NY grand jury indicts former President Trump
File - In March 17, 2006 file photo, members of the Irish-American gay community protest of Fifth Avenue against the exclusion of Irish and Irish-American gay people from marching in the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. (AP Photo/Dima Gavrysh, File)
Since 1762, St. Patrick's Day has served as one of America's most popular celebrations of a Catholic saint. In modern times, the New York City parade has been the most visible of those celebrations – which is why it has been targeted by the gay rights movement for the last two decades.
Since the 1990s, the parade has resisted demands to include the gay "rights" agenda in the privately-sponsored celebration. Unfortunately, as of 2015, that resistance is over.
Later this month, for the first time in its history, the parade will host a group promoting same-sex relationships, and more than one such group next year. Disturbingly, the parade's organizers didn’t balance the scale this year with the admission of a prolife group; they only added the participation of a gay advocacy organization called Out@NBCUniversal.
Historically, the parade’s organizers had a standing tradition of excluding groups that had their own political agenda, thus excluding both gay and pro-life groups. This year, they clearly made an exception – not for a group that stands with the Church's doctrine, but one that openly opposes it.
One has to give gay advocates credit – they have effectively co-opted the parade, turning it from a Catholic event into just another of the gay pride parades seen throughout the nation.
This strategy may have used modern tools, such as NBC threatening to boycott the parade and the boycott of New York's mayor. However, co-opting something that glorifies God is almost as old as time itself – and, as always, it most effectively uses partial truths to promote the causes of Satan.
Consider the first time that this tactic was used, in the Garden of Eden. Back then, there was no TV and no Internet. So, Satan used a snake. The animal told Eve that eating the Forbidden Fruit would bring her "knowledge of good and evil, like that of God and the angels."
This was true! But the snake also said that Eve would not die if she ate the fruit – in fact, it implied that there would be no repercussions for her actions. Only good would be gained.
As Adam and Eve found out only moments later, they did gain knowledge, but at the cost of their lives, and the sanctity of the Garden. God summarily banished them, saying that their actions would lead to their deaths, and the deaths of all of their progeny.
Fast forward some umpteen thousand years to modern day. St. Patrick's Day honors the Irish saint who drove all of the snakes out of Ireland and Christianized a pagan land – and for his work, a Catholic feast day was named in his honor.
And the gay "marriage" movement has taken this celebration of faith and made a direct attack upon it.
In the first prong of the attack, proponents of gay inclusion said that they merely sought fairness and equality. In their estimation, being gay is as part of the human fabric as race or ethnicity. However, recent studies from Harvard and other respected institutions have failed to produce any evidence for a gay gene – continuing 50 years of academic data on this point.
Their real goal is to purge the religious tradition of the parade – by making it an ethnic celebration of Irish heritage, not a religious celebration. Unfortunately, many activists confuse deliberate actions with feelings or attractions, and thus argue that their life choices are as unchangeable as one's national or ethnic heritage.
They also claim that because religion is a choice, it must be held as secondary to unchangeable qualities such as race or ethnicity. While they would like to include sexual relationships in that category, it is absurd to claim that homosexuals somehow lack the impulse control that makes heterosexual intercourse a choice.
In other words, the logic of their argument for inclusion requires that everyone agree that acting on sexual attraction is not a choice, and is as unchangeable as ethnicity.
In addition to marginalizing the religious components of a Catholic parade, gay "rights" advocates have now successfully sidelined God's command "to be fruitful and multiply." By definition, same-sex relationships are not fruitful, and cannot multiply – meaning that a Catholic parade (which encourages being fruitful and multiplying) is now promoting relationships that are not part of God's intentions.
Again, co-opting is nothing new – and it's not always evil. The Church co-opted pagan traditions like evergreen trees and gift-giving during the winter. Halloween and Valentine's Day have pagan roots, but have been used for the glory of God and the improvement of mankind.
To be fair, St. Patrick's Day celebrations have never been perfect. Many American Catholics have already co-opted the holiday to be a time of sinful drunkenness, something that has also drawn criticism from orthodox Catholics and is undoubtedly celebrated by Satan.
But that does not mean the Catholic Church should allow Satan any further holds in this Christian celebration. Unlike Eve, the parade's Grand Marshal – Cardinal Timothy Dolan – and parade organizers should hold strong to the full truth of God, not the damning, inverted partial truths of Satan.
This year, millions will watch the St. Patrick's Day parade. And in doing so, they may not realize that the takeover of a Catholic parade by Satan's unwitting lackeys is just the first, big bite of the apple.
David Flynn is a senior cybersecurity architect for government cloud systems. He holds a MA in Catechetics from Christendom College, a premier Catholic institution. He is the author of "Search for the Alien God" and its sequel "Dangerous Alien Robot." The third book in the series, "Battle of the Queens," is forthcoming.