https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/olympian-obscenity/
Christians and their allies should respond to ideologues’ mockery of their faith.
Radical queer ideologues have long been willing publicly to profane Christ and Christian values. But before last week, they had never done so at an Olympic ceremony, which had historically represented our common humanity across nations and cultures.
That line has now been crossed. In a now-infamous moment from the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony, a group of drag queens flanked a woman with a ring around her head, with a topless, blue-painted man lying atop a platter at the display’s center. The exhibit was an obvious mockery of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. The display prompted pushback from Christian leaders across the globe. For example, Bishop Robert Barron, at whose Word on Fire organization I serve as senior director, called on Christians to take a public stand against the mockery.
In response, Olympic organizers removed the opening ceremony from YouTube and issued a qualified apology for causing offense. Unfortunately, these same organizers now seem to be gaslighting the public, denying that the display was a play on The Last Supper, despite their own performers’ claims to the contrary.
How can Christians and like-minded allies prevent this ugly event from being memory-holed? More broadly, how can they combat an increasingly pervasive queer ideology—that is, a political worldview that seeks to dismantle objective, biologically based conceptions of women, men, and family formation and replace them with subjective, transgressive expressions of gender and sexuality decoupled from the creation and nurturing of human life?
Here are five suggestions:
Boycott the Institutional Backers
The movement plants its flag on the territory it holds. Garish rainbow symbols identify the movement’s corporate supporters. Christians and all who embrace traditional values should pull their money from such organizations, forcing them to choose between virtue-signaling and profit.
Cleanse Our Temples
The belief system that inspired the Olympic debacle has too often penetrated Protestant and Catholic churches, charities, and schools. My family and I, for example, just visited one of the most well-known Catholic universities in the world; we were greeted by an admissions counselor who enthusiastically introduced herself to prospective students and their parents with her pronouns: “she/they.”
Such capitulation is now commonplace in many Christians institutions, despite the obvious conflicts between biblical religion and the radical ideology. The Bible upholds and celebrates the integrity of the human body, the intrinsic and complementary goodness of the two (and only two) sexes, the innocence of children, and the creation of new human life within a natural family. Queer ideology, by contrast, denies every one of these goods. No effort to resist it will succeed if Christians continue to allow its exponents to capture the pulpits and indoctrinate children. It’s time for believers to insist on doctrinal orthodoxy within their ranks.
Go on the Rhetorical Offensive
The ideology’s most effective weapon of institutional capture is rhetorical. Grounded in a postmodern understanding of the subjectivity of language, its proponents have gutted words of their meanings and stuffed them with their own content. They have redefined, for example, “compassion,” “kindness,” “inclusion,” “safety,” “diversity,” and “equality,” to fit their political goals. The opening ceremony’s creative director put this linguistic manipulation on display when he stated that the drag exhibit was intended to “celebrate community tolerance”—“tolerance,” in rainbow argot, meaning publicly mocking those whose values you do not share.
Christians and their allies must not only reclaim the stability and coherence of language but also go on the offensive, describing in clear terms the perversions of the ideology, including its support of so-called “gender-affirming care.” Consider, as a representative example, Christopher Rufo’s use of the term “child sex-change procedure” to describe the surgical mutilation of children’s healthy reproductive organs. The phrase accurately captures the reality underneath the euphemism and shows how Christians can respond to the ideologues’ efforts to use language to shield their radicalism.
Reclaim Where We Can, Build Anew Where We Must
The opening ceremonies may have been the most prominent display of the ideology’s success at institutional capture, but at the local level, especially in public schools and universities, its proponents are taking power as well. Some of these institutions are past the point of reform, but others might yet be reclaimed. In those cases, organized campaigns—such as the legal challenges and parent-led movements that have liberated some public schools from transgender madness—can save institutions. It will be an uphill battle and require courage and persistence, but motivated, organized, and politically savvy people can succeed.
Be Fruitful and Multiply
Queer ideology is literally sterile. Its view of human sexuality denies the primacy of the naturally formed family and makes idols of kink, fetish, and self-mutilation. Left to its internal logic, it will die out. Those who remain after this ideology’s demise will be the descendants of those who cherished and fought to protect the creation and nurturing of new human life. But those who seek to pass on the goods of civilization to the next generation must produce the next generation.
The 2024 Olympic ceremony is a watershed moment. The organizers’ version of The Last Supper ridiculed self-sacrificial love and laid bare the rotten fruit of a radical ideology. Christians and non-Christians alike ignore the threat at their own peril.
