"I felt totally abandoned this weekend as everyone was 'rainbowing' on Facebook"

Facebook is watching. Who will dare to refuse
to "Celebrate Pride"?

Let me share with you a reaction that I received after I published my post about Facebook's rainbow conformity campaign (which has since been republished on LifeSite News) on my personal Facebook page.

The reaction, which came from one of my Facebook friends, strikes me as representative of what many people went through this past weekend. My friend wrote:

"This is exactly how I felt. I felt totally abandoned this weekend as many of my friends and my children started "rainbowing" their photo. It's very creepy and I felt the pressure to conform...I have to admit I'm even afraid to repost this even though I normally would. I have been afraid all weekend to discuss this or put very much on Facebook because I am lost on how to battle this."

Notice that even her children rainbowed their photos. Notice the social isolation that she felt as a result of all these rainbowed profiles. That is propaganda in action. Another way to describe it: a cloaked form of bullying. It aims to isolate us, to make us feel like "nonpersons".

When we feel alone, we feel powerless. We become silent, and the bully wins.

Facebook pressures people to show their colours: Choose or refuse the rainbow flag?

If Lenin had a Facebook account, I bet it would look like this.

Facebook has launched a new "Celebrate Pride" tool which lets users blend their Facebook profile photo with the rainbow flag. The tool came out soon after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage was announced last Friday, and it has become become a massive movement. Within hours of the tool's launch, over a million people had changed their profile photo. It now likely reaches into almost everyone's Friend list, including mine.

I was startled at first when I logged into Facebook and saw that a few of my friends had giant rainbows painted across their faces in their profile pics. My first surprise was that some of these people were conservatives, whom I had believed supported the conjugal definition of marriage. I guess I learned something about my friends this weekend.

But Facebook's new tool also got me thinking. What else is this, but a massive conformity campaign? I look at my list of friends and breathe a sigh of relief. Only a few have done it, no big deal. But I click and look at some of their friends. There are people out there with friend lists where rainbows cover almost every face. If that was my friend list, how would I feel?

The pressure to conform is real. Back in New York, I worked in a large law firm where the majority of the lawyers were liberal. What if I were still a lawyer there, and what if I were friends with my colleagues on Facebook (as many are)? How would I feel if I were the only one who did not have a rainbow over my profile shot?

Pennsylvania newspaper officially closes door to opinions against same-sex marriage as racist

The latest from the Patriot-News in Pennsylvania:

As a result of Friday's ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will very strictly limit op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.

These unions are now the law of the land. And we will not publish such letters and op-Eds any more than we would publish those that are racist, sexist or anti-Semitic.

We will, however, for a limited time, accept letters and op-Eds on the high court's decision and its legal merits.

The march of progress is often slow, but it is always steady.

On Friday, the United States took another step toward the ideal of equality envisioned by its founders. And we are all more free as a result.

Note the highly ironic last sentence. They will no longer publish our columns, but we are all more free, apparently. 

The Court is Emperor, and the End of Religious Liberty: Reactions to Obergefell

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

"Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.

     ...what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003.20 They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.

You Are Officially Declared a Racist Under the U.S. Constitution

Except it isn't just love. It also comes with a lot of hate,
towards anyone who doesn't celebrate this cause.

Today's Supreme Court decision changes everything.

Obergefell represents the complete failure of American democracy and the illegitimate usurpation of law-making power by five unelected judges. But that isn't news, really - the Supreme Court has had that problem for a long time.

The news is all about the irrevocable decision that has been taken, to create a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

It is a destructive and serious historical error, but history has indeed been made today. The Supreme Court has enshrined the views of one side of the marriage debate within the Constitution, thus making them virtually unassailable. Try taking back a constitutional right.

But the Supreme Court did something even more far-reaching: it created a new form of "racism". The majority decision leans heavily on the view that same-sex marriage is just like interracial marriage. The corollary conclusion, of course, is that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage is essentially no better than a racist who is motivated by mere animus. 

The Courage to be on the "Wrong Side of History"

Any time now, the Supreme Court of the United States will likely announce a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. This, even though majorities of Americans, everywhere across the nation, voted against it.

The liberal advocates will seem to have won at last, just as they always planned - through the courts, bypassing the will of the people.

There is no question that this ruling will be a serious low point for conservatives in America. There could hardly be a bigger morale-buster.

This ruling will also mark the start of a new era in America. It is no secret what will come next. We have other countries for that - such as Canada, as I have written about before.

All the rational arguments for marriage as defined between a man and a woman will fall away into the abyss. Not because they were wrong, but because no one will be listening anymore. Why consider the arguments, when an irreversible decision has already been made? It will seem to be time to conform, not to revisit the decision.

From now on, same-sex marriage will appear to be on the "right side of history". Even many conservatives will jump ship, since the alternative will be political and professional suicide.

Lessons from behind the Iron Curtain: How to oppose gender ideology

Remembering the Berlin Wall.

The topic of social psychology rarely comes up in conservative discussions about the upsurge of gender ideology and same-sex marriage. That is a big mistake, because mass propaganda is the elephant in the cultural living room.

It is both evident and known that those promoting the normalization of gender ideology have crafted a popularization strategy with the aid of psychologists, pollsters, marketing experts and other professionals whose business is to influence the human mind in ways other than logic and reason.

Conservatives have not responded with a campaign in kind. Nor have we put up any defences. In fact, we prefer to ignore the whole subject entirely. Do we believe that we are above being influenced by a campaign directed at our subconscious instincts?

Whatever the reasons, if we ignore the psychological aspects of this culture war, we are doing so to our peril. Our own brains are being hijacked to play against us, without our realizing it. Conservatives are caving in left and right, and our reasoned arguments have made no headway against the approaching juggernaut.

Laudato Si, lulling the left into a winning prolife strategy

With Laudato Si, there is no longer any doubt. Catholics are the official enemies of Alberta's oil sands and the use of fossil fuels everywhere. Environmentalism is now a Catholic thing. As progressive Vatican journalist John Allen Jr. puts it:

Laudato Si seems destined to go down as a major turning point, the moment when environmentalism claimed pride of place on a par with the dignity of human life and economic justice as a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching. It also immediately makes the Catholic Church arguably the leading moral voice in the press to combat global warming and the consequences of climate change.

The Church has been globally warming to climate change

Many Catholics may feel like they were just whacked in the head with a bio-degradable frisbee thrown by Pope Francis out of nowhere, but Allen's fascinating article argues that Laudato Si the pinnacle of a "growing eco-streak" in the Church.

Bigots and Haters? Using Conformity to Normalize Same-Sex Marriage

Social pressure to conform.

Have human beings become too clever for their own brains? Our understanding of human psychology has advanced to the point where we can create marketing and propaganda schemes that effectively manipulate people's opinions and behaviour. But most people have not yet gained the ability to withstand this kind of psychological pressure.

In fact, most people are completely unaware of the problem. They do not recognize the pressure that is affecting their unconscious instincts and making them alter their conscious choices and opinions. Our knowledge of ourselves can now place us in chains, and we may not yet be clever enough to unchain ourselves. We may have become smart enough to outsmart ourselves.

Here's an example. The movement for the normalization of same-sex marriage owes a good portion of its success to an intentional exploitation of human psychology. As a recent article on LifeSiteNews describes, for several years the gay rights movement was getting nowhere fast. But things changed six years ago:

...[A]after the their 2009 “gay marriage” referendum defeat in Maine, the homosexual movement decided to craft an entirely new approach toward elections. 

They brought together groups of political strategists, psychologists, pollsters, organizing experts, and various “think tank” types. They meticulously studied the data and their election experiences and designed a new set of strategies and tactics to win against their “right wing” adversaries...They created a sophisticated propaganda campaign. 

Expertise in human psychology - effectively "mind manipulation" through advertising, marketing, and other psychologically-based strategies - has made a crucial difference to the same-sex marriage campaign. Since that shift in strategy, there has been a rapid advance in the same-sex marriage cause, both in Ireland (where same-sex marriage has been legalized by popular referendum) and in the United States.

Culture Witness is on Facebook!

Since the readership of this blog has been going up steadily, this seems like a good time to introduce a Culture Witness Facebook page, newly minted as of tonight.

If you are on Facebook and interested in getting updates, not just about new posts on this site but also about related articles and events, then please click "Like" in the right sidebar!