By Rose Carlson
Christian Action League
June 15, 2022
Promoters of Pride Month continue to push the LGBTQ agenda and try to demonize anyone who doesn’t celebrate their chosen lifestyle.
Equality NC sponsored a Drag Queen Story Hour for children Saturday in Apex, despite residents’ objections to the event. And Holly Springs Mayor Sean Mayefskie came under fire for announcing that his town would not be issuing a Pride Month proclamation.
Mayefskie said Holly Springs has inclusive and diverse policies and doesn’t need a proclamation.
“I think our actions as a town speak louder than the words,” he said during a June 7 town meeting, where a council member called anyone who didn’t embrace Pride month part of an “intolerant minority.”
The Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, said gay rights advocates will never be satisfied.
“I can remember when they insisted that all they ever wanted was marriage – just like heterosexuals. Now they have it, but it’s still not enough. They continue to push the line further and further until there is no live-and-let-live policy,” Creech said. “What they continue to want is affirmation and acknowledgement that their sexual preferences are immutable, normal, and something to be celebrated.”
Creech said gay rights advocates “often use the language of openness, tolerance, and diversity, but to disagree with them is to be labeled a ‘hater’ or a ‘bigot’ or part of a subculture as bad as the KKK.”
In fact, “bigot” is the word that the News & Observer Editorial Board used to describe Apex area residents who spoke out against plans for the Drag Queen Story Hour, which was canceled in response to the negative feedback but then resurrected by Equality NC, who stepped in to take over the event.
“They insist that Christian people who find their way of life rejected in the sight of God, are free to have such views, but only if kept to themselves,” Creech said.
Created in San Francisco in 2015, Drag Queen Story Hour has spread across the country, with the first such event held in Raleigh about three years ago. According to the DQSH website, having drag queens read to children “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood.”
“Christian people don’t want their children subject to drag queen days, and they care enough about other children that they want them to be protected from it too,” Creech said.
That’s the sentiment expressed by Holly Springs resident Steve Schneider, one of seven people who spoke out at the June 7 meeting and the only one agreeing with the mayor that a Pride Month proclamation wasn’t needed.
“For the month of June, I am forced to change the channel, visit stores less frequently, turn off the radio and bite my tongue in the name of being nice — all to protect myself and my children and my family from Pride Month propaganda,” Schneider said. “No more. Love your neighbor, tell the truth, pray and do not proclaim June as Pride Month. Be humble instead.”
In addition to demanding a Pride Month proclamation, many of the crowd at the meeting were pushing for Holly Springs to sign onto a non-discrimination ordinance that Wake County has adopted, which includes special protections for special populations, including LGBTQ people.
Council member Aaron Wolff, who had characterized the mayor as part of the “intolerant minority,” also pushed for the non-discrimination ordinance, saying that he’s been told by his LGBTQ neighbors that the ordinance “has value.”
In addition to sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, protected classes under the ordinance include race, natural hair or hairstyles, ethnicity, creed, color, sex, pregnancy, marital or familial status, national origin or ancestry, National Guard or veteran status, religious belief or non-belief, age or disability.
“These SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) ordinances which they promote in towns across our state can have all sorts of serious unintended consequences that actually take away civil rights and freedom from people,” Creech said.
The N.C. Values Coalition says SOGI laws coerce uniformity of thought and speech on beliefs about marriage, sex, and what it means to be male and female and in so doing undermine both fairness and freedom. Instead of protecting the vulnerable, the Wake County policy will actually “create conflicts, disputes and victims in unintended ways,” the group’s website explains.
