Pride Month may now be over, but the ideology it represents is always here. The LGBTQ movement, displaying its pride, holds tremendous influence in Canadian politics and culture. Every level of government in Canada is captive to the queer perspective, as is the mainstream media, academia, public education, and even sports organizations.Although many people may see the triumph of the LGBTQ movement as just another example of successful political mobilization, it actually goes much deeper than that. In fact, it represents the repaganization of the West.The West was originally the Roman Empire. That empire was pagan, and its spiritual life was dominated by pagan gods. However, as Christianity spread throughout the Empire in the first centuries of the new millennium, paganism was forced to retreat. Eventually, it would be pushed to the margins of Western society.By the latter part of the twentieth century, Christianity itself was being marginalized. Christian influence was cast out of public affairs. But there is no such thing as neutrality in culture and politics, so the retreat of Christianity was accompanied by the advance of a new religious perspective.This process is described by Jonathan Cahn, an American Messianic Jewish pastor, in his 2022 book, The Return of the Gods. As Cahn argues, that new religious perspective is essentially a form of the old paganism..Cahn sees the first major evidence of Christianity’s decline in the 1960s. It was during that decade that the influence of Christianity was formally removed from the public school system in the United States. Around the same time, Christianity was losing its influence in the media and culture. This, of course, meant that ideas founded on a different worldview were increasingly dominant.One clear manifestation of change was the popularization of new views of sexual morality, commonly known as the “sexual revolution.”What’s particularly interesting here is that the Christianization of the Roman Empire had played a crucial role in reforming the sexual mores of the West. Briefly stated, the pagan Roman view of sexuality was rather loose. Christianity brought significant change — a kind of conservative “sexual revolution” — by mandating sex to be exclusively for monogamous heterosexual couples within the bond of marriage.But with the 1960s, the consensus on the Christian view began to unravel. As Cahn writes, “the sexual revolution that took place in America and Western civilization in the late twentieth century was the reversing of the sexual revolution that took place in ancient times.”The new widespread popularity of sexual immorality included the embrace of homosexuality as a positive force in Western society.In point of fact, homosexuality and biblical Christianity are incompatible. The return to a favourable view of homosexuality was gradual, but it has now essentially triumphed at the expense of Christian influence..As Cahn puts it, “Each major step taken toward the establishment of homosexuality would be matched by an inverse step toward the disestablishment of Christianity. Every movement to celebrate homosexuality would lead to an inverse movement away from Judeo-Christian faith or the attacking of biblical values.”The gay rights movement was launched by the Stonewall riots of June 1969. Those riots broke out when police raided a homosexual bar at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in the early hours of June 28. The homosexuals fought back violently against the police, and this event became an historical watershed in the launch of the LGBTQ movement.As a result of the Stonewall riots, every June in locations across North America, Gay Pride Month is celebrated to commemorate this event. The official recognition of Pride Month represents a massive change in the culture. Cahn writes, “America and other nations of the West were now devoting an entire month to honour, praise, and celebrate a form of sexuality that a little while earlier had been nearly universally viewed as a form of immorality. Now it was being treated as sacred.”Even as Christian symbolism was being removed from schools and public property, the rainbow flag began to appear on public buildings and even in private businesses..In essence, the ubiquitous presence of the rainbow flag represents the triumph of paganism over Christianity in American and Western society.Such pagan influence is not without serious consequences. The new morality represented by the triumph of the LGBTQ movement and the legalization of same-sex marriage has become the official morality of governments in North America.The result? Cahn writes that “Christians were now told that they would have to comply with the new morality, its tenets and acts, to endorse them and propagate them, by force of social or economic pressure or by force of law. If they refused or voiced disagreement, they would now be subject to serious consequences: the loss of their jobs, the boycotting of their businesses, deplatforming, defunding, prosecution, or other punishments.”It is clear that Christianity has been rapidly losing its public influence in North America for several decades. The West has come full circle — from pagan to Christian, and back to pagan again. The celebration of LGBTQ Pride every June is a constant reminder of the current triumph of paganism.
