A New Evangelical Harvest

JAMES R. WOOD JANUARY 29, 2025

American culture is undergoing a “vibe shift.” There’s a resurgence of hope among conservatives that politics and culture will increasingly return to reality. But alongside this, there seem to be signs that the soil of society is prime to receive the word of God. This is surprising, given that for quite some time, many Christian leaders believed that evangelical support for Donald Trump would dry up any interest in the message of the gospel. For years, David French has been arguing that support for Trump is “collapsing” and “destr[oying]” Christian “witness.” In 2019, Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today, argued that Trump should be removed from office, and he challenged evangelicals to consider “what an unbelieving world will say” if they continue to support him in spite of his moral failures. Peter Wehner has characterized evangelical support for Trump as a “bad trade” because the “world is noticing” how they have supposedly abandoned Christ’s teachings. And, of course, the most prominent figure who has regularly made such arguments in various outlets since 2015 is Russell Moore. Moore has characterized evangelical support for Trump as trading “the power of the gospel for the gospel of power,” destroying evangelistic credibility and all but guaranteeing that many will walk away from the faith.  

To be fair, Trump is no moral exemplar and has not always been promising as a champion for socially conservative values: He and Melania publicly supported abortion access and IVF during the campaign; he supports gay marriage; he invited a porn star to speak at the RNC; he has had high-profile affairs and been divorced multiple times; and his mocking rhetoric can often verge on the cruel and un-Christian.

And yet, over a week into his second term, it is clear that gospel opportunities were not sacrificed on Trump’s altar; evangelical voting patterns did not devastate evangelism. In both politics and culture, there has rarely been a time when more people have been interested in Christianity. We are entering an evangelistic hot zone, especially among young men who are searching for faith and meaning on YouTube and popular podcasts. This may be the spring before an evangelistic harvest of what I call “reality-respecters.” 

Just a couple of weeks ago, Wesley Huff, a popular young Christian apologist, was invited on The Joe Rogan Experience, the biggest podcast in the world. For over three hours, Huff defended the faith and presented the gospel to Joe Rogan and his millions of listeners. Amidst the digressionary journey that is a Joe Rogan episode, Huff ably defended the faith and the reliability of the biblical text using classical, left-brain arguments that many had assumed were obsolete in our postmodern age. Huff employs logic with the assumption that reality can be known—that we can have confidence about events in the past. And Rogan ate it up. Many have already speculated that this will be the most heard presentation of the gospel in world history. The conversation has 5.3 million views on YouTube, and untold millions of listens on Spotify and other podcast platforms—likely north of his 11 million listener average. 

Rogan, along with many other high-profile atheists, has slid into the category of “cultural Christian.” Many of these figures express a new openness to Christianity, oftentimes for its civilizational resources, recognizing the Christian roots of the values that built the West. Some of these figures, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have embraced genuine faith. And these high-profile examples are merely representative of a broader phenomenon on the ground: So many regular people are exhausted by woke insanity and looking to get back to reality. There is a widespread decline of faith in materialism, and the immanent frame the secularists and atheists pushed on public consensus for decades is falling flat. Paul Kingsnorth and Russell Brand are two examples of such conversions. 

Huff’s Rogan episode was released on January 7, one day after Donald Trump’s election was certified and just two weeks before the inauguration. The timing is noteworthy. Fears that Trump’s evangelical support would undermine evangelistic efforts, discredit our witness, and offend seekers are not coming to pass. That Trump’s victory did not impact evangelism the way many expected should invite us to reconsider some of our assumptions about how politics and the capacity of the church to spread the good news are related. 

For too long, there’s been category confusion. Politics is its own sphere with a certain logic proper to it. Thus, it is an error to conflate our political actions with evangelistic terminology. Christians should honor Christ and love our neighbors in every sphere of life—however, this looks different in different domains. Treating your ballot as an apologetic tract is confused. Politics is not about minimizing offense in order to maximize openness to the gospel. Politics is about the prudential pursuit of justice and social order. The prudence part recognizes the reality of present options and trade-offs. We often must make choices among highly flawed options about what we believe will do the most good or the least damage. Making such a choice does not equate to worshipping a political figure or engaging in evil. That our vote might raise the ire of our political opponents is not a good reason to abstain from politics. 

Politically-minded Christians have also fallen into the trap of false certainty. We have no idea how our political actions will be perceived as time goes on. It is ironic that many critics of Trump accuse his supporters of trading their faith for political expediency, of committing immoral acts because the ends justify the means. But voting for a flawed figure is not inherently immoral. One could even argue that these critics are engaging in a form of consequentialism: foregoing practical political goods in the here and now on the gamble that this will aid future evangelism. But there’s no telling if that gamble will pay off. As the saying goes: “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” 

It seems that God’s providence is at work because and not in spite of the leftist overreach of the past few years. The most unlikely people are waking up to the civilizational madness and spiritual emptiness unleashed by opposing nature and God. Those figures such as Ali and Brand are open to spiritual realities at least in part due to their clear-headed pursuit of political sanity. It is plausible that the defense of the natural order—such as the distinction between men and women, the given goodness of our bodies, or the need for common sense border enforcement and immigration policies—might make others more likely to hear our claims about supernatural realities. 

We can’t be certain about what is on the horizon. But it is clear that things are not necessarily panning out according to the never-Trump jeremiads. Evangelistic opportunities were not sacrificed on the altar of political agendas. So let’s make proper distinctions, vote with prudence, and evangelize with boldness. But above all, trust the Lord—he sowed the seeds of this harvest when we weren’t even looking.

 

Pray It Away: The Alleged Ghouls Of An Ancient Church

The Ghosts and Demons of Clop Hill Church: A Believer’s Perspective

Nestled deep in the rolling countryside, surrounded by ancient oaks and crumbling gravestones, Clop Hill Church in Bedfordshire, England, has long been a beacon for stories of supernatural encounters. To those with faith in the unseen and the spiritual, this church is not merely a relic of the past—it is a threshold, a liminal space where the realms of the living and the dead intertwine. With its weathered stones and air of abandonment, Clop (also spelled Clopp) Hill Church has earned its place as one of the most haunted sites in the region, with tales of ghosts, demons, and unholy presences captivating believers and skeptics alike.

And then some.

The church was built in the early 12th century, a modest yet sturdy structure designed to bring the word of God to the surrounding villages. It did not face east. its early years were fraught with hardship; records from the time speak of failed harvests, plagues, and outbreaks of violence. The church’s remote location made it a refuge for some but a death trap for others, as its walls became a final resting place for victims of disease and famine.

These dark beginnings, many believe, sowed the seeds of a haunted legacy.

During the late Middle Ages, Clop Hill Church became infamous for accusations of witchcraft.

Local legends claim that women accused of consorting with the devil were imprisoned in the church’s crypt before being executed on the hill. Their restless spirits, bound by the cruelty of their deaths, are said to linger, wandering the grounds and whispering their laments to the wind.

The most commonly reported apparitions at Clop Hill Church are those of the so-called “Wailing Women.”

Visitors often describe hearing faint cries emanating from the crypt beneath the church. These disembodied voices rise and fall like mournful songs, sometimes punctuated by anguished screams.

Believers claim these are the souls of the accused witches, eternally reliving their torment and seeking vindication.

Another well-known specter is that of the Black Priest, a shadowy figure clad in dark robes.

The Black Priest is most commonly seen within the nave of Clop Hill Church, standing ominously at the pulpit as if delivering a sermon to an invisible congregation. Could not an exorcism have rid this poor place of what plagued it? Could it not have recovered sanctity?

Satanic Rituals and the Legend of the Schoolboys

As if the ghosts of the unjustly accused and the spectral Black Priest were not enough to cement Clop Hill Church’s infamous reputation, darker, more malevolent tales also haunt its history.

In the 19th century, Clop Hill became a gathering point for clandestine rituals, with whispers of Satanic ceremonies and unholy sacrifices held under the cover of night. The secluded location, with its crumbling walls and eerie aura, became a magnet for those seeking to defy the sanctity of the church and delve into forbidden practices.

Historical accounts from local villagers speak of strange gatherings on moonless nights; they describe seeing flickering torchlight from the church windows long after it had been officially abandoned.

Some brave—or perhaps foolish—locals who ventured close reported hearing chants in an unfamiliar tongue, the clanging of ritualistic bells, and even the cries of animals.

These rumors eventually grew into full-blown stories of Satanic worship, where participants were said to desecrate the church’s altar and invoke demonic entities.

In the 20th century, interest in Clop Hill Church as a site for occult activity surged. Paranormal investigators and spiritualists who visited the church claimed to find unsettling evidence: pentagrams etched into the stone floor, burnt candles, animal remains, and graffiti proclaiming allegiance to dark forces.

Many believe these rituals awoke something ancient and evil that had lain dormant for centuries, intensifying the church’s haunting.

Perhaps the most chilling legend associated with Clop Hill Church is that of the three schoolboys who disappeared in the 1970s.

According to local lore, a group of boys from a nearby town dared each other to spend a night in the church, hoping to prove their bravery.

They arrived armed with flashlights, sleeping bags, and snacks, fully expecting to share ghost stories and scare each other with the church’s infamous reputation.

None of them could have foreseen the horrors that awaited.

The boys were never seen alive again. A frantic search was launched the next morning, and their flashlights and belongings were found scattered around the nave of the church, but no sign of the children. Weeks later, two of the boys’ bodies were discovered in the dense woods behind the church, their faces frozen in expressions of terror. The third boy was never found.

Autopsies were inconclusive, but their deaths were officially ruled as the result of exposure to the elements.

Still, locals whispered that the boys had been victims of a malevolent force within the church. Some claimed they had inadvertently stumbled upon a satanic ritual or invoked a demonic presence that pursued them to their deaths. Others speculated that the boys themselves had tried to perform a ritual, accidentally summoning something beyond their comprehension.

Since the tragedy of the schoolboys, the supernatural activity at Clop Hill Church has taken on a more sinister tone.

Paranormal investigators and thrill-seekers who visit the site frequently report feelings of dread and despair, as if being watched by an unseen presence.

Some claim to have encountered shadowy figures with glowing red eyes lurking in the pews or in the surrounding graveyard.

These entities are not the spirits of the dead, but something far darker—malevolent beings drawn to the residual energy of the rituals performed on the sacred grounds.

One investigator reported being pushed violently to the ground by an invisible force, while another recounted hearing a deep, guttural growl that echoed through the nave. Crucifixes and other religious items brought into the church have reportedly been shattered or burned, as if rejected by the malevolent entities within.

The crypt beneath the church has become a focal point for these encounters. Those brave enough to descend into its depths speak of overwhelming feelings of suffocation and despair. Some have seen symbols of dark magic etched into the walls or found remnants of what appeared to be animal sacrifices. There are whispers that a portal to another realm—a gateway to hell itself—lies within the crypt, opened by the rituals performed there.

A Believer’s Warning

As a believer, one approaches Clop Hill Church not with curiosity but with a sense of solemn caution. It is not merely a place of historical intrigue or ghostly tales; it is a battleground for the forces of good and evil.

The church, once a sanctuary for the faithful, has become a cautionary tale of what happens when sacred spaces are defiled.

For those who visit Clop Hill Church (which we don’t necessarily advise), do so only with reverence, fasting, and prayer (as in any such situation).

Carry the protection of faith with you, for the entities that linger there are not to be taken lightly. They remind us of the spiritual war that surrounds us—a war that is all too real, fought not only in the visible world but in the unseen realms of the supernatural.

In places like Clop Hill, the veil between these worlds grows thin, and what lies beyond may reach through.

May God’s light prevail in places of darkness such as this, and may those who have suffered find peace at last.

 

The Impossible Object of Queer Desire

STEPHEN G. ADUBATO JANUARY 27, 2025

The late British writer Quentin Crisp, despite being one of the first openly homosexual men in England, was lambasted as “homophobic” and “misogynistic” for his self-deprecatory quips about the “perversity” of homosexuality. His lament that gay men are incapable of caring about the well-being of others—a weakness he attributes to their narcissism and “feminine minds”—aroused the ire of LGBT activists like Peter Tatchell.

Crisp wasn’t just a curmudgeonly old queen—he had deep insights into the metaphysical nature of homoerotic desire. Gay men, he claimed in his 1968 book The Naked Civil Servant, are in “search perpetually” of the “great dark man” who embodies everything “they wish they themselves were”: young, beautiful, masculine—in other words, a “real man who desires passionately another man.” But in its essence, homoeroticism is a desire for the impossible, for the mysterious and elusive. Crisp knew he would never find a real heterosexual man to reciprocate his attraction. The men who found Crisp attractive were incapable of completely fulfilling his desire, as their homosexuality inevitably diminished their masculinity. Crisp recognized that homosexual desire, unless sublimated into an artistic or ascetic vocation, can only end in tragedy.

The Italian film director Luca Guadagnino is among the latest openly gay men to be criticized for failing to walk in step with the rainbow agenda, joining the ranks of other heterodox Italian gay artists like Dolce and Gabbana and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Upon announcing that Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer would play the lead roles in his 2017 adaptation of André Aciman’s novel Call Me By Your Name, Guadagnino was accused by gay media outlets of “straight casting.” Nevertheless, Guadagnino selected Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, both heterosexual, to play the main characters in his recent adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s 1985 novella Queer. Asked whether he feared further backlash, Guadagnino replied that he finds the issue “idiotic.”

The irony of accusing Crisp and Guadagnino of homophobia is that their take on all matters queer are more faithful to the true nature of homosexuality than that of their gay activist critics. They understand that homosexuality is markedly distinct from heterosexuality. Love is incontrovertibly not love. When a male pursues a partner of his own sex, he is venturing into the realm of the unattainable, which will either end in the discovery of higher mysteries or in tragedy and his demise. Guadagnino’s decision to cast heterosexual actors to play gay roles projects Crisp’s impossible fantasy onto the screen—a feat much more interesting than promoting “queer visibility.”

Queer follows William Lee (Craig), an American expat living in Mexico City in the 1950s, who cruises for younger guys on the city’s gay scene. He comes across the young American G.I. Eugene Allerton (Starkey), with whom he becomes infatuated. Lee starts following him around, catching him flirting with both men and women at bars. Allerton, well aware of Lee’s attraction to him, plays hard to get, which only fans the flames of Lee’s desire. After a few sexual encounters, they visit the shack of Dr. Cotter (Lesley Manville) in an Ecuadorian jungle, where they trip on yagé (ayahuasca) and seemingly communicate with each other telepathically. “I’m not queer,” says Allerton while his body appears to be melded with Lee’s, “I’m disembodied.”

The plot and dialogue of the film exude the tragic drama of longing for a “dark” mysterious figure, a real man, or at least one who is sexually ambiguous or who, at minimum, is not a “screaming queer.” One of the older gay Americans in the Mexico City scene complains that one of his boy toys was “so queer that I lost interest in him.” Part of Allerton’s allure is that he is “cold, slippery, and hard to catch.” The old gays revel in watching him weave his way around the bar, flirting with both sexes. After first sleeping with Lee, Allerton emotionlessly rushes out—his aloofness and flippancy entrancing Lee all the more.

Guadagnino has also been accused of glorifying older men who groom naive younger ones. But contrary to the insistence of activists, pederasty is indeed linked to the very nature of male homosexuality. Large age gaps are not exactly uncommon among male same-sex couples, in part because their relationships tend to be driven more so by a dynamic of use and power than by mutual gift and complementarity. According to theologian Fabrice Hadjadj, “Sexuality presupposes a difference between the sexes.” Thus, the very “concept ‘homosexuality’ is a contradiction.” Sexuality classically understood, he says, is predicated on the pursuit of otherness, the uniting of opposites. “The Greeks were well aware of this,” he says, citing how, for them, “pederasty was a way of avoiding sexuality.”

Hadjadj echoes Crisp in his assertion that the sameness of gay eroticism often “ends in crisis,” in a clash rather than harmony, in covetousness rather than mutual gift. He even goes on to laud “the genius” of gay writers like Marcel Proust who understood that this attempt to “possess the other person [of the same sex] is impossible.”

The controversial feminist art and literary critic Camille Paglia also cites how Greek pederasty reflects the recognition that there is something inherently different about gay and straight pairings. And like Hadjadj, Paglia recognizes the unique genius of gay men, insisting that their constant “conflict with nature” enables them to understand it on a deeper level. Yet she warns that this prophetic, “shamanistic” sensibility can easily be “destroyed” when the gay man yields to the temptation to chase after a “beautiful boy.”

She lists Oscar Wilde, Paul Verlaine, and Hadrian among the “foolish gays” of history, whose genius got sucked into the vicious archetype of “the beautiful boy as destroyer.” They thereby lost their capacity to create great works of art and literature, to build spiritual and civic institutions for the sake of the common good—which is to say, their virility, their manhood, their ability to generate and be fathers in the truest sense of the word. Wiser men like Socrates and Fr. John Gray (the supposed real-life inspiration behind Dorian Gray) were smart enough to abstain from the vice of boy love, and sublimated their urges into nobler pursuits.

By casting straight actors to play queer characters, Guadagnino hints that there is something defective about sodomy. It saps the homoerotically inclined man of his genius and thus diminishes his manhood. If you’re going to show gay sex on the screen, it’s much more riveting when it’s happening between two “real” men—a fantasy both practically and ontologically impossible, but which speaks volumes about the true nature of homosexuality.

 

Neil Gaiman and the Failure of Modern Sexual Ethics

CARL R. TRUEMAN JANUARY 23, 2025

Arecent Vulture article reporting on the sexual proclivities and alleged abusive activities of fantasy author Neil Gaiman has rekindled debates about power and consent, in large part because it includes a disclaimer about BDSM. After describing a violent sexual encounter between Gaiman and a young woman named Scarlett Pavlovich, the author states: “Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a rape scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent. But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done.” Gaiman, of course, alleges otherwise, claiming that he has “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone.” The whole disturbing story is a stark reminder of how weak the foundations of modern sexual ethics are. 

Gaiman, once a vocal supporter of the #MeToo movement, fits into that category of performative feminists whose commitment to the cause doesn’t extend beyond social media platforms. I have always found such cheap piety to be deeply implausible. Not to mention, the existence of ex-wives (two, in Gaiman’s case) is always a rather troubling sign. What do they think of their erstwhile husband’s vocal online advocacy for women, women’s rights, and “the gynocracy”? The proof of a passionate commitment to respecting women is not some cost-free recitation of feminist clichés on social media that garners congratulatory retweets or Instagram likes. It is how these men treat real women in real time. Ex-wives are likely expert commentators on such matters, something that applies to the famous, such as Gaiman, as much as to the unknown online wannabe.

But setting aside his apparent hypocrisy, the garish allegations against Gaiman are, if true, the consequences of the logic of the sexual revolution, albeit rather extreme ones. That his claim of consent sounds plausible, even if ultimately untenable, speaks to the cultural intuitions of our day, where we do not typically regard sexual acts as having intrinsic value. Further, if sex is primarily about self-directed physical or emotional satisfaction, then the others involved are necessarily turned into instruments for the achievement of such an end. They become things or objects, of use only as far as they make one feel good. It is not a logic restricted to sexual matters. Ebenezer Scrooge viewed his clients not as people but as entries in his ledger. It is the most dramatic form of the failing anthropology of the modern world, forced now to reduce philosophies of sex to debates over consent, and thus to defend the most obviously degrading behavior as the glorious culmination of our freedom.

One need not be religious to find patterns of behavior that are deeply dehumanizing in the description of Gaiman’s alleged activities. Nor does it take a feat of imagination to see that even those who might consent to being treated in such ways have come to think of themselves as little more than pieces of meat. But one may need to be religious to see beyond this. If human beings are defined by radical autonomy, or if they are merely sentient lumps of meat, why should the strong not behave as they choose and the weak simply have to accept it? If we are not made in God’s image but just the latest product of an aimless concatenation of efficient causes—if human nature has no moral significance—who is to say what is and is not dehumanizing behavior? Why not merely live for the moment?

My granddaughter was baptized on Sunday. As I watched the minister read the liturgy, admonish her parents and the congregation of their responsibilities toward her, and then sprinkle water on her head in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, my mind went to Psalm 128:6: “May you live to see your children’s children.” Until I became a grandfather, I assumed that verse was merely a poetic way of saying, “May you live a long time.” But it is far more than that. To see and hold life that was brought into being by the life you created brings a unique joy. But it is not the joy of seeing another object, another thing brought into the world that can then be used for self-aggrandizement. On the contrary—something has been created that brings more obligations and more potential vulnerability. To the modern mind, having a grandchild means being more burdened, not less. 

Yet the service was a beautiful reminder of the joys that such realities bring, for it expressed a true anthropology. We are not born free. We are born dependent upon others and, compared to other species, are dependent for a remarkably long time. To live life as if this is not true—to treat others as objects, as things, that exist exclusively for our own benefit and to which we ourselves have no obligation—is to dehumanize them and ultimately ourselves. Baptism, taking place as it does within the community of the church and within a network of dependency and obligation, stands in opposition to this.

But baptism does more. God is the agent in baptism, which reminds us (among other things) that we as human beings are ultimately dependent upon God, and that life is a gift. The child therefore belongs to God and is in a sense loaned to parents, grandparents, and congregants, to be nurtured and cherished. That means that our duties and responsibilities are also gifts, gifts that define us. Those things that make us human—the very obligations against which modern man fights with such determination—are therefore the very things for which we should be grateful. And that also means that gratitude, a uniquely human trait, should be the pervasive characteristic of all of our lives.  

“May you live to see your children’s children” reflects a wish for a particular blessing, the blessing of being reminded of one’s true humanity through the grateful acceptance of duties toward others. That is a blessing that those who see others simply as objects or tools for their own pleasure, sexual and otherwise, will never know. Gaiman’s tragedy is not simply that he has indulged himself at the expense of others. It is that in doing so, he has immeasurably impoverished himself.

 

Anita Bryant Takes a Final Pie to the Face

JOHN MURDOCK JANUARY 24, 2025

The family of Anita Bryant (1940–2024) only recently announced that the singer and Christian activist died on December 16. The belated family obituary that broke the news notably made no mention of Bryant’s prominent efforts in the late 1970s to counter what she called “the threat of militant homosexuality.” But if most headlines since her death are any indication, the gay rights movement has certainly not forgotten about that chapter of Bryant’s life.

The child of a broken home, Bryant went on to become Miss Oklahoma and a successful singer. One of her biggest hits was “Paper Roses,” a lament about being deceived in matters of love. She entertained the troops with Bob Hope in Vietnam and sang at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1968. She performed at the 1971 Super Bowl, and sang as President Lyndon Johnson was laid in his grave two years later.

In 1976, Bryant used her celebrity—she was then widely known as a pitchwoman for Florida orange juice and living in the Miami area—to support Ruth Shack’s successful campaign for Dade County commissioner. (Shack was the wife of Bryant’s agent.) As she wrote in her book The Anita Bryant Story, Shack had some “good ideas . . . relating to ecology, helping the elderly, and other issues.” But when Shack introduced a resolution making sexual orientation a special protected class in 1977, the Baptist Sunday School teacher was taken aback. Bryant had amicably worked with plenty of homosexuals in the entertainment industry, but as a mother of four, she feared the ordinance would require Christian schools to allow openly homosexual individuals to instruct children.

Despite her initial outreach to Shack and others, the resolution, one of the first gay rights laws in the country, passed. When Bryant spearheaded the effort to repeal the law via a referendum, she became the face of parental rights and traditional family values on TV sets tuned to everything from The 700 Club to The Phil Donahue Show. In response, Singer Sewing Machines pulled the plug on a variety show she was set to host, and celebrities from Carol Burnett to Johnny Carson made her a prudish punch line.  Still, nearly 70 percent of the referendum voters agreed with Bryant.

Following that landslide victory, Bryant famously took a pie to the face from an angry protester who called her a bigot at a press conference in Des Moines, Iowa. She quipped, “Well, at least it’s a fruit pie,” then prayed and forgave the man before breaking into tears. The person who pied her, Thom Higgins, was a homosexual activist who was later credited with coining the term “Gay Pride” based on a memory of the seven deadly sins from his Catholic education. Higgins died of AIDS in 1994 and so did not see the subsequent dominance of that “pride” within American culture. Bryant certainly did, though, even as she faced her own challenges. Her marriage ended in divorce, and she was suicidal for a time. She later married Charlie Dry, a childhood friend who notably had a role in NASA’s Apollo program. After attempts to revitalize Anita’s career in places like Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, they lived for more than two decades in their native Oklahoma.

California Gov. Ronald Reagan flew across the country to personally show support for Bryant in the midst of the referendum campaign, but American culture and politics have since shifted. President Donald Trump is comfortable holding a rainbow flag and has appointed openly homosexual people to key positions, including his Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent. The usually private First Lady Melania Trump has fundraised for the Log Cabin Republicans. Trump’s second inaugural festivities featured The Village People, who catered to the gay disco scene of the late 1970s as Bryant campaigned. The schools that Bryant tried to protect from homosexual influences are awash in them now, and drag queens read to preschoolers at public libraries.

Nevertheless, pro-LGBT voices continue to use Bryant as a means to rally around the Pride Flag once again. Politico, reporting on her death, focused on a family rift to demonize Bryant:

In 2021, her granddaughter, Sarah Green, told Slate that she came out to Bryant. Her grandmother responded, Green said, by claiming that homosexuality—which in this case is actually bisexuality—is “a delusion invented by the devil.”

“It’s very hard to argue with someone who thinks that an integral part of your identity is just an evil delusion,” Green said.

That’s a perfect encapsulation of Bryant’s enduring legacy. It has taught conservatives how to invalidate the very existence of LGBTQ+ people, turning them first into a phantom menace, and then into a convenient bogeyman.

Could Bryant, in the 1970s, have predicted the cultural chasm of the 2020s? Today, any claim that what one feels might be a delusion can be seen as an invalidation of another’s existence. 

Politico’s reference to a “convenient bogeyman” is especially ironic, as the gay rights movement cast Bryant in just that role. Though Bryant was far from perfect in her advocacy, she often said that she did not hate homosexuals. For many the feeling was not mutual. In the same Slate podcast that Politico references, Lillian Faderman, an LGBT historian, says, “Anita Bryant became the devil of the gay rights movement,” a common enemy who enflamed passions and motivated effort.

After the successful referendum in Florida, Bryant largely left activism and tried to rebuild an entertainment career that never fully recovered from the earlier blacklisting. That may be one reason opponents continue to keep her memory alive: Bryant’s professional demise serves as a warning to others. But as a student of the Bible, Bryant likely knew that such a warning had already been delivered on a Galilean hillside, but with a promise: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”

 

Holocaust survivors fear Europe is forgetting the lessons of Auschwitz

Image source,Getty Images

Image caption,

Auschwitz after the camp was liberated in January 1945

Katya Adler

Europe editor

Published
26 January 2025, 00:10 GMT

"Seeing a concentration camp with my own eyes and listening to a survivor who went through it all, that's really brought it home. It's important for young people like me. We'll soon be able to vote. The far right is gaining more and more support in Germany and we need to learn from the past."

Xavier is a 17-year-old German student. I met him at a Holocaust education centre in Dachau, in southern Germany, just around the corner from what was once a Nazi concentration camp of the same name. He and his classmates were spending two days there, learning about their country's Nazi past and debating its relevance in today's world.

Eighteen-year-old Melike admitted she didn't know much about the Holocaust before coming to Dachau. Listening to Eva Umlauf, a survivor, talk about what happened, touched her heart, she said.

She wished racism and intolerance were spoken about more frequently. "I wear a headscarf and people are often disapproving. We need to learn more about one another so we can all live well together."

Miguel warned of growing racism and antisemitism on social media platforms, including jokes about the Holocaust. "We need to prevent that," his 17-year-old friend Ida chimed in.

"We are the last generation who can meet and listen to people who survived that tragedy. We have to make sure everyone is informed to stop anything like that ever happening again."

They are earnest and hopeful. Some might say naive.

Here in Europe, 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, societies seem increasingly divided. There's a rise in support for political parties, often, but not exclusively on the far right and far left, that are quick to point at the Other. The outsider. The unwanted. Be they migrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people or Jews.

Image caption,

Eva Umlauf speaks to students at Dachau

"I want everyone to live together, Jewish, Catholic, black, white or whatever," says Eva Umlauf, the Holocaust survivor who made such an impression on the German teens.

She describes the Holocaust as a warning of what can happen when prejudice takes over.

"That's why I dedicate my time to talking, talking, talking," she says. Now in her 80s, she was the youngest inmate to be freed from the Nazi extermination camp, Auschwitz, eight decades ago this Monday. She has written a book about her experiences and, alongside working as a child psychiatrist, she speaks often about the death camps and antisemitism, to audiences at home and abroad.

"Death Mills" is the title of a US war department film, shown to German civilians after the war, edited from allied footage captured when liberating the around 300 concentration camps run by the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945.

Skeletal naked people, with shaven heads and hollow eyes, shuffle and stumble past the camera. One man gnaws at a fleshless bone, clearly desperate for food. Piles of dead bodies are strewn in all corners; emaciated faces forever twisted in open-mouthed screams.

While in warehouse after warehouse, you see carefully labelled gold teeth, reading glasses and shoes belonging to murdered men, women and children. And bundles of hair shaved from female inmates, packed and ready for sale for Nazi profit.

'My body remembers what my mind has forgotten'

The Nazis used concentration and death camps for the slave labour and mass extermination of people deemed "enemies of the Reich" or simply "Untermenschen" (subhumans). These included, amongst others: ethnic Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, people with disabilities, others labelled as homosexuals and the biggest target of all: European Jews.

In total, six million Jews were murdered in what became known as the Holocaust. Numbers have been calculated based on Nazi documents and pre- and post-war demographic data.

The legal term "genocide" was coined and recognised as an international crime, following the world's realisation of the extent, and grim intent, of Nazi mass murder which continued with fervour even as they were losing the war. It refers to acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Auschwitz is probably the best-known Nazi camp. Its horrors have come to symbolise the Holocaust as a whole. 1.1 million people were murdered there, among them, a million Jews. Most were poisoned en masse in gas chambers. Their bodies burned in huge crematoria. The ash given to local farmers for use in their fields.

"I was too young to realise much of what was going on at Auschwitz," Eva told the students. "But what my mind has forgotten, my body remembers."

The teens listened intently. No-one fidgeted or glanced at their smartphones, as Eva explained she had the number A-26959 tattooed in blue ink on her arm.

Being forcibly tattooed was part of the "process" for every prisoner arriving at Auschwitz who wasn't immediately gassed to death and instead was selected for forced labour or medical experimentation.

Image caption,

Students Miguel, Melike and Martha spent two days at Dachau learning about their country's Nazi past

"Why did they choose to tattoo a two-year-old baby?" Eva asks. She says she finds just one answer to that question: that the "superhumans" - the Nazis believed they were creating a superior race - did not think that Jews were human beings.

"We were rats, subhumans, totally dehumanised by this master race. And so it did not matter to them if you were two years old, or 80 years old."

Recounting the trauma she inherited from her young mother, the loss of every family member from before the Holocaust and the loneliness she felt postwar as a little girl with no grandma to hug her or bake cakes with her, Eva at one point begins to cry silently. Especially when she plays a video of her recently taking part in the annual "March of the Living" at Auschwitz, where survivors walk alongside youngsters from all over Europe, with the mantra "Never Again".

As they watch her, a number of the teens in Eva's audience have tears rolling down their cheeks too.