Religious groups, cultural conservatives stand on same side of culture war

Politics may make for strange bedfellows, but culture wars marry them.

In the clash between traditional values and radical gender ideology, Christians, Muslims and other culturally conservative groups share many common morals and a commitment to preserving the preeminent role of the family in raising children.

Muslims in the US have historically embraced the Democratic party for myriad political reasons, but that once-monolithic support is proving more fragile than anyone suspected, as the left’s slavish devotion to identity politics has placed Muslims and the LGBT/Transgender faction at odds.

Astute observers of the passing scene will have noticed the deference usually given to Muslim religious sensitivities by Democrats, evidenced by that party’s unwillingness to challenge Islamic beliefs with the same ferocity as those of Christians.

However, liberals’ in-your-face promotion of radical gender ideology is forcing Muslims to choose between supporting Democrats or upholding the tenets of their faith, and recent events across the nation clearly show where loyalties lie.

In March of this year, the Montgomery County, Maryland school district announced it was ditching its long-standing policy of allowing parents to opt their children out of reading and lesson materials with homosexual or transgender themes, a policy both Christian and Muslim families had relied on. 

Worse still, the new policy singled out LGBT materials as essential lessons, prohibiting students from opting out – a clear attempt to promote gender ideology to an equal footing with subjects like math and science. 

The Maryland chapter of Moms for Liberty launched an immediate protest and found themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of Muslims demanding the change be overturned. 

In Muslim enclaves across swing state Michigan, such as Hamtramck, which has a 100% Muslim City Council, and in Dearborn, where Muslims hold a majority of elected offices, Democrats are losing support as the GOP makes inroads with a message of religious liberty. 

Hamtramck has banned the flying of Pride flags on government property and Dearborn’s population saw a significant swing toward the GOP during the last election, based almost entirely on the issue of religious freedom. 

The Michigan GOP now has a dedicated Muslim outreach director who is finding success pointing out the hypocrisy of Democrats preaching love and tolerance while force-feeding gender ideology to Muslim children through the school systems. 

This phenomenon of Muslim pushback against progressive proselytizing isn’t limited to a few American localities with large Muslim populations. From London and Birmingham in England, to Ottawa, Canada, groups of newly allied Christians and Muslims are demanding a halt to the gender identity indoctrination of children, many as young as five years-old, happening in public schools. 

In Glendale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, the decision by the school district to sponsor a panoply of events celebrating Pride Month at elementary schools grievously misjudged the views of parents of the district, which is majority Armenian, 97% of whom are Christian. Local Muslims joined ranks with the Armenians, despite being a very slender minority in the area. 

Confrontations outside of school board meetings swiftly devolved into brawls between incensed Armenian parents and LGBT counter-protestors, including members of Antifa.  

Even the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group known for pushing radical Islamist supremacy, is weighing in against the overreach of leftist gender-obsessed agitators, making common cause with Christian groups they ordinarily oppose. CAIR even helped organize some protests in the case of Montgomery County.

While the United States was birthed in a Judeo-Christian manger, the singularity of this nation is arguably found in our willingness to tolerate the free exercise of all religions. This foundational “fairness” is the seedbed for all of our other freedoms. A nation dedicated to freedom of worship is poor soil for growing a restrictive, authoritarian government. 

Unfortunately, many on the left are relentlessly assaulting that fundamental liberty, arguing that religion has no role to play in the public sphere. This pursuit of aggressive secularism has pulled the mask off of the Democratic party, revealing the ugliness of a decidedly anti-liberty face.  

To many immigrants, who have intimate first-hand knowledge of tyrannical governments, the bait and switch in which the progressive democrats have engaged is infuriating. Many of them came to America seeking religious freedom, not the elimination of religion itself. 

Religious immigrants – like African Americans, blue-collar, working class whites and women – are discovering the inevitable consequences of identity politics: the grievance crown passes arbitrarily, and without notice.

Adults can manage conflicting values within their communities, even within themselves, but when the innocence of children is at stake, the shaky concessions between opposing ideologies soon crumble, and without rapid de-escalation, can quickly turn a cold war hot.

Few parents want another adult talking to their kids about sex. When these “dialogues” extend to describing and promoting various sex acts, preferences, and appetites, that pool diminishes further. Add in the disturbing presence of outright pedophilic grooming behaviors, and the only supporters remaining are the groomers themselves, or predators hoping to take sexual advantage. 

Now, of course that’s an oversimplification, but not by much. A “live and let live” attitude toward sexual orientation isn’t good enough anymore. Anything less than unquestioning support for any and all gender/sexual expressions is treated as an insult by the left.

Like a trip through hell with Dante as your tour guide, once-trusting parents find their concerns dismissed with increasing vigor as their children are led into new rings of depravity, hand-in-hand with their teachers.

Marxism-addled leftists are convinced they’re saving America, that their various potions and poisons are really just the castor oil we all must swallow to get well.  

Their stunning lack of self-awareness prevents them from recognizing the only difference between their offerings and cult-leader Jim Jones, is Jonestown’s deadly Kool-Aid likely tasted better.