Idaho and the Red State Grooming Festival

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Update: Zions Bank has withdrawn from participating in the festival.

Second update: Idaho Department of Health and Welfare pulled its sponsorship as well.

Third update: The kids drag event for this weekend has been postponed to a “later date.”

Fourth update: ICCU has pulled out.

Fifth update: Idaho Power decided to withdraw.

Dear J ,

I trust that you saw the latest rollout of the Idaho-based pride gunk? It turns out that the whole month of June wasn’t nearly enough for these people . . . and that is understandable because lust has no brakes.

While I appreciate your natural desire to keep your head down, and I do know that you have a wife, three kids, and a mortgage, and we are both aware of the kind of piranha-fest that would be likely to occur if you decided to leak the incriminating information you have gathered (and if it were traced back to you), it nevertheless seems to me that the time has come for you to act on your convictions. I mean, golly. Some of Idaho’s premier companies seem to have been persuaded that giving all the bright colors of the rainbow Crayola box to their graphic design team can somehow hide the fact that they have become the kind of companies that needs to crawl back down the sewer pipe. I am sure O’Keefe will be more than interested in what you have got.

You and I have talked about this a time or two at church, but let me go over the issues again. I mean, look at the superhero design at the top of the link I included above—this is a concerted effort to lure in the kids. These people have parked their festival down the street from the school, offering to show kids the puppies they have in their van. This is nothing but a red state grooming festival. The only thing that is different from the old style molesters would be all the corporate logo sponsors plastered all over the van—Zions Bank, Micron, Wells Fargo, Blue Cross of Idaho, Idaho Central Credit Union, and of course, we must not leave out Ascension Pole and Dance.

Now it is not as though these companies are run by the lust monkeys—most of the corporate dudes have a different problem. We are all aware of the trope about a certain kind of businessman, the kind who would sell his own grandmother if the margins were good. So these people would sell our grandchildren, as the margins currently really are good. The motivation for the sponsors is usually quite different than the motivation of the organizers, who are the lust monkeys in this—these sponsors are just mammon-grubbers and cowards.

Have you noticed a new kind of poster in airports these days? You know, the “help stop human trafficking” kind of poster? I was just on a trip and the prominence of these new public service cautions is quite striking. And so, while we have a culture that has a huge problem with child porn, and with sex trafficking, these organizers can still put together a festival that features events that sexualize young children, both as performers and observers, and then corporate sponsors clamber over each other to get their names attached to this monstrosity.

So, Micron, Zions Bank, Blue Cross, Albertsons, answer me this: When they hold that kids drag show, which you are sponsoring, and a crowd gathers to watch these abused children vamping it up, does anyone in that leering crowd have a hard on? Do any of the organizing groomers? To ask the question is to answer it, and yet this spiritual schizophrenia is so advanced that they won’t care about what happens to any of these kids unless they get taken off to the airport, and somebody reads one of those posters.

Speaking of spiritual schizophrenia, there will be some tut-tutters who are offended that I used an indelicate phrase in the previous paragraph, and yet are not offended at all at this jubilant and colorful celebration of pedophilia and pederasty, and are upset with me for pointing out the obvious. Some of us have been warning about what sexual minorities might be lurking under that + sign in the LGBTQ+ propaganda campaign. And come now the MAPs—minor attracted persons, who also have their hopes, dreams, and aspirations, one of which is getting a moment alone with that cute boy, the third entry. Hey Zions! Are there going to be any MAPs at this shindig that you good Mormons are sponsoring? Are they welcome, or are they not welcome? And, I almost forgot, by what standard?

These people remind me of that woman in Revelation 17: “The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and bedizened with gold and jewels and pearls. In her hand she held a gold cup, full of obscenities and the foulness of her fornications” (v. 4). A gold cup filled with obscenities. It is amazing what a good graphic design team can cover up.

The thing that would be hilarious (if it were not so dark and hypocritical) is that many of the supporters of this putrefying sludge are in the forefront of those who attack churches like ours for welcoming repentant sex offenders as members. I highlight the word repentant for a reason. Remember all that heat we took over Sitler? Our town recently held the same kind of event on a smaller scale—a small town like Moscow can’t really do debauchery like Boise can—but we had drag kids and the works. And yet these are the same people who are upset with us when we require such people to repent of their sin, reject their perverse inclinations, forswear all of it, and follow Christ. This sets them off like nobody’s business, and it is quite clear that it is not the sexual sin that upsets them. It is the repentance that upsets them. And repentance is always the key. If one of these Boise groomers were to repent, name the evil for what it is, and come to me asking if he could join our congregation, my reply would be “come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.” These people are sinning with a high hand, but we need to remember that Christ has saved a lot worse.

In the meantime, if the sin bothered them, they wouldn’t be celebrating it like they are. Hey, Blue Cross! Will any of these kids be twerking or pole dancing? Could you have one of your PR guys phone one of the organizers and check? Do you care? Okay, maybe you don’t care. It didn’t seem like you care.

But back to the point of this note. I got to writing about the thundering hypocrisy of these people, and I warmed to my subject. I think the time has come for you to share what you know, and to release what you have recorded. I will pray for you.

Cordially in Christ,

Douglas

N.B. The question will naturally be raised whether J is a fictional character. I think we can say that that is a real possibility. But if he is not, then more than a few people ought to be worried about what they have said, written, or done. Some flat rocks reveal a lot of things when you turn them over.