With Over 50+ LGBT Holidays, Christians Must Continue to ‘Speak the Truth in Love’

When President Joe Biden declared Easter Sunday to be the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” many Christians voiced their outrage. The controversy has been the talk of the town ever since, with little slowing down the momentum of the backlash. However, aside from the way Christians argue that proclamation seemed to intentionally overshadow the most holy day of the Christian calendar, it also brought light to another topic of discussion.

While the White House seemed unconcerned with eclipsing the resurrection of Jesus Christ with transgender ideology, the fact that there are dozens of days in the calendar year dedicated to celebrating something related to LGBT ideology has gone relatively under the radar. “I don’t remember presidential proclamations of Transgender Day of Visibility during any previous administration, especially not on Easter,” said “Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on Wednesday’s episode. 

But, he added, “Given the way that the LGBT movement has literally captured our calendar, what happened last Sunday, frankly, should be of no surprise. They now have [at least 50] days on our calendar for celebration.” So, what are Christians to think about this? How should we respond, and why does it matter?

David Closson, Family Research Council’s director of the Center for Biblical Worldview, said, “[I]f I had to boil this down, this whole episode shows us that this White House as well as the Biden campaign is laser focused on appeasing a part of the electorate that cares deeply about … this ideology, [these] identity politics.” He believes it’s important for Christians to recognize the priority of the country’s leaders. Although, it’s also important to recognize, as Closson emphasized, that even though the government pushes against biology and nature, “the more [they] push for visibility,” the more “it’s backfiring.”

He explained that we’ve watched as Europe, a continent “ahead of the United States in some of these experimental cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries for minor children,” increasingly pulls back on their policies and practices. Clinics in England that do these experimental procedures have shut down, and Closson laid out a reminder that “over the last year or two, dozens of states” have put “protections in place to protect minor children … [and] to protect women from biological men going into female only spaces.”

“In one sense,” he continued, “this push for so-called visibility, the more everyday Americans learn about this kind of agenda, the more they … say, ‘This isn’t anything we actually want.’” And so, when it comes to the vast number of LGBT-related “holidays” on the calendar, it can be viewed as a greater opportunity for the world to potentially see how out of hand this has all become, he argued.

“The holidays that a culture recognizes tell you a lot about [that] culture,” Closson emphasized. And he outlined some of the days the LGBT agenda has created, including April 6 as International Asexuality Day, April 18 as non-binary Parent’s Day, May 24 as Pansexual and Pan-Romantic Awareness and Visibility Day, August 14 as Gay Uncles Day, and October 11 as National Coming Out Day. “And it goes on,” Closson sighed.

But “we need to realize what’s happening here,” he continued. “Those who are driving the moral revolution realize that holidays, days that we set aside for recognition, they matter. They begin to categorize a people. They begin to inculcate what is right and what is wrong into a people. And so,” we can see how “the Left, … [is] trying to really colonize the calendar. Instead of celebrating Christmas and Easter, we’re going to celebrate these other holidays based on gender, based on ideology.”

Hice posed the question: What are Christians to do if they find themselves in an environment pushing for the observance of these “LGBT days”? Closson referred to Ephesians 4:15, which instructs Christians to “speak the truth in love.” He said that “sometimes people think those compete or those are somehow pitted against one another, being loving and being truthful. But they’re not at odds with one another.”

In fact, as Christians, Closson emphasized, “we need to be people of love. We need to be known by the fruits of the spirit. Christians should not be known as gruff people or rude people or mean people. We need to be known by love and joy and peace and patience and all the other fruits of the spirit.” But in this, “we can’t compromise what we know is true.” Practically, he added, Christians cannot “celebrate something that is objectively wrong” such as same-sex marriage or the usage of pronouns.

Hice agreed, adding that speaking the truth in love seems to be “one of the areas that brings a lot of confusion for believers.” In a sense, “there’s been some muddying of the water in understanding love. Many people, including many Christians, have come to believe that love means, in essence, affirming someone in their current … lifestyle or whatever it may be. But that’s not what love is.”

According to Scripture, Closson highlighted, “God is love. God is fully loving, and He’s full of truth. Jesus Himself says, ‘I’m the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.’ And so … the world screams for affirmation with the identity politics that is just plaguing our nation,” but “we cannot affirm sin.”

However, Closson wanted to make clear that while believers cannot affirm sin, we do show love to sinners. “[A]ll of us are sinners,” he said. “All of us have fallen short of God’s glory as Paul tells us in the book of Romans. So, we love sinners, … but we don’t affirm someone in that sin.”

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, shared some encouragement for Christians on his daily podcast, “The Briefing.” As he pointed out, no matter their ideological slant, the government “cannot change anatomy and physiology. It may rebel against creation order. It cannot reverse creation order. That is not in its power.”

Mohler concluded:

“Christians … have a very real sense of sympathy with people whose lives are so broken. … [But] at the same time, we cannot stop saying what we know to be true. We cannot stop preaching and teaching the Scriptures. We cannot stop saying the truth about male and female, about human beings, male and female made in the image of God. We cannot stop speaking about what marriage is and is not. We can’t stop speaking about what God has commanded both to do and not to do when it comes to human sexuality. We can’t stop telling the truth about the goodness of God’s creation. We can’t stop telling the truth even if they threaten us with jail.”