CATHOLIC HERALD

Drag queen confirms it was a parody of Last Supper despite Olympic committee’s claim

Elise Ann Allen/ Crux

July 29, 2024 at 11:15 am

Artists who participated in the parody sketch at the heart of mounting controversy over the opening ceremony to the Paris Olympics have confirmed that the performance was intended to imitate Leonardo da Vinci’s famed painting of the Last Supper.

The confirmation was made in online social media posts and in comments to the press, and goes against the explanation offered by the Paris Olympics’ organising committee that the controversial scene was an “interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus [that] makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings”.

RELATED: Olympics’ organisers offer half apology over Last Supper controversy

The French drag queen and rapper known as Piche from the show Drag Race France spoke to French media, saying the intention was to create a tableau of the Last Supper.

“I received a lot of messages of support and people who were very happy that I was there and very surprised that there were drag queens at the opening ceremony,” he said, adding the opposition to the performance indicates that “we’ve succeeded and we’ve done what had to be done, that we’ve been fair and representative”.

“Art always divides. As long as it doesn’t move people, it’s not art for me,” he said, arguing that the parody of the Last Supper “is not a provocation” as “it’s a biblical representation that has been reused in pop culture for decades and it’s never really been a problem”.

“There were no real provocations or anything that was truly obscene. We didn’t make fun of the painting at all…it’s really just because it’s queers and drag queens who use that representation that it bothers,” he said.

Similarly, Barbara Butch, a lesbian who donned a silver aureole halo crown headdress and low-cut dress while portraying the figure of Jesus in the Last Supper sketch, said the opening ceremony was intended to bring people together.

According to her Instagram profile, Butch is “a Love activist, Dj and producer based in Paris. My aim is to unite people, gather humans & share love through music for all of Us to dance & make our hearts beat (in unison)! Music sounds better with all of Us!”

Butch posted a screenshot image of her performance in the Last Supper parody above an image of Da Vinci’s original painting to her Instagram account with the comment, “Oh yes! Oh yes! The new gay testament!”

The post was subsequently deleted.

RELATED: EDITORIAL: Not clever; not funny; just crass

The French Bishops Conference released a statement saying that while the ceremony “offered the world a marvellous display of beauty and joy, rich in emotion and universally acclaimed”, it also “unfortunately included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity, which we deeply regret”.

“We are thinking of all the Christians on every continent who have been hurt by the outrageousness and provocation of certain scenes”, the bishops say, adding that “we want them to understand that the Olympic celebration goes far beyond the ideological biases of a few artists”.

Photo: The Last Supper parody sketch during the Paris Olympic Games’ opening ceremony, with Piche on the far right and Barbara Butch in centre of image; screenshot from @libsoftiktok.

 

 

1. “Uncivilized” Catholic Ireland

   by John Duggan7 . 30 . 24
   

Neil Jordan is Ireland’s greatest and most successful film director. His 1992 movie The Crying Game was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay, which Jordan won. Michael Collins, which starred Liam Neeson and Julia Roberts, won the Golden Lion at Venice. Jordan recently gave an interview to the BBC about the experiences and ideas that have influenced his career. It’s a good listen and Jordan, as you’d expect, has some memorable and insightful things to say. But he also says some pretty odd things—things redolent of the glib but widespread assumption that the culture of mid-century Ireland was irredeemably, comprehensively, contemptibly backwards. 

It begins when Jordan responds to a question about whether he had film-making ambitions “as a kid.” The reply comes: “No, I didn’t. Nobody Irish could have at the time because they didn’t make them there.” Since Neil Jordan was born in 1950, the listener’s takeaway is that there was no film production in Ireland in, say, the 1950s and 1960s. 

However, this isn’t true. Setting aside the filming of certain U.S. or U.K.-made blockbusters—think John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952), or David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970)—strenuous efforts were underway to create and sustain a home-grown Irish film industry precisely when Jordan was “a kid.” Two years before he was born, in fact, Ardmore Film Studios had been established by an extraordinary man called Emmet Dalton. 

Born in Fall River, Massachusetts, and reared in Dublin, Dalton had served with distinction as a junior officer in the British army throughout the First World War, and was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. Returning home, this devout, lifelong Catholic joined the struggle against the British in the Irish War of Independence. 

Neil Jordan must surely know about Emmet Dalton. Yet, in his BBC comments, he spoke as though films such as Shake Hands with the Devil, starring James Cagney, made at Ardmore and released in 1959, or The Playboy of the Western World, directed by Belfast-born Brian Desmond Hurst and released in 1962, simply never existed. The latter was an adaptation of J. M. Synge’s play, one of the acknowledged masterpieces of Irish literature. Meanwhile, 1963 saw Francis Ford Coppola make his first feature-length film at Ardmore, a low-budget horror movie called Dementia 13. 

More broadly, there was also a certain film culture, however modest, in Ireland when Neil Jordan was a child. For instance, another Ardmore-made film, This Other Eden, directed by Muriel Box and described as addressing “emigration, the power and wealth of the Church, the reverence of nationalist martyrs, illegitimacy and anti-English hostility” (no signs of narrow-mindedness there), received its premiere at the Cork International Film Festival, which is only ten years younger than Cannes and much older than Toronto or Sundance. And already in the late 1930s, a hefty quarterly review titled Bonaventura, edited by Fr. Senan, a Capuchin priest, was publishing a regular cinema column that posed questions like “Can Ireland Make Films?” and “Are We Sufficiently Cinema Minded?” 

Now, to be clear: to describe film-making in Ireland in those days as fragile would be entirely justifiable. But to pretend it didn’t exist at all seems perverse. So why did Neil Jordan do it?  

Well, in part, it makes for a good story. To get anywhere in life, the plucky, impoverished Paddy needed first to get away from dead-end Ireland. Speaking about leaving for London, Jordan lays it on thick: “We’re talking about the seventies, 1970, I would have been twenty. Every Irish person either went on the dole, became an alcoholic, or went to England, became a laborer, or ended up somewhere in between.” 

Let’s allow that Jordan is, at least partly, being mischievous and hyperbolic. (He went up another gear for The Guardian newspaper when referring to his move to England: “Probably somebody who leaves North Korea for South Korea would have the same experience.”) But let’s also remember that, while there were indeed plenty of people on the dole, the unemployment rate in Ireland in the early seventies was actually not much higher than in the U.K.: around 5.5 percent versus 4.5 percent.  However, for Jordan simply to have said that, quite rationally, he went to England because the cinema industry and the literary scene were so much greater and more opportunity-rich than in Ireland wouldn’t have evoked quite the same self-serving mood of romance and despair.

But there is more to Jordan’s remarks than just that. Neil Jordan, and his right-thinking BBC listeners, view the Ireland of those days, from top to bottom, as a poor, priest-ridden, censorship-stifled, philistinic wasteland. Of course, only a fool would argue that there was nothing about mid-century Ireland that needed to change; that the position of the Church in society was all to the good, or that cinema and the arts flourished unencumbered. But why not simply tell the truth about it? Why always paint the country your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents made as irredeemably primitive?  

Frantz Fanon, the famous Martiniquais psychiatrist and political philosopher, comes whispering to my mind with some added explanatory power. He famously once wrote that the first thing the colonizer does is to “plant deep in the mind of the native population the idea that, before the advent of colonialism, their history was one which was dominated by barbarism.” Ridding the people of their barbaric papist faith was among the dearest objectives of English policy toward Ireland over many centuries. Heaping insults and ridicule on the heads of the Irish was one of the (gentler) methods employed. 

Are there traces of what Fanon theorized in Neil Jordan’s attitude? “I think the Ireland I grew up in was still not entirely civilized,” he told the BBC. “I mean it was this kind of blasted, Catholic Church kind of universe, you know, wedded to a whole bed of superstition.” England, by contrast, was “where people finished their sentences,” where “people make sense,” where “real things happen.” The effort in Ireland to build a fully independent, self-determining republic, with its own broadcaster, airline, state industries, armed forces, social welfare systems, and so on, was barely thirty years old; yet nothing real was happening there, apparently.      

Ultimately, Neil Jordan’s remarks represent a worldview in which all counterfactuals—however minor, however rightly hedged about with caveats—to the dominant version of Ireland’s cultural and social history in the twentieth century must be blotted out entirely. They demonstrate, once again, how, in these days, it is not permitted for even the smallest ray of light to reach us from that poor, benighted land.

John Duggan is a freelance writer based in England.

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Reposted from February 2024

WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT SEBASTIAN...

Detters we have to talk about Sebastian. He's now fifteen? And like all teenagers of that age very impressionable.

First of all Detters let me congratulate you and Delia on your parenting. You have my unbounded admiration. From everything I gather Sebastian has had a wonderful upbringing and is fortunate in this day and age to grow up with such solicitous care for his moral and spiritual welfare. Recently Detters you wrote that when you and Delia visit The Bay Food Bank with donations you take Sebastian along with you. Such good example. Well done!

However, it's not all plain sailing. Sebastian must encounter some difficulty in you being eighty or thereabouts. No doubt many of his friends mistake you for his grandfather.

Also there is the issue of you being Protestant* and your wife being Catholic. 

I don't mind if you attend Catholic Mass with Sebastian and Delia but there are problems if they attend C of E Eucharist with you. Firstly you of course cannot receive Holy Communion at the Catholic Mass. Under no circumstances at the C of E Eucharist must Sebastian and Delia receive communion - it is of course not communion but an unconsecrated wafer. Henry VIII and the break in Apostolic succession has seen to that. C of E bishops and priests are not validly ordained. How correct was Pope Benedict XVI when he declared that the Anglican Church had no legitimacy.

Finally, please do not allow Sebastian to come under any Gay Lobby influences or ideas. I do not have to elaborate. Likewise please direct him away from any acceptance of abortion or assisted dying. 

Please Detters and Delia keep up the good work.

GENE

* I used to have arguments with the Church of England Busybody R.I.P. about this. She maintained that she was not Protestant. I countered with that because the C of E accepted the 39 Articles she was ergo Protestant.

 

The Enduring Testimony of Eta Linnemann (1926–2009)

July 25, 2024  |  Robert W. Yarbrough

 

Significant figures in recent history are easily forgotten. You may have never heard of Eta Linnemann, but her story bears recalling.

As a student of renowned theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) in the 1950s, she inherited his skepticism about the Bible and events like Christ’s bodily resurrection. She taught these skeptical views to her students in a German university. But as she reached middle age in the 1970s, she abandoned this unbelieving heritage and professed faith in Christ. During her final 30 years, she taught and proclaimed the truth of the Bible and its gospel message. She addressed students and churches in Germany, Scandinavia, Indonesia, the United States, and elsewhere. Her books still sell and circulate today.

Before we consider her faith, let’s see how the skeptical phase of her life unfolded.

Pilgrimage into Unbelief

In her northern German childhood, Linnemann attended church sporadically. She recalled young assistant pastors instructing her Lutheran youth group, but they taught only briefly and then rotated elsewhere. During her confirmation lessons (early teens), she concluded that the pastor “was not born again, and whatever [she] learned did not give any connection to the Lord.” She regarded the gospels as “just different biographies of Jesus.” What she learned had no lasting effect.

After the war, searching for meaning, she attended a 10-day retreat. The scheduled speaker canceled due to flu. A last-minute substitute proved to be an upgrade. In Linnemann’s words,

He had something special: he really believed in Christ. Now, I would say he was a born-again Christian; at that time, I had never heard about being born again. One day this pastor dared to tell us that we were sinners and needed a Savior—Jesus Christ. Of the twenty or so students, about six or seven of us agreed with him and accepted Christ. A day full of joy followed our decision, and then everyone had to return home.

This faith seems to have been stillborn. A few months later, she began university study at Marburg, Germany. She was taught that Jesus’s resurrection wasn’t a historical fact; it was just an idea his disciples shared. This set the tone for her entire theological education. She learned that despite the predictions of Christ’s return in Scripture, the second coming was never going to happen. She learned that the Bible isn’t really “the word of God”; at most, you might sense impressions of God as you read it.

Overall, Linnemann recalled, “We were taught that when we read something in the Bible, we must realize it could have never taken place.”

Due to her diligence as a student and her talent as a scholar, Linnemann eventually followed her teachers (Bultmann, Gerhard Ebeling, Ernst Fuchs, and others) into teaching. She became part of the society of scholars teaching university students (many headed into church leadership) that the Bible and Christian belief must be radically reinterpreted to keep in step with the times. As a New Testament scholar, she authored publications (including Gleichnisse Jesu – Einführung und Auslegung) that were among the first critically acclaimed studies by a woman in a male-dominated guild.

Looking back, Linnemann confessed that God had forgiven her for her critical views and how she inflicted them on a generation of university students. What happened to bring her to a living faith in Jesus Christ?

From Criticism to Christ

As she taught disbelief in the Bible to students, Linnemann found skepticism of her own skepticism creeping in. “The Lord helped me hear the real gospel,” she recalls. This happened over several years through seemingly unlikely means.

Looking back, Linnemann confessed that God had forgiven her for her critical views and how she inflicted them on a generation of university students.

 

When evaluating a dissertation, she came across well-attested reports of miracles occurring in African churches. She shared this with students, who were shocked that a university professor would admit the possibility of miracles being real. The students began to pray for her. So did their families. It would be a miracle to have a theology professor who believed that at least some of the miracles reported in the Bible could have occurred.

Sensing an opening, students began inviting Linnemann to their monthly prayer meetings. She resisted for months. Finally, she showed up. For a year, she observed the students’ love, their affirmation of salvation through faith in Christ, and the prayers they shared—many of which were visibly answered. This fascinated Linnemann.

Then, one month, a speaker challenged the students: “Is there anybody who wants to believe in Christ?” Linnemann says her first response was “Oh, that’s not for me because I already believe in Christ.” But looking back, she reflects,

That is the problem with theologians; they think they are believers. But then he repeated it, asking who was willing to surrender his life to Christ. Then I knew it was for me. I lifted my arm, the Lord saw my heart, and my life was changed.

I first heard of Eta Linnemann in the early 1980s. Her new life in Christ was just getting underway. I was a doctoral student in Scotland. Two of my fellow students were Germans, and they told me about her change of heart.

I began to run across publications reflecting her new outlook. Over time, I met her personally and translated three of her books, all still in print: the first was Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology? Next, she wrote a book that challenged the consensus that the Synoptic Gospel writers mainly copied off of each other: Is There a Synoptic Problem? Rethinking the Literary Dependence of the First Three Gospels. She followed that with an anthology of critical essays covering various topics: Biblical Criticism on Trial: How Scientific Is Scientific Theology? At least two of these are still in print in Germany.

Among her other publications was an article probing the evidence for the reputed Gospel source called Q. A funny story sheds light on Linnemann’s sometimes blunt manner: the well-known editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks, began a translation of the German version of this article. He sent his work to Linnemann to see if she would consent to its publication in the magazine. Reading his translation, Linnemann thundered, “This is not a translation! It is a forgery!” She didn’t find the translation accurate.

Shanks was thick-skinned enough not to take offense. He invited her to find a translator to her liking, which she did. He subsequently published the result.

Linnemann’s Legacy: Pro and Con

This exchange with Shanks reveals one aspect of Linnemann’s legacy: she wasn’t always diplomatic in her dealings with others. She felt that evangelical scholars should be on the warpath against the “historical-critical theology” (as she termed it) that dominated Western biblical studies. She was sometimes unfair to evangelical colleagues (especially Germans) who weren’t on the same page as her on this mission.

Yet in other respects, I believe we may regard her work favorably. Years ago, I evaluated reviews of her somewhat maverick work on the Synoptic problem. Then as now, I believe she made valid points, offering a truly critical perspective on a topic where too many take too much for granted . . . and where consensus on solving this “problem” still eludes the guild.

In an age of “exvangelicals,” it’s sobering to contemplate Linnemann’s dead-on critique of the generally liberal theology that nearly did her in—and which some disaffected evangelicals seem eager to affirm at least in part.

Most of all, it’s heartening to recall the work of God’s grace in leading Linnemann out of the darkness of the skepticism she’d learned and sought to inflict on her students. The opening of her written testimony includes this:

I want to give you my testimony, beginning with a verse from God’s word, 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” This is very important. I was a theologian for decades but did not know about the inspiration of the Holy Scripture. I had to be born again to find this out.

Linnemann’s story isn’t unique. In 2011, Mary Schertz, professor of New Testament at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, published an account of a major shift in her outlook. She went from rejecting “the notion of having a personal relationship with Jesus” to entering into that relationship.

It’s sobering to contemplate Linnemann’s dead-on critique of the generally liberal theology that nearly did her in.

 

Many Bible scholars and theologians do, of course, profess faith in Christ. But among scholars internationally, they’re a marked minority. The university world isn’t friendly toward the notion of a truth-revealing Bible and the one true living God revealed in Jesus Christ.

We therefore give thanks all the more for stories like those of Linnemann and Schertz. God’s Word isn’t bound (2 Tim. 2:9), even if powerful institutions, mainstream scholars, and the normative societal outlook deny such a Word even exists.

 

 

Author Edna O'Brien dies at age of 93

Image source,Getty Images

Image caption,

The Irish President described the writer as a ‘fearless teller of truths’

Charlotte Gallagher

Culture reporter

Published
26 minutes ago

Acclaimed Irish author, Edna O'Brien, has died at the age of 93.

Her literary agent, PFD, and publisher, Faber, said she died peacefully on Saturday after a long illness.

They said their thoughts were with her "family and friends, in particular her sons Marcus and Carlo".

Born in rural County Clare in 1930, O'Brien found her education by nuns suffocating and moved to Dublin to escape, subsequently spending much of her life in London.

She published her first novel The Country Girls in 1960.

The ground-breaking account of two female friends and the portrayal of female sexuality scandalised Ireland.

The novel and her two subsequent stories, The Lonely Girl and Girls in Their Married Bliss were banned by the Irish government.

Some copies were even burnt, including in O'Brien's home village.

But the books became huge successes and were credited with challenging traditional societal views.

O'Brien wrote more than 20 novels, as well as dramas and biographies.

Many of her novels detailed the struggles of women in a male dominated world.

The writer was also the recipient of numerous awards including the Pen Nabokov prize.

Ireland's president, Michael D Higgins said he felt "great sorrow" and described O'Brien as a "fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed.

"Through that deeply insightful work, rich in humanity, Edna O’Brien was one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations and played an important role in transforming the status of women across Irish society.

"While the beauty of her work was immediately recognised abroad, it is important to remember the hostile reaction it provoked among those who wished for the lived experience of women to remain far from the world of Irish literature, with her books shamefully banned upon their early publication."

In 2020 Edna O'Brien told the Guardian newspaper that she had not had "that brilliant a life in many ways"., external

She added: "It was quite difficult and that’s not said in self-pity but one thing that is true is that language and the mystery of language and the miracle of language has, as that lovely song Carrickfergus says, carried me over… the richness of great language.”

• Listen to 2015 interview O'Brien gave to the BBC as she published her novel, The Little Red Chairs

 

Christian voices protest 'outrageous and provocative scenes' at opening ceremony

French bishops criticized the "mockery and mockery of Christianity," while in Lebanon the bishopric of Antelias condemned the one scene as a despicable act.

OLJ / 28 July 2024 15:37

Lire cet article en Français

Smoke in the colors of the French national flag billows in the background during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26, 2024. (Credit: Luis Robayo/Pool/AFP)

Certain sequences from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games continue to cause controversy, in particular one in which Drag Queens surrounded the singer Philippe Katherine, naked and painted blue on a meal tray. While many spectators saw in this painting a reference to the gods of ancient Greece, the origin of the Olympic Games, and particularly Dionysus, the god of wine, others pointed to a reference to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, seeing it as an attack on this passage of the New Testament and therefore on Christianity.

As a result, a campaign of criticism and homophobic comments flooded social networks, with some figures from the French far right taking part, and press releases were issued denouncing what was interpreted as an attack on the sacred.

In a statement, the French Bishops' Conference said that “the opening ceremony ... last night [Friday] offered the whole world marvellous moments of beauty and joy, rich in emotion and universally acclaimed,” but that it “unfortunately included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity, which we deeply deplore.”

The Conference said it was thinking "of all the Christians on every continent who have been hurt by the outrageousness and provocation of certain scenes."

"We want them to understand that the Olympic celebration goes far beyond the ideological biases of a few artists," the text added.

Paris 2024 organizers apologized on Sunday to Catholics and other Christian groups angered by the depiction including in the ceremony. "It is clear that there was never any intention to disrespect any religious group. [The opening ceremony] tried to celebrate community tolerance," Paris 2024 spokeswoman Anne Descamps told a press conference. "We believe that this ambition has been achieved. If anyone was offended, we are very sorry."

Bishopric of Antelias denounces blasphemy

These outraged reactions spread to Lebanon and elsewhere, and the controversy flared up on social networks between those who condemned the scene and those who saw it as an exaggeration.

However, a virulent reaction came from the bishopric of Antelias (Metn, Mount Lebanon), which issued a statement condemning "the hatred towards Christians and the blasphemy against Jesus Christ that appeared during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris," and which "constitutes a new degradation of our human society."

The press release added, "We can only condemn this despicable act and this filthy profanation, which undermines all our sacredness in the name of freedom and free expression, and which also insults the spirit of the Olympic Games."

Beyond these criticisms and the controversy surrounding the supposed meaning of the depiction in question, the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris on Friday evening was hailed the world over for its creativity and the splendor of its achievements. 

This article was originally published in French on L'Orient-Le Jour.

 

1. THE FALL OF PRIDE

   by Matthew SchmitzAugust 2024
   

On June 2, 2024, protestors temporarily halted the Philly Pride Parade. They were not congregants of the Westboro Baptist Church or representatives of the Proud Boys but members of a group called Queers 4 Palestine. They held up a sign saying “No Pride in Genocide.” As they explained in a statement on Instagram, they viewed the city’s Pride parade as a symbol of oppression, not liberation: a “public-relations instrument used by the corporate arm of the state to divert public attention away from the configuration of violent, repressive policies and practices inflicted upon Queer people worldwide.”

The interruption was the latest sign of the challenges facing Pride, a monthlong holiday that has united corporations and activist groups, political leaders and self-styled dissidents in celebration not only of gay liberation but of queerness generally. After decades of increasing buy-in, Pride appears to be losing public legitimacy. The change is reflected in a corporate retreat from Pride-themed marketing, shifts in public opinion, and conflicts among progressive groups about the meaning of Pride.

Inspired by the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the first Pride parades took place in 1970 in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. As decades passed, Pride came to symbolize not only the increasing acceptance of sexual minorities, but the rising fortunes of an educated, urban professional class that valued self-expression, equality, and diversity. Marketers recognized this, and sought to exploit, in the words of Katherine Sender, a professor of communications at Cornell, the association between “same-sex eroticism and young, urban trendiness.” Alcohol companies, having little reason to fear alienating religious consumers, led the way.

In 2023, the backlash came. On April 1, the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a picture on Instagram featuring a personalized can of Bud Light. The conservative commentator Matt Walsh called for a boycott. Kid Rock posted a video of himself shooting a case of the beer. Megyn Kelly compared drinking the beer to giving “a middle finger to women.” Bud Light’s sales declined by approximately 25 percent in a matter of weeks. Two executives associated with the Mulvaney promotion were placed on leave. Anheuser-Busch’s chief marketing officer stepped aside. Bud Light, the top-selling beer in the U.S. for twenty-two years, was dethroned by Modelo Especial.

Target faced similar criticism after social media accounts claimed that a size XS swimsuit advertised as having “light binding” in the chest and a “tuck-friendly” crotch was available for purchase in the children’s section. (Target officials responded that the suits were offered only in adult sizing and not intended for children.) Sales fell by 5 percent in the April-to-June period, the first such drop in six years.

Corporations took note. After years of increasing prominence, Pride commemorations were more subdued in 2024. Nike, which has offered Pride collections since 1999, declined to offer one this year. Target dropped Pride-themed childrenswear and offered Pride merchandise in only half its stores. Bud Light refrained from any Pride-themed advertising, instead highlighting its partnership with Dustin Poirier, a UFC fighter.

Due in part to these decisions by retailers, Pride was less prominent this year in the public spaces of American cities—as if Manhattan department stores had suddenly stopped doing Christmas displays. “I certainly haven’t seen a significant amount of pride items or flags outside, which kind of threw me because I live in a fairly progressive area,” lamented one commenter on the r/lgbt subreddit. “I’ve noticed this too,” wrote another. “Even when I was in the city I only saw a few.”

One reason Pride is less prominent in cities this year is that cities have other things to worry about. Despite its origins in rioting, Pride greatly benefited from the historic reduction in crime that American cities underwent in the 1990s. Cities suddenly became safe for the educated professionals whose values generally accorded with Pride, whether or not they happened to be LGBTQ. Areas that once had been known for crime and disorder gradually gentrified, a process often marked by the emergence of shops adorned with rainbow banners.

Having long profited from the stability of America’s hip urban centers, Pride must now reckon with some of the problems they face. Rising public disorder and falling numbers of police have reshaped American cities and are now having an effect on commemorations of the holiday. Citing a shortage of police officers and concerns about public safety, Chicago capped this year’s Pride parade at 150 entries (down from 199 in 2023) and shortened its route. The move has nothing to do with ideological opposition and everything to do with an inescapable fact: If America’s urban centers decline, so will their signal festivals. When progressive governance fails, even progressive celebrations feel the pinch.

Gay marriage has never been more secure, having been recognized as a constitutional right by the Supreme Court and enshrined in law by the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act. The priorities of LGBTQ groups—up to and including gender transitions for children—continue to enjoy the backing of the White House and leading medical societies. Yet public support of LGBTQ causes shows signs of weakening. In 1996, Gallup found that 27 percent of respondents supported same-sex marriage. By 2022, that number had surged to 71 percent. In recent years, however, as the political scientist Ryan Burge has noted, this rapid change in public attitudes “has stalled out. Maybe even reversed itself a bit.” In Gallup’s latest poll, 69 percent supported same-sex marriage.

More troubling for supporters of Pride are polls showing that support for same-sex marriage is declining among young Americans. A 2021 survey by the American Enterprise Institute found that 80 percent of Gen Z adults favored same-sex marriage, compared to 72 percent of Millennials, 64 percent of Gen Xers, and 59 percent of Baby Boomers. In a follow-up survey last year, it was clear that something had changed. Support for same-sex marriage had marginally increased in every generational cohort—except Gen Z, where it had fallen to 69 percent. Gen Z Americans are now less supportive of same-sex marriage than their Millennial elders.

These results may reflect a broader rightward turn among Gen Z men, who are much more opposed to feminism than their Millennial counterparts. Whatever the case, the data strike at the self-understanding of Pride supporters as opposition from older Americans never could. A cause long associated with youth and vitality now appears to be losing favor with the young. A similar problem is posed by progressive criticisms of Pride, which have become common since the outbreak of the conflict in Gaza. When the boot company UGG announced its 2024 Pride collaboration with Alok Vaid-Menon, a queer influencer, social media users denounced Vaid-Menon—because UGG’s parent company does business in Israel. “Alok, this is deeply upsetting,” wrote one Instagram user. “UGG is a known Zionist brand and is whipping out the pinkwashing playbook to divert attention from their complicity in genocide.”

Intersectional theorists insist that advancing gay rights requires advancing a broader agenda of anti-racism and decolonization. It requires tearing down border walls and abolishing prisons, defunding the police and denouncing white supremacy. One can see this in the evolution of the movement’s symbology. The rainbow Pride flag, designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, has been superseded by the Progress Pride Flag, which features not only pale pink and blue to represent transgender causes, but black and brown to symbolize the inextricable connection between LGBTQ rights and racial justice.

The association of LGBTQ causes with anti-racist and decolonial rhetoric is likely to upset certain political alignments. On October 8, one day after Hamas’s attack on Israel, hundreds of protestors gathered in New York’s Times Square to support the Palestinian cause. A small group of counterprotestors waved Israeli flags, including one that showed a Star of David superimposed on the rainbow stripes of the original Pride flag. The flag evoked a longstanding boast that Israel is by far the most LGBTQ-friendly country in the Middle East. It is impossible to imagine a similar banner that shows the Star of David superimposed on the Progress Pride Flag, for the simple reason that the Progress Pride Flag represents a political ideology inimical to the existence of Israel. It is similarly hostile to even conventional liberal visions of the United States. Among other things, queerness now means (in the words of those protestors) “from Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go.”

An equally sharp conflict has emerged as the latter letters of the LGBTQ initialism have gained salience. Several prominent writers, along with lobby groups like the LGB Alliance, have sought to defend legal protections for lesbians and gay men, while rejecting things like gender transitions for minors. But their arguments have not persuaded the LGBTQ movement more generally. Queerness—which rejects not only heteronormativity, but any stable sexual identity—appears to be the controlling term. It may embrace homosexuality or lesbianism insofar as those are opposed to heterosexuality, but it turns against them when they begin to insist on biological sex.

If Pride were being challenged only by a diminished, if persistent, religious right, then its recent setbacks could be dismissed as temporary. But in fact the challenges are more wide-ranging. Pride is now criticized not only by conservative Christians, but by progressive activists who make a claim on its deepest meaning. Long associated with youth and the future, it is bleeding support among young Americans. It must overcome not only external opposition but its own internal contradictions, as it is invoked in the name of a global imperial project, and of decolonial revolution—of rights for gay men, and of the denial of all sexual distinctions. The Pride flag, like the flag of the United States, no longer unifies those who once marched behind it.

Matthew Schmitz is a founder and editor of Compact.