A Month Of Rage Against Pride

Led by sports blogger John Simmons, the Media Research Center used the occasion of Pride Month to repeatedly spew hate and contempt at the LGBT community (and drag queens).

By Terry Krepel
Posted 10/5/2022

The point man for this project was sports blogger John Simmons, who was one of the MRC's top Lia Thomas-bashers. He started things off on June 1 with a massive whine setting up the rest of the month for him:

It’s June 1st, which means that sports leagues across the nation can officially gush about celebrating Pride Month.

Predictably, the MLB and NHL have changed the logos on their social media pages to include all the colors of the LGBT flag (because no made-up community should be left behind).

Surprisingly, the NBA has yet to follow the MLB and NHL’s example. But what the NBA lacked in showing support for the LGBT community, the NFL made up for in spades.

Not wanting anyone to forget just how much they adore the gay agenda, the NFL posted this on all their social media platforms.

[...]

Prepare for more of this in the upcoming days, not just from sports leagues, but from countless businesses, celebrities, politicians, and others for the next 29 days.

Simmons never explained what this "gay agenda" is that he finds so offensive. On June 6, Simmons cheered that a group of baseball players were as hateful and homophobic as he is:

Because we are in the midst of Pride Month, it's unfortunately normal to see professional sports teams hold their annual Pride Nights. On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays had theirs, in which they included LGBT people in pregame events and handed out pride flags to the 19,000+ fans in attendance. In addition, the “TB” and sunburst logos on the Rays uniforms were rainbow-colored to show an added level of support.

However, several Rays pitchers decided not to participate in this gesture in order to stay true to their beliefs.

"So it's a hard decision...But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it's just a lifestyle that maybe -- not that they look down on anybody or think differently -- it's just that maybe we don't want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who's encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior,” Adam, the chosen spokesperson for this group of pitchers, said.

Notice how Adam worded this. He never said that he thinks he or his teammates are better than anyone in the LGBT community, because true and honest Christians would agree that everyone has “sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But the truly remarkable part of his response was that he and his teammates unwaveringly commit to their faith in a culture and time where it is incredibly easy to forsake it so you do not face backlash.

Simmons tried to further justify the hate by quoting the Bible himself: "Romans 1:26-27 states that homosexuality is unnatural and sinful and should not be condoned in any way by followers of Christ. Wearing pride flags or pride logos does just that." Simmons didn't explain why LGBT people must have hate spewed upon them everywhere at all times, which is what he seems to be advocating.

The same day, Simmons had a separate meltdown:

Carolina Panthers fans will have quite the surprise on the sideline during the upcoming season.

The Panthers became the first NFL team to hire an openly transgender athlete to it’s cheerleading team. The TopCats announced that Justine Lindsay, a man masquerading as a woman, will be on the sidelines performing on Sundays starting in the fall.

Lindsay came out as transgender in March, but TopCats director Chandalae Lanouette said that her decision to bring Lindsay on board has nothing to do with that.

When Lindsay posted a picture of herself on Instagram with the caption "Understand that we are all Gods children, that he is an awesome God from sun up to sun down. I live through him. Negative hate stay away," Simmons took served up all the negative hate he could muster and hurled more Bible verses:

It’s funny that Lindsay mentions he lives through God, because nowhere in Scripture do we see that God condones or approves of anyone that changes their gender. God created all people to either be male or female (Genesis 1:27) and any attempt to switch your gender based on how you feel is an act of rebellion against his created order. So Lindsay isn’t doing something that pleases God, and his attempt to get others to empathize with him and his actions further adds to the twisted nature of his actions.

It’s disgusting that the NFL just continues to make a fool of itself by doing stuff like this.

But spewing hate at someone just because they're different from you isn't even more disgusting, John?

In a June 7 post, Simmons touted the notoriously homophobic (his denials to the contrary notwithstanding) Franklin Graham as supporting those Tampa Bay pitchers who petulantly refused to wear the LGBT jerseys, going on to huff: "If anyone is offended by the gracious, humble, and truthful response these men gave, then that is on them for having an immature and unhealthy response. What these men have done is praiseworthy, something Graham recognized and we should too." Of course, hate delivered in a "gracious" and "humble" manner is still hate, and Simmons is cool with that.

On June 23, Simmons lashed out at yet another sports league for not hating LGBT people as much as he does:

The National Hockey League (NHL) was the last bastion for non-woke sports entertainment in America, but now, even they have gone completely off the deep end.

With Pride Month celebrations being over in eight days - which can't come soon enough - the NHL is using its influence to make sure that everyone continues to make LGBT members feel “safe.”

In a graphic titled “How To Be An Ally,” the NHL listed several ways to support LGBT members in their fight to be loved and supported - which they already are, but apparently not enough.

It’s funny that the tweet mentions them as a “marginalized” people, when all of corporate America, hundreds of “Christian” churches and millions of citizens support them through all the ways the graphic says to support them.

Calls to action like this fall short and mean nothing because everyone knows that the LGBT community is widely supported. Plus, who would want to support a community that belittles you if you show even a hint of what they would deem as hatred and rejection?

July 1st can’t come soon enough.

Not the scare quotes around "Christian," as if you're not a real Christian if you don't viciously hate LGBT people the way he does.

While the mere thought that there might be someone, somewhere who doesn't hate LGBT people might make Simmons a little itchy, you'd think he wouldn't want Pride Month to ever end because it gives him so much hateful copy that the MRC presumably pays him well to write. His hate is his paycheck!

Transphobia too

Simmons also brought his transphobia to the month's proceedings as well. In a June 14 post, he hyped a poll claiming that many Americans oppose transgender women in sports:

In the midst of the Pride Month celebration of all things LGBT, it can be easy to think that most Americans are perfectly okay with how this ideology has affected every aspect of American life.

However, a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll showed that a strong majority of Americans still have a strong measure of common sense on the issue of transgendered women playing sports alongside real women. As per the poll that sampled1,503 Americans across the country, 55 percent of respondents said they were opposed to transgendered females playing in the same sport in high school, with that number increasing to 58 percent for college and professional sports.

[...]

We can only hope that more Americans begin to see just how harmful this ideology is and do everything they can to stem the tide of its effects.

Simmons never explains why he calls being transgender an "ideology." Does he think his homophobia and transphobia is an "ideology" too?

Simmons kept up the MRC's hatred of Lia Thomas in a June 20 post:

Lia Thomas’ dream of swimming in the Olympics was spectacularly dashed after a ruling from the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA, translated “International Swimming Federation”) that became effective today.

The ruling states that anyone who is born male must have their transition completed by the age of 12 to be able to compete in elite swimming competitions. Of the 152 members of FINA, a 71 percent majority passed the new legislation.

[...]

While we will not have to deal with a man swimming and taking away gold medals from females, it does not mean that transgendered females will be completely prevented from the Olympic stage ever again.

As best-selling children’s author Matt Walsh pointed out, it just meant that people will start transitioning their children at a younger age.

Simmons whined in a June 20 post that international women's soccer may consider allowing transgender athletes, while also taking a misogynistic shot (as he's wont to do) at women's soccer: "Not many people watch women’s soccer to begin with, but the few who do might end up seeing men pretending to be women in the sports soon." The next day, he cheered a women's rugby league for banning transgender women; when women's soccer legend Megan Rapinoe criticized the move, Simmons huffed in response:

Sorry Rapinoe, but it’s not disgusting to look at what Lia Thomas is doing in swimming and think that something needs to change. It’s not cruel to see Connecticut high school track star Chelsea Mitchell lose to transgender opponents and want something to be changed. And it certainly isn’t wrong for FINA and IRL decide that the future of women in their respective sports leans heavily on what they do in this pivotal moment.

Women belong competing with women, and men belong battling against men in sports. It’s that simple.

If your desire to ban transgender women is borne of irrational fear and hate, as it appears Simmons' desire is, then it can plausibly be labeled disgusting.

Meanwhile, Simmons found a new transgender athlete to spew hate at in a June 28 post:

Yet another transgendered "female" has seized opportunities for real women to succeed at elite levels within their respective sport.

Richard Batres, who started taking hormone treatments and who is now going by the name Ricci Tres, skated in the Boardr Open competition in New York City on Saturday. Bartes, who is 29 and at least 13 years older than four of the other top-six finishers at the event, won the $500 grand prize at the event.

Because of his delusions, Batres has told his three children from his failed marriage that they are starting to refer to him as “mother,” and he has taken hormone treatments so he can feel like a woman, even though he says he knows he will never be one.

“I’ve decided that I like being pretty and cute,” Batres said. "I know I will never be a woman, because women are miraculous, they have babies and create life and do all that awesome stuff. I’ll never have that ability but I feel like I am a woman. I would have wished to be born one so I’ll try to fill that image as much as I can for myself and that pretty much involves being as cute as can be.”

But trying to “fill that image” is going to have horrendous consequences, for Batres’ family and women’s skateboarding. First, three children will not only have to live without their real mother being a steady, everyday presence in their lives, but now they have to witness their father base his life on the idea that he can change his gender because he wants.

Additionally, Ricci will now likely keep robbing women from earning results that their hard work deserves, just because they have to compete against someone who’s biology gives him an inherent advantage.

Simmons' transphobia extended into the following month as well. In a July 7 post, he falsely portrayed Zambian soccer star Barbra Banda as transgender, misgendered her throughout the piece, and whooped that she was banned from a championship tournament for allegedly having too high of a testosterone level:

Yes, you read that right. A woman can’t play women's soccer because she - actually, he - has too many male chemicals in his system.

Banda would have had to take hormone suppressors as prescribed by the Confederation of African Football (CAF), in order to be eligible for the roster but refused, rendering him unable to participate in the tournament.

[...]

[Zambia Football Association spokesperson Sydney] Mungala and her colleagues can cry all they want, but there is a much simpler solution for this problem: don’t let men join your soccer teams.

In fact, Banda is a biological woman as far as anyone knows but has naturally high testosterone, and she has had no problem playing in other tournaments.

Simmons' fellow anti-LGBT sports blogger, Jay Maxson, took some time away from spewing hate at Brittney Griner to contribute his share of hate as well. Maxson complained in a June 7 post:

It may take a Parliamentarian to explain the convoluted rules, but two transgender men dusted the field in a London cycling event a few days ago. They kissed on the podium as the third-place finisher, a woman holding her baby, looked on. It’s a sign of the times in a great big gender-convoluted sporting world. 

[...]

[Union Cycliste Internationale] called for more clarity in the sport of cycling because all participants deserve it. It also called for a coalition to learn more about achieving fairness in a way to maintains dignity for all athletes. 

Here’s a little tip for the UCI: if it’s truly fairness that you seek, keep separate divisions for males and females and resist public pressure to foolishly recognize gender identity instead of biological reality.

There's even more hate from Maxson to come.

A month of drag queen hate

Since June was Pride Month, that was code for the MRC as a whole to be as hateful to LGBT people as it could muster -- and particularly against drag queens. Intern Michael Ippolito unleashed the nasty "grooming" smear in a June 6 post:

The left’s obsession with grooming children is in full throttle during Pride month.

A Dallas bar named Mr. Misster held an event, “Drag the kids to pride,” drag show on Saturday, June 4. This so-called “family-friendly” event saw drag performers dance and walk down the room aisle, even interacting with the crowd and taking dollar bills from little children. The event was advertised as “We have FIVE limited spots for young performers to take the stage solo, or with a queen of their choosing,” promoting children to dance with half-naked men posing as women. During the event, protestors arrived to call out the open grooming of children.

Protestors from the group “Protect Texas Kids” condemned the depravity.

[...]

On cue, a local LGBT youth organization called the protestors “transphobic” for defending the innocence of children — no surprises from the groomers here.

Ippolito grew even more hateful two days later about another drag event:

The pride month drag show for children at a Dallas bar last weekend is rightly infamous. But out in Phoenix, the grooming got underway a whole day earlier.

According to AZ Free News, the Heard Museum hosted its first drag show, titled “Pride Night at the Heard,” on Friday, June 3, sponsored by BlueCross BlueShield of Arizona with Arizona Public Service. As in Dallas; children got a front-row seat to this grotesque show. The museum checked several woke boxes by making its characters Native American drag queens. “Tomahawk Martini” and “K.Yasss Savage” accordingly strutted their stuff for the kiddies.

[...]

But perhaps the most atrocious aspect of the event is that the kids were then forced to listen to the poetry of the performers. A Drag Queen Twerk-Off and Poetry Slam may be the most heinous instance of child abuse ever reported.

In a June 10 post, Ippilito bizarrely smeared former "Wonder Woman" Lynda Carter as a "has-been" for not hating drag shows as much as he does:

Hollywood lefties hate Christians, and never pass up a chance to show it. Following a spate of incidents of children participating in drag shows, they’re showing what they hold sacred.

Lynda Carter, whose claim to fame is playing Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s, was on Twitter taking shots at Christians who don’t think kids should hang around with drag queens.

Following the Dallas drag show for children's fiasco, many conservative commentators on Twitter showed their disdain for the event. Congressman Lauren Boebert tweeted, “Take your children to CHURCH, not drag bars.” Carter responded with an asinine retweet.

[...]

You don’t have to think like a superhero to have played one on TV.

Actually, Kevin Sorbo is the best example of that.

Catherine Salgado took up the drag-bashing baton in a June 13 post:

Google sponsored a disturbing LGBTQ+ “Pride” and drag event in Austin, Texas, which was billed as “family-friendly,” according to the Rainbow on the Creek web page.

The “Rainbow on the Creek” event in Austin’s Waterloo Park said on its official webpage that it is “a free family-friendly celebration that connects, educates, and celebrates Austin’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQIA+) community.” The webpage also prominently announced that the event was “[s]ponsored by Google.”

Performers at the event June 11 included multiple drag queens, including “Pelvis Wrestley” and “Roxxxy Andrews of RuPaul’s Drag Race” as a featured performer, according to the event page. A self-described independent journalist claimed that scantily-clad drag performer “Heyonce The Vocalist” was caught on video performing suggestive dance moves at the event while children watched.

Salgado went on to huff, "Google also has a history of pandering to radical LGBTQ+ ideology and censoring those who criticize it. " If being LGBTQ or a drag queen is "ideology," does that mean the MRC's irrational hatred of them is an "ideology" too?

When all this right-wing anti-LGBTQ hate was pointed out, the MRC freaked out about that too. Kevin Tober whined in a June 14 post:

On Tuesday’s Deadline: White House on MSNBC, host Nicole Wallace once again proved that she will distort reality and twist facts to further her left-wing political agenda. This indisputable fact was on display when she gathered her panel of miscreants to discuss the troubling incident over the weekend where over thirty men linked to the white supremacist “Patriot Front” were arrested in an attempt to disrupt a “Pride Month” event.

Instead of chalking it up to a group of deranged racists intent on causing a violent incident, Wallace and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart suggested it is part of a trend of “anti-LGBTQ hate” from Republicans like Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and others.

“AP writes this, last month a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his small Boise congregation that gay, lesbian, and transgender people should be executed by the government. Another fundamentalist pastor in Texas gave similar sermons,” Wallace said using an extreme example of hatred that nobody endorses.

She then wailed that “Heather Scott, an Idaho Republican lawmaker recently told an audience that drag queens and other LGBTQ supporters are waging, quote, 'a war of perversion against our children,' end quote.” Wallace then bemoaned how “Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he would consider sending child protective services to investigate parents who take their kids to drag shows.”

The suggestion is that because DeSantis wants to protect children from sexually explicit “drag shows”, a group of white supremacists and a fringe Idaho pastor want to kill LGBTQ people.

Tober never explained why this isn't true; he just whined that the linkage was made.

As part of a hate-filled June 15 anti-LGBTQ rant about how the NFL is "a queer lesson in advanced decadence and wokeness," Maxson whined:

Featuring rainbow “W” helmet logos, the Washington “Commandants” [sic] tweeted that Sunday’s spectacle in decadence was so much fun. Especially for young children, who were “treated” to drag queen story time. This kind of sordid event would make a welcome addition to the NFL’s “football is gay, lesbian, queer, transgender” campaign.

[...]

What’s more, is the NFL’s partiality to sexual perversion is an in-your-face to those who don’t celebrate aberrant lifestyles and who do not want their young children exposed to it.

In a June 17 post, Alex Christy complained that drag legend RuPaul pointed out the anti-drag obsession by right-wingers like Christy is (correctly, one might argue) seen as a diversion from gun violence that they are on the wrong side of:

For RuPaul, it isn’t a question of whether these events are to sexualized for children or promote gender confusion in easily impressible youth, but “this is a diversion tactic to do, take the narrative away from the gun debate into something to scare people into thinking about something else. And—and-- they've been successful. They have changed the narrative away from the gun debate into this drag queen thing.”

If you truly care about children, he continued, you’ll support gun control, “Say, y'all want to help your kids? Take away them guns. That will help them kids. And drag queens—drag queens-- ain't hurting nobody.”

Further wondering what the big deal was, he added, “These drag queens ain't hurting, you know, you're born naked and the rest is drag. Everybody is in drag, ok?”

Elise Ehrhard lashed out at fictional drag queens -- and fictional gay people -- attacking a June 20 post in the "sexually charged gay teen series" on Disney+, Love, Victor":

Disney should just rename Pride Month "Groomer Appreciation Month," because the third and final season of Love, Victor again promotes inappropriate interactions between minors and adults. It also insults the beliefs of major world religions and even makes a joke in one episode of risky homosexual promiscuity involving teen boys.

Previous seasons included high school minors going to adult gay bars and this season was no different. This time high school teenager Victor (Michael Cimino) meets his ex-boyfriend and fellow high schooler Benji (George Sear) for bingo night at a drag bar in the episode "Lucas and Diego."

Maxson returned -- and played dumb about who is really obsessed with drag queens -- in a June 22 post:

The left’s obsession with drag queens continued at recent pride night events hosted by the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox. It’s just part of making the “right people” uncomfortable, SB Nation Outsports writer Ken Schultz said Tuesday.

“The drag gods have spoken," Schultz wrote. "And based on the Mets’ and Red Sox’ current records, they approve."

The “right people” are those who attend sporting events to see athletic competition, not events sure to confuse the heck out of their impressionable children. And those like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who last week introduced a bill to protect children from drag queen story time, also tweeted that federal funding should be withheld from schools intentionally confusing children about gender and sexuality.

[...]

Schultz calls the drag queen events legitimate art. They are in reality further evidence of a declining culture. Baseball, hot dogs and apple pie has sunk to new lows - baseball, deviance and depravity. No, thank you.

Jorge Bonilla used a June 22 post to complain that a Miami Herald published an editorial pointing out Republican hypocrisy in demanding full parental authority over their children but threatening to jail parents who take their children to a family-friendly drag show, though he mostly tried to play gotcha that the the editorial didn't appear in the Spanish-language edition of the paper:

The primary reason behind this glaring omission is that running this editorial in Spanish would in fact expose Hispanics to the left’s ongoing attempts to normalize the attendance of children at sexually explicit drag shows. Good luck trying to explain to a socially conservative Hispanic family what the “it” is that “won’t lick itself”, or why they’re bigoted transphobes for believing that their grade-school children should neither be sexualized nor exposed to trans stripping.

Bonilla didn't identify any example of "trans stripping" that any child was being exposed to. Still, he thought so much of his gotcha attempt that he also wrote his post in Spanish.

Gabriela Pariseau spent a June 23 post complaining that "Big Tech" is "censoring users who oppose the transgender narrative" and spreading "biological truth," also cheering that the notoriously anti-LGBT Libs of TikTok account targeted drag queens:

Libs of TikTok tweeted a “MEGA DRAG THREAD” exposing the proverbial sewage leftists have been trying to feed American youths this June.

The thread featured pictures, videos and information highlighting events like drag queen story time at a Sudbury, Mass. preschool, a Dallas gay bar’s “Drag the Kids to Pride” event, Jasper, Ind.’s Pride in the Park event, which later canceled its “all ages” drag show, and many more similar school and library events.

Twitter removed the thread and locked the user’s account for allegedly “violating our rules against abuse and harassment,” according to a screenshot tweeted by The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillion.

"The transgender movement has no shame in attempting to indoctrinate children for its cause, and Big Tech has no qualms aiding and abetting," Pariseau ranted, demonstrating that she doesn't know the obvious difference between a transgender person and a drag queen.