimation, seeing students and parents protest "Pride" celebrations outside schools is a great sign of hope that families are finally waking up to the dark underbelly of the LGBT/Pride movement. This devouring beast trains children in lies and destructive behaviors that destroy bodies and souls, and yet has somehow found a way into the sacred halls and classrooms of our schools.
The success of the Bud Light boycott shows that ordinary citizens do have power to stand up to the LGBT juggernaut that thought it had won dominance over all of our cultural institutions. In the end, the LGBT movement can control all the money, power and influence, and yet fail to win the hearts of ordinary people who can see through the lies, and who will eventually find the courage and will to stand up and say, "enough is enough!"