Opinion

The sacred Pride flag and the new double standard blasphemy laws

A new crime wave has gripped the country, and this time progressives are calling for harsh penalties, even ch🧸arging teenagers with fღelonies.

That’s because this crime is political, and these teens are accused of disrespecting the flag — the Pride flag, that is.

The latest front in the culture war is the𒁃 humble urban crosswalk.

Hip cities across the land, or at any rate cities that want to be perceived as hip, have taken to repainting crosswalks with the colors, strip🍸es and chevrons of the LGBTQ flag.

In some places, this is a “Pride Month” display — but elsewhere, including in Nashville, Tenn., Alexandria, Va., and Westport, Conn., these are permanent c⛦hanges to the cityscape.

If these municipalities had puꦿt up statues honoring war heroes or Founding Fathers, teen vandalism with a political edge might be tolerated.

But in Delray Beach, Fla., and Spokane, Wash., teens in pickup trucks or on Lime scooters are p🙈eeling out their tires on the sacred emblem of every-sexuality-but-hetero, and for that there’s zero tolerance.

Ruslan Tu𒊎rko, 19, and two unnamed minors are charged with first degree malicious mischief in Spokane.

Do police therꦅe usually make a priority of chasing down kid💙s who leave skid marks on crosswalks?

Those teens aren’t in trouble for what they did, but for what they thought and meant — and what one of them is alleged to have said: “F–k you, f—-t!”

It’s not easy to g🔯et arrested in America’s cities just for using four-letter words or marking up a road 💞with tire tracks, but for speaking ill of queer people and defacing their symbol? 

We still have the First Amendment, but the 🐷separation of church and state doesn’t apply to sexuality and state.

So we have, in effect, a new kind of blasphemy law prohibiting insults against gay symbols instead of religious one𓃲s.

Delray Beach police spent a week investigat💖ing the crime of defacing a crosswalk flag there before 19-year-old Dylan Brewe🍒r turned himself in.

He’s charged with felony mischief, too.

Law enforcement put out a statement making the ideological nature of his offense clear: “The reckless action caused significant damage to the stre𒈔etscape painting, which serves as a symbol of unity and inclusivity for the LGBTQ community.”

This was no mere traffic violation.

The country might be a calmer place if rowdy teens were routinely busted for anti-social behavior🎶.

But the cit♈ies treating these kids like Jan. 6 p🃏rotesters aren’t trying to clean up the streets — they’re legislating morality.

Even now, liberals insist they’re against that:

They still say it’s unconstitutional when Louisiana passes a law that put🔯s the Ten Commandments in every public-school classroom in the state.

Progressives would never countenance painting a Christian cro🌺ss on a public crosswalk.

But what makes one group’s symbol of pride different from another’s s🐟ymbol ofꦯ love?

What gives the LGBTQ community a right to an official presence in public that’s denied to relig✤ious believers?

“The legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in the same 1802 letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Conn., in whജich he characterized the First Amendment as “building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

The Danbury Baptists weren’t enemies of religion, of course — their complaint was that they should not be taxed to pay for a religion that wasn’t their own, in this case Connecticut’s established 💦Congregationalist church.

But if Baptists shouldn’t be taxed to pay for Congregationalist privileges, and if it’s unconscionable to tax non-Christians to pay for Christian public symbols, why should all religious believers — many of whose traditions teach morals incompatible with queer lifestyles — be taxed to pay for gay pride?

Progressive sexuality is as exclusive as any religion: If you doubt that, ask anyone leading a pride par𒁏ade whether “straight pride” is part of the celebration.

A sexual identity i🌠s unavoidably a moral identity, justꦉ as a religious one is.

In other contexts, progressivesꦓ say America is a pluralistic country that can’t impose one view of disputed moral matters on everybody through government power.

But they make an exception where sexual mor🅺ality is concerned.

There’s a fork in the road here: If liberals want to separate church༒ and state, they have to acknow﷽ledge that the same principle separates sexuality and state — and Pride-flag crosswalks violate the principle.

A conscientious religious believer, or an unbeliever, should no more be forced to pay for the symbols of somebody else’s sexuality than he or she shoulꦰd be coerced into paying for somebody else’s church.

Alternatively, liberals can reject their hypocrisy and admit that if city governments are free to subsidize and publicly promote gay pride, the state of Louisiana or any other state can pubꦆlicly honor a religion.

The teens who vaౠndalized th꧃e Delray Beach and Spokane crosswalks were wrong to do so.

But they’ve called attention to another wrong — the one committed by those cities that have enshrined sexu𒆙ality as an official religion♒.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review and editor-at-large of The American Conservative.