For years, June looked like the American Ramadan: an entire month dedicated to the state religion of LGBTQ politics, complete with mandatory observances across every major institution.

Gay men exposed themselves to children at parades while police looked on. Transgender activists went topless on the White House lawn while Joe Biden declared that transgender youth “shape the soul of America.” The spectacle was grotesque, but the LGBTQ movement kept winning, and its radicals assumed they could do whatever they wanted without consequence.

For too long, conservatives pretended the state could remain neutral while the left captured every major institution. That fantasy is over.

Donald Trump’s 2024 victory shocked the cultural radicals who expected the country to keep swallowing the agenda. Trump did not end wokeness, but his mandate signaled a limit to what the public would tolerate. Movies and television still push woke pieties. Democrats still advance insane views on child transition. But the most outrageous excesses of Pride Month have begun to recede. This June, far fewer institutions seemed eager to signal total loyalty to the rainbow regime.

Professional sports remain among the stubborn exceptions.

Hockey and baseball teams still drape their social media in rainbow colors and hold Pride nights at their stadiums. On the surface, this makes little sense. Sports audiences tend to be male, more conservative, and far less interested in radical LGBTQ propaganda than the professional class that runs these leagues. Pride branding does not attract these fans. It alienates them.

So why keep doing it?

Because the point is not profit. The point is domination.

The leagues maintain their public worship of homosexuality because it irritates their middle-American audience. Hollywood did something similar with “Joker.” The first film made a fortune, but elites hated that disaffected young men embraced it. So the sequel humiliated and destroyed the main character. The studio cared more about punishing the audience than pleasing it.

Sports owners increasingly behave the same way. They despise the people who make them rich and would rather lecture them than serve them.

San Francisco is hardly a conservative stronghold, so no one should be surprised that the Giants held a Pride night and required players to wear LGBTQ-themed uniforms. The team redesigned its logo in rainbow colors and placed it on player caps, as it has done before.

This time, a few players found a way to resist.

Pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker wore the required Pride caps but wrote “Genesis 9:11-16” beside the logo. The passage refers to God giving mankind the rainbow as a sign of His promise never again to flood the earth.

RELATED: MLB sends subtle threat to SF Giants pitchers over Pride Night biblical protest: ‘We have warned the players’

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

It was a clever protest. The players wore the mandated symbol of the regime. They did not directly attack LGBTQ activists or the Pride agenda. They simply recontextualized the rainbow, turning a celebration of homosexuality into a reminder of God’s love, covenant, and dominion. The shift was subtle but devastating. It seized the frame and subverted the intended message.

Activists were predictably outraged. They could not tolerate faithful Christians finding a tactful way to register dissent. They demanded punishment, claiming the players had “politicized” the event.

That complaint sounds absurd until you understand the real rule. This is not hypocrisy. It is hierarchy.

Pride night itself is political. Professional athletes routinely wear political messages for approved causes such as Black Lives Matter. Leagues have no problem turning games into ideological performances when the message serves the left. The issue is not whether Major League Baseball should remain neutral. The issue is that only one form of politics is allowed.

The warning to the Giants pitchers was an assertion of raw power over players and fans. It told Christians that they may be forced to wear the symbol, but they may not interpret it according to their own faith. They may participate in the ritual, but they may not confess a higher authority.

Major League Baseball understood its dilemma. The protest was too careful to cast easily as hateful. The players had worn the required uniform. A severe punishment would look vindictive. But the league also needed to placate activists who treat every Christian objection as heresy.

So the league chose the worst possible middle ground. It reportedly warned the three players that they had violated a rule and could face consequences if they did it again. Fans and Christians will see the warning as a bigoted attack because that is what it is. LGBTQ activists will see it as insufficient punishment for disobedience.

The decision may also bring legal trouble. Major League Baseball operates in Florida and is subject to that state’s law. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier noted on social media that the policy appears to show religious discrimination by the league. He warned that Major League Baseball would be hearing from his office soon.

Good.

RELATED: Democrats can’t escape their trans problem

Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

This is why conservatives must obtain political power and use it. Progressives will not stop discriminating against Christians. They will not leave believers alone. They will demand submission, call it inclusion, and punish anyone who remembers that the rainbow belonged to God before activists turned it into a corporate loyalty oath.

For too long, conservatives pretended the state could remain neutral while the left captured every major institution. That fantasy is over. Someone will dictate the culture. Someone will decide which beliefs are honored, which are tolerated, and which are punished.

Christians should not seek persecution as proof of virtue. They should seek victory as the proper end of political life. If corporate sports leagues want to conscript players into Pride rituals and punish faithful dissent, they should face lawsuits, investigations, and political consequences.

The rainbow is not theirs. It never was. It’s ours. The lesson should be obvious by now: Neutrality never survives contact with a militant faith. If Christians refuse to defend their symbols, the regime will gladly steal them and demand gratitude for the theft next June too.