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Pride month
Avert your eyes and hide your children – it’s that time of the year again: an entire month that we have inexplicably devoted to the mandatory public celebration of sexual degeneracy. For the last 25+ years June has been designated Pride month (originally “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month”), ironically but unintentionally named after the deadliest of sins.
Americans have one day set aside to honor George Washington, the Father of Our Country. We have one day set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. So it speaks volumes about our cultural priorities that we somehow allowed the Alphabet Lobby to impose on the calendar a full thirty days to commemorate sexual kinks. Rainbow versions of corporate logos abound, and the streets of Democrat-run major cities teem with exhibitionists sporting everything from leather-and-dog-collars to “furry” costumes. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that it’s only a month and not the entire year.
But there are hopeful signs that the momentum of the LGBTQetc. movement has slowed and may even be in reverse. One indication is that the Target chain, which went full-groomer in recent years by packing its stores with gender ideology-promoting children’s clothing, has muted its in-your-face participation in Pride month this year.
Another sign is that recently installed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered that the Navy warship USS Harvey Milk, named after a celebrated San Francisco pedophile, be renamed. The new name has not yet been announced, but a defense official said the decision’s timing was intentional, according to ABC News. Good – warships should all be named after wartime heroes, not social justice activists and/or sexual deviants.
Glenn Greenwald
Speaking of deviants, independent journalist Glenn Greenwald was trending on X over the weekend after someone (it remains unclear who) reportedly leaked video of Greenwald engaging in some sort of BDSM humiliation ritual with a male prostitute (I have not seen it and would rather stick white-hot pokers into my eyes than watch).
Strangely, major conservative influencers leaped to Greenwald’s defense. Megyn Kelly posted, “Love & respect @ggreenwald. Can’t wait to have him on again soon and ignore this attempt to embarrass him as the irrelevant BS it is.” Charlie Kirk wrote, “I am a massive fan of Glenn’s work even though we don’t agree on everything, all the time. He’s a free speech warrior, one of the most consistent journalists anywhere, and he’s earned my respect.” Matt Taibi, who is hardly a hardcore conservative but not a Lefty propagandist either, gushed to his 2 million followers, “Glenn is neither immoral nor degenerate, I’m proud to be his friend, have seen him display unusual courage and integrity countless times, and couldn’t admire him more.”
Sorry, but hiring a prostitute to satisfy your self-abasing fetishes is both immoral and degenerate. We should all agree that the violation of one’s privacy (if indeed that is what happened) – whether it’s doxxing or blackmailing or a smear campaign – is wrong and contemptible. But just because Greenwald’s privacy was violated doesn’t mean media personalities have to leap to defend his perversions.
Too many conservatives believe they are taking a brave and righteous stand when they defend immorality and degeneracy by claiming that one’s private and public lives have nothing to do with each other. In fact, they do. There is no way that the private sexual peccadilloes of, say, a politician do not bleed over into his or her public political actions (see Clinton, Bill and Monica Lewinsky). There is no way that Glenn Greenwald’s sexual perversions – which, in the aforementioned video, included wearing a Palestinian flag as he licked the prostitute’s spittle off the floor – are completely separate from his relentless anti-Israel “journalism.” Don’t even get me started on Greenwald posturing as a model dad to the two boys he and his late lover adopted.
Yes, Greenwald is a fierce defender of free speech, which in itself is admirable (although his agenda behind that defense is suspect), but he is also a propagandist obsessed with demonizing Israel over the ugly, demonstrable lie that it is waging genocide against the so-called Palestinians. He is also a committed Marxist and defender of Islamic terror groups in addition to previously running a gay escort service in Brazil and partnering with a pornographer. Exactly what is it that Kirk, Kelly, Taibi et al love and respect about this? That he’s consistent in his anti-American and anti-Israel propagandizing?
The compulsion among major media figures on the Right to prop Greenwald up as some kind of admirable hero is extremely odd and disturbing, an indication that today’s media elites – internet superstars like Megyn Kelly, Russell Brand, Tucker Carlson and many others – are not necessarily any more moral or trustworthy or even conservative than the Progressive mainstream media.
Addressing the leak, Greenwald posted on X, “As for the content of the videos: I have no embarrassment or regret about them. The videos depict consenting adults engaged in intimate actions in their private lives. They all display fully consensual behavior, harming nobody.”
To paraphrase philosopher Aldo Leopold, morality is what you do when no one is looking. Greenwald is spouting the age-old lie that consent is an ethics-free zone (can there even be true consent between a prostitute and his john? Does prostitution truly “harm nobody”?). He and his defenders want to pretend that there is a sacred wall of separation between your character and your sex life. There is not, and the conservatives supporting this falsehood need to check their own morality.
Pete Hegseth
Speaking of Hegseth, the UK’s Daily Mail posted an hilarious, fear-mongering hit piece titled, “The controversial visual cues Pete Hegseth uses to broadcast his beliefs that have landed him in the hot seat AGAIN.” Tragically, the article is behind a paywall; I would love to dissect the whole conspiratorial lunacy line-by-line, but in any case, the opening reads thusly:
Pete Hegseth, well known for using his body as a billboard for beliefs, is drawing ire again for his choice of political symbolism.
Critics both in and out of the defense department are railing against the defense secretary for wearing a Betsy Ross flag in the breast pocket of his suit – first on Memorial Day and then again for the Shangri-La Dialogue Summit in Singapore. The image is seen by many as a dog whistle for white supremacy and other forms of extremism.
Here is an image accompanying the piece:
Yes, it’s truly shocking that a United States Secretary of Defense would “broadcast” his beliefs with patriotic symbols like an American flag.
The “controversial visual cues” that previously landed him in “the hot seat” were Hegseth’s Jerusalem Cross and “Deus Vult” (“God wills it”) tattoos, which mark him as – gasp – a Christian, something the tolerant Left cannot tolerate.
The notion that “critics” are “railing” against Hegseth for wearing a Betsy Ross flag is absolutely absurd. If he were a Democrat sporting a keffiyeh, LGBT rainbow flag, or African kente stole, the Progressive media would be ecstatic. But because Hegseth is a proud patriot – and a Christian white male – they brand him a “white supremacist” and “extremist.”
These people are shameless – but also impotent, because their character assassinations have no power anymore.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior