Pride Month’s true competition? Faith, family, freedom



This June, as rainbow flags flutter and parades march on, a noticeable shift has occurred — corporate America is stepping back from its once-vocal support of Pride Month. That retreat offers conservatives not just a moment to observe but a moment to reflect: What are the values we ought to be truly proud of? What are we, as a nation, actually celebrating?

This year, according to Gravity Research, nearly 4 in 10 companies are scaling back Pride-related activities — a major jump from just 9% last year. Major sponsors like Google, Home Depot, Mastercard, and Citi have withdrawn support from some of the largest Pride events in North America. Even entertainment giants like Netflix and Disney have noticeably toned down their rainbow-wrapped algorithms.

If this trend is truly reversing, what should we celebrate instead?

These aren’t isolated incidents. They are part of a growing corporate recalibration — one triggered by consumer backlash. The Bud Light and Target controversies of recent years proved that when brands pander to divisive ideologies, everyday Americans take notice — and they push back. The market has spoken, and many companies are now listening. I’ll crack a Coors Light to that.

None of this is to dismiss the real people behind Pride Month — Americans who genuinely desire dignity, respect, and the freedom to live without fear or hostility. Every person is made in the image of God and deserves to be treated with decency. But that’s precisely why the corporate exploitation of these communities is so hollow. When support is only loud during ad campaigns and silent when there's pushback, it reveals that the motive was never about justice — it was about profit. Those who truly care about human dignity should be just as offended by this performative marketing as anyone else.

If companies are now walking away from Pride because it’s no longer profitable, we should ask a deeper question: Were they ever really “with” the LGBT community in the first place — or were they simply exploiting a cause to sell products?

The answer is obvious.

It wasn’t support — it was a sales strategy.Betrayal dressed in bright colors. You can’t sell “authenticity,” and these brands proved it.

What we’ve witnessed over the past decade is the rise — and now the reckoning — of performative activism. Rainbow logos in June. BLM hashtags in July. DEI statements in quarterly reports. All too often, these campaigns have felt more like virtue-signaling PR stunts than sincere commitments. It’s what critics have dubbed “rainbow capitalism”: when a company paints itself in the colors of a movement, not to live its values but to boost its bottom line.

One organization that has been instrumental in exposing this performative activism is Consumers’ Research. As a conservative watchdog group, it has launched campaigns targeting companies it perceives as prioritizing progressive agendas over their customers. For instance, in response to Bud Light’s partnership with a transgender influencer, Consumers' Research initiated a “Woke Alerts” campaign to inform consumers about companies' political stances. The organization's efforts have played a significant role in holding corporations accountable and encouraging a return to customer-focused values.

So, if this trend is truly reversing, what should we celebrate instead?

Rather than centering our national pride around identity groups or political campaigns, we should be celebrating the things that actually hold America together — faith, family, freedom, and community.

Faith, not in the empty slogans of corporate human resources departments, but in a higher purpose. Faith that grounds our moral order and has shaped the conscience of our country from the beginning. One can’t help but think of Matthew 15:8: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

RELATED: Rainbow rebellion: How Christians can take back what Pride Month stole

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Family, the foundational institution that no government program can replace. It’s within the home that virtue is taught, character is formed, and citizens are raised.

Freedom, especially the freedom to speak the truth — even when it’s unpopular — and to live according to conscience without fear of cancellation or coercion. The most inclusive flag in the land is Old Glory.

And community — real, local, lived-in community — where Americans help each other not because of corporate campaigns, but because it’s the right thing to do.

We know better. These are the values that deserve celebration. These are the virtues that built this country. And if corporate America is finally pulling back from the cultural fray, maybe it’s time for all of us to recommit — not to branding campaigns, but to the timeless truths that made America strong in the first place.

Pride Month 2025 isn’t just about what’s changing on Madison Avenue. It’s about what’s possible on Main Street. Let’s use this moment not to divide but to unify — by celebrating what we’ve always had reason to be proud of.

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Church is cool again — and Gen Z men are leading the way



Amid a broader spiritual collapse, one trend stands out: Young men are returning to church in growing numbers. Generation Z, in particular, seeks structure, meaning, and community in a world fractured by chaos and alienation.

For decades, the dominant story in the West told of religion’s slow death. Church attendance dropped year after year, while “nones” — those who reject any religious affiliation — surged. But recent data complicates that narrative, especially among younger Americans.

The return of young men to the church is a cultural reckoning and a budding flower of renewal.

Gen Z remains the least religious generation on record, with 34% identifying as unaffiliated — higher than Millennials (29%) or Gen X (25%). Yet signs of revival are breaking through. One recent survey found that 31% of Gen Z attend religious services at least once a month, while 25% actively practice a faith.

Similar trends are occurring in the United Kingdom. A report by the Bible Society reveals that Catholics now outnumber Anglicans by more than two to one among Generation Z and younger Millennials. In 2018, Anglicans made up 30% of churchgoers ages 18-34, while Catholics accounted for 22%. By 2024, these figures had changed to 20% Anglican and 41% Catholic.

According to the Becket Fund’s 2024 findings, members of Gen Z attending religious services at least monthly rose from 29% in 2022 to 40% in 2024. Similarly, those who consider religion important in their lives increased from 51% to 66% over the same period.

Religious is the new ‘rebellious’

What explains the sudden shift? For generations, youth pushed back against the dominant order, and for much of the 20th century, that order was Christianity. But what happens when Christianity fades, replaced by atheism or whatever postmodern creed happens to be in vogue? The instinct to rebel remains. Only now, the rebellion turns back toward order, tradition, and moral clarity.

For years, legacy media and Hollywood told young men they were disposable — interchangeable, expendable, even dangerous. That narrative failed. And now, young men are driving the revival.

Historically, women filled the pews in greater numbers. But in 2024, that dynamic flipped. According to the Alabama Baptist, 30% of men attended weekly services compared to just 27% of women — a quiet but telling reversal of a long-standing pattern.

Men lead the charge

Traditional, structured worship has become a magnet for young men seeking discipline and meaning. Orthodox and Catholic churches — with their rituals, hierarchy, and deep historical roots — have seen a marked rise in male converts.

A 2022 survey reported a 78% increase in conversions to Orthodoxy since 2019. Catholic dioceses across the country have posted similar gains. From 2023 to 2024, some reported conversion spikes of up to 72%. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles alone welcomed 5,587 people into the Catholic Church this Easter, including 2,786 baptisms at the Easter Vigil — a 34% jump over last year.

But this resurgence goes deeper than doctrine. Churches offer young men what the modern world fails to provide: real community. According to the Barna Group, 67% of churchgoing adults report having a mentor — often someone they met through church. Among Gen Z and Millennials, that number rises to 86% and 83%, respectively.

Small groups and discipleship programs allow young men to wrestle with challenges, seek counsel, and build genuine friendships. These are exactly the structures secular society neglects — and precisely what my generation craves.

Cultural shifts have accelerated the return to faith. The internet may connect everyone digitally, but it often isolates people in the real world. Local churches still offer something screens can’t: brotherhood, accountability, and face-to-face contact. In a culture that demonizes masculinity and treats male virtues as liabilities, the church remains one of the last institutions to honor strength, discipline, and leadership without shame or apology.

A cultural mandate

Many young men today feel discarded by a society that marginalizes their natural instincts and virtues. Christianity offers them something different — a call to action rooted in service, discipline, and brotherhood. It gives them a place where effort matters, strength is welcomed, and belonging isn’t conditional. The need to connect, to matter, and to be respected — long ignored in secular culture — finds real expression in the life of the church.

This return of young men to the pews marks more than a spiritual revival. It’s a cultural reckoning. In many ways, it echoes the moral foundation laid by America’s founders. Though denominationally diverse, the founders agreed that freedom without faith could not last. George Washington said it plainly: “Religion and morality are indispensable supports” to political prosperity.

Today’s young men appear to understand what many in power have forgotten — liberty without virtue cannot endure. As America drifts, a new generation looks not to slogans or screens but to God — for strength, clarity, and the courage to rebuild what has been lost.

Old boxes, open hearts, and a little divine timing



My suburban town has a waste drop-off center where residents can take items that don’t belong in the regular trash — things like chemicals, corrugated cardboard, and certain recyclables. I gladly hand over my aluminum and metal cans, which actually have some raw material value, in exchange for unloading the mountain of cardboard boxes I seem to collect.

The center also runs a moving-box exchange: new arrivals can drop off their flattened boxes, and anyone is free to take what they need. It’s one of those small civic gestures that, in theory at least, make a town feel like a community.

‘I think you might be an angel,’ she said. ‘Ma’am,’ I laughed, ‘I can assure you I’m not. You can call my wife and confirm.’

It’s also where I witnessed two moments I’ll never forget.

The first came just after my wife and I had moved from another state. We’d been through an ugly incident — one that left her physically hurt, shaken, and furious. I tried to console her, though I was rattled myself. More than anything, she felt afraid. She didn’t know a soul in our new town. She felt alone.

Still, life had to go on. We were setting up our new home, and on that Saturday afternoon we loaded the car with flattened moving boxes and headed to the drop-off center. After unloading the last one, I placed my hand gently on her back as we turned toward the car. Her face was heavy with sorrow, her body slack with grief.

As we neared our vehicle, a man and woman — both around 60 by my guess — walked toward us. The woman gently placed her hand on my wife’s arm and asked, “May we pray for you?”

The man explained that they had noticed her pain and wanted to offer her comfort through prayer. My wife, still shaken but open, nodded yes.

They each rested a hand on her shoulders. Without knowing a single detail of what had happened, they prayed. They asked God to bring her peace. They prayed for strength to carry the weight she was bearing. They asked that she feel God’s presence — that she know she wasn’t alone.

And then my wife began to cry.

These two complete strangers embraced her while she wept. In that moment, something shifted. Her healing had begun.

Afterward, my wife and I reflected on that moment. If angels walk among us, we agreed, they must look something like that couple.

About a year later, we had new neighbors whose garage was overflowing with empty boxes. As they unpacked, I offered to take the pile to the waste station while running errands. They accepted, and we broke the boxes down and loaded them into my SUV.

At the drop-off station, I noticed an elderly woman struggling with a single flattened moving box, trying unsuccessfully to wedge it into the back seat of her small Nissan. I approached and joked that she either needed a smaller box or a bigger car.

I offered to fold the flaps or crease the cardboard to help it fit, but she waved me off — it wasn’t worth the trouble, she said.

She explained that she’d heard about the moving box exchange and came to see what she could find. But she didn’t need just one box — she needed dozens. She was moving out of the home she’d lived in for decades, the house where she and her late husband had raised their children. They were all grown now and had moved out of state. It was time, she said, to downsize and move closer to one of them.

“It’s all so overwhelming,” she said. “I don’t even know where to begin. But I know I’ll need a lot of boxes — so much is being given away or won’t be packed by the movers.”

I nodded toward my vehicle, packed with dozens of flattened moving boxes, and said, “Let’s skip the middleman. I’ll bring these straight to your house.”

She hesitated with the usual “I hate to impose,” but eventually accepted. I followed her a couple of miles to her home.

As I carried the boxes inside and stacked them in a corner, her tone turned serious.

“Why were you at the waste station?” she asked.

“To drop off these boxes,” I replied.

“No, I mean why were you there at that exact moment? And why did you approach me?”

“Just timing,” I said.

“I think you might be an angel,” she said.

“Ma’am,” I laughed, “I can assure you I’m not. You can call my wife and confirm.”

She handed me some strapping tape, and I assembled a dozen boxes, showing her how to do it easily.

Before leaving, I scribbled my name and number on a slip of paper.

“Call if you need more boxes,” I said, “or help with anything else.”

As I walked out, she asked again, “Are you sure you’re not an angel?”

“I promise you I’m not,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure they hang out at the waste drop-off center. That’s where my wife and I met a couple of angels once.”

High-trust societies die when people don't trust their neighbors



In a better world, people would cultivate virtue and develop habits of right action, practicing them regardless of external pressures. But we don’t live in that world. For most, concepts like honor and morality emerge from community, not individual will. These vital, pro-social behaviors rely on constant reinforcement by others. When daily life consists of anonymous, disconnected interactions, it becomes easier to justify selfishness. But when people must live among and depend on those who observe and remember how they behave, accountability shapes conduct.

Social norms depend heavily on the expectation of repeated interactions — what game theorists call “iterated games.” A functioning society requires widespread cooperation. When people believe they benefit more by acting selfishly than by cooperating, social cohesion begins to unravel. In one-time interactions, the incentive to cheat or defect rises sharply. One can gain an immediate advantage with little risk of social or material consequences.

Many debate distant acquaintances online, try to enforce shared principles across cultural divides, and appeal to ‘common sense’ in a world where little remains common.

Carnival workers and traveling merchants were once known for scamming customers. Sailors and touring rock musicians were infamous for defiling the honor of the daughters of the town. These groups operated without accountability because they never had to face the communities they affected. Their minimal connection to others reduced the costs of antisocial behavior and encouraged defection.

Today, we see a broader breakdown of communal life. We’ve fragmented communities, commodified identity, and isolated individuals. In doing so, we’ve eroded shared moral standards and stripped away even the basic incentives to cultivate virtue.

As a colleague recently observed, communal gatherings used to serve as informal “wellness checks.” Church, for example, grounded both cultural norms and moral expectations. It also required people to present themselves before others. Even atheists or agnostics often showed up on Sunday mornings — not for faith but to signal solidarity and demonstrate their role as contributing members of the community.

Churches noticed what others missed. Underfed or unwashed children caught someone’s eye. A hungover woman felt the weight of disapproval. An unfaithful man encountered the quiet judgment of those around him. These small acts of social accountability reinforced a shared moral order.

For most of history, individual independence was difficult, if not impossible. People relied on their communities for safety, food, education, goods, and entertainment. In many ancient societies, exile was tantamount to a death sentence. Some preferred suicide to being cast out. Reputation and honor mattered more than money because survival depended on others’ trust. A man’s worth reflected the number of relationships he had managed honorably over time.

Today, people can meet most of their basic needs without relying on others. That shift creates the illusion of freedom, but in reality, it has replaced dependence on community with dependence on the state.

Now, instead of interacting face-to-face within tight-knit communities, we operate as isolated individuals within anonymous digital spaces. Functions once performed by churches and neighborhoods have shifted to malls and bureaucracies. But social correction — once a communal responsibility — has become taboo. Attempting to help or intervene risks public shaming as a so-called "Karen" on social media.

The best social worker, no matter how dedicated, cannot match the quiet authority of vigilant grandmothers. And as that kind of local, relational accountability fades, the consequences grow harder to ignore.

A shared religion and common cultural norms significantly increase the likelihood that people will cooperate and act ethically, even among strangers. This dynamic defines what we call a “high-trust” society — one where individuals expect cooperation and moral behavior from others, even without close, day-to-day interaction.

In such societies, cultural expectations and religious beliefs so deeply shape conduct that people often can’t imagine behaving any other way. Even when defection carries few immediate consequences, trust persists because moral behavior has been internalized through habit and community values.

This is why most successful civilizations develop around a unifying religion and dominant cultural framework. A shared moral and social code allows complex societies to function by making behavior more predictable. Without that foundation, everyday interactions become unreliable, and cooperation breaks down.

Still, this model has its limits. Problems arise when a society continues to assume widespread agreement on values long after the cultural or religious foundation has eroded. Without a clear basis for those norms — or mechanisms to enforce them — shared assumptions collapse. The result isn’t cohesion but confusion, fragmentation, and in many cases, failure.

Social norms draw their power from habit and community enforcement. Religious precepts gain strength by asserting transcendent truths. Strip away both, and the incentive to cooperate weakens dramatically.

This is why the popular secular call to “just be a good person” falls flat. What does it mean to be good, in what context, and to what end? Only deep-rooted moral traditions, developed over time within specific communities, can answer those questions with any clarity or authority. When pressure mounts, the only forces that reliably foster cooperation are interdependence, strong communal accountability, or a belief in higher truths — all of which arise from tight-knit communities. Attempts to universalize these concepts without those foundations always collapse in the end.

As Americans confront the consequences of open borders and increasing social isolation, questions of national identity have become more urgent. We’re told Americans value liberty and hard work — and while that’s true, it’s not enough. Many debate distant acquaintances online, try to enforce shared principles across cultural divides, and appeal to “common sense” in a world where little remains common.

To recover a meaningful national identity, we need to rebuild on the foundations of Christian faith and real, local community. Neighbors must be able to depend on one another and hold each other accountable. That’s a tall order in a digital age where every device offers an escape from responsibility. But those willing to embrace that challenge will be the ones most equipped to lead.

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