Rainbowed
June initiates ‘Gay Pride Month’ in which LGBT (and so on) folks celebrate more gender selves then there are colors in the rainbow. Liberty? Think again. Their promise of freedom becomes enslaving liberties. (2P 2: 9).
How so? Our common enemy picks off the most vulnerable then offers well-intended solutions that neither fit the wound nor its cure. Simply put, sensitive, beat-up kids are misinterpreted as intrinsically ‘gay’ or ‘trans’ or whatever and are encouraged to ‘live their dream’ under the rainbow. That dream usually involves blessing the child as he or she aspires to an adult identity/fantasy, often with sexual connotations. (The boy wants to be Beyonce, the girl, a swaggering dude.) But gender ‘expansiveness’ (how we are now encouraged to define kids at odds with their gender) actually becomes a reduction of the self.
The threat to a child’s well-being lies in mistaking normal emotional needs for sexual ones. Developmental psychologists have always known that kids, from infancy to adolescence, need to be emotionally bolstered in the goodness of their own gender. That’s not about binding kids to rigid gender stereotypes. But a child’s freedom to flex in non-traditional ways needs to be grounded in self-acceptance. That involves parental attention, setting limits, and becoming trustworthy bridges between the child’s emerging self and his or her gender.
These are normal emotional needs! But in our virtual, sexually-exaggerated, and abuse-ridden world, a child’s bridge to gender security can break. In the void, emotional needs can become eroticized, and a ‘self’ begins to be constructed that promises freedom but may well fracture the already vulnerable soul.
That is the premise and unintended result of ‘Moonlight’, the Oscar-winner for Best Picture of 2016. A sensitive boy (who we have not reason to assume is ‘gay’; he is simply, shatteringly, in a state of emotional retreat) growing up in the hood with a drug-addicted mother is bullied and bloodied then befriended by a drug dealer and his girlfriend. The emotional core of the boy’s childhood involves a scene in the ocean where this unusually kind drug dealer teaches him to swim (a life-giving glimpse of ‘fathering’); the film treats this bond as a kind of baptism.
Sadly, a similar ‘baptism’ occurs when the boy-now-teen’s sole peer friend fondles him to climax on the beach, replete with swoony romantic images. While the boy’s ache for masculine advocacy is heart-rending, his need for connection is misconstrued as sexual and framed as almost divine in its consummation.
Later on, the teen-now-man, an emotional cripple who can barely speak, reteams with his beach ‘boyfriend’ for a sexual reunion. The film’s last scene revisits the man as a boy, baptized afresh in the cleansing waves of the ocean. Sexual connection triumphs over all! He was ‘gay’ all along and now free! Added bonus: black pride is ‘gay’ pride too!
We mess with kids when we misinterpret normal emotional needs for sexual ones. Hollywood majors on this. So does Gay Pride Month. Stay clear. We who are vulnerable to this deception must stay true to the Lord and one another. Let’s exemplify real freedom for a new generation, especially those as poignantly in need as the protagonist of ‘Moonlight.’ We can do better.
Please join us in San Diego on June 16th and 17th for the sixth annual RHN Hope 2017 Conference as hundreds gather to celebrate how Jesus has set them free from gender identity distortions. Preview with us the first full-length documentary film ever made–Tranzfomed–on how Jesus restores the transgendered. Register here today!
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