“When a person can be married in the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being gay in the afternoon, something is still very wrong in America,” Joe Biden falsely asserted at the galling “Pride 2023” event at the White House — the one where he had a pride flag hung equally and between to U.S. flags, arguably a violation of U.S. Flag Code. The one where a man who “transitioned” to a woman went topless. As for throwing people out of restaurants, no such thing is happening in America in 2023, and Biden knows it.

Enter Peter Heck, a thoughtful Christian and political observer. He begins a new column on the subject by talking through his historical approach to talking with Christians who want to argue that “Jesus identified with and ministered to the marginalized” and that’s why they approve of or at least stand by the LGBT crowd.

I attempt to tactfully point out that we all have a duty to be extraordinarily cautious when ascribing motives or actions to Christ. He isn’t a pawn for us to use to fit our own political or social agenda – and I say that as one who has been guilty of that very offense in the past. Jesus isn’t our ragdoll or our battering ram. He’s God.

From there, I probe to find out exactly what they mean when they say that Jesus “identified” with the marginalized. That He took pity on them? That He loved them? That He brought hope to them? Yes, yes, and yes. But notice that’s wholly different than validating any sinful rebellion against God that existed in their lives. That is something Jesus never did.

At that point, the conversation usually breaks down over our respective definitions of sin.

Times are changing, Heck says, and we’re fast approaching the point where the better question is “what do you mean ‘marginalized?’”

To be “marginalized” means being a victim of social exclusion. You are treated as insignificant or as an outcast, callously relegated to the fringe of society.

No serious person can make the argument in 2023 that anyone identifying somewhere under the ever-broadening banner of alternative sexualities is “marginalized.” Where is the LGBTetc movement excluded or treated as outcasts?

Despite the First Amendment prohibiting the federal government from establishing a national religion, something the courts have aggressively enforced (for instance, rulings that pretend a student using the school’s PA system to say a prayer is somehow tantamount to Congress establishing a national religion) for decades now, there’s no compunction left in our lawmakers as they happily endorse the spirit of the age from the pillars of the White House itself.

When Caesar is flying your flag and demanding that everyone bow to it, I struggle to see how that fits into any reasonable definition of “marginalized.”

That doesn’t mean the Pride People have no opponents. There are still those of us who defend biblical truth and traditional American values. But Heck concludes that the LGBTetc folks. should drop the “marginalized” canard altogether.

I fully appreciate the direction American society is going, and completely understand the bragadocious gloating of sexual revolutionaries that they have “won the culture war.” But since it is going in that direction, and if they truly have won over the culture, isn’t it intellectually dishonest to continue pretending they’re marginalized outcasts, and start considering the rights and dignity of those who really are?

Read the whole thing here.