“Pro-life” now means anti-gay for a group that calls itself the nation’s “oldest grassroots Catholic pro-life education organization.”
In a June 6 news release, the American Life League took on the Young Men’s Christian Association and said the 180-year-old organization should stop calling itself Christian. The reason, ALL said, is that affirming the LGBTQ community is not consistent with Christian belief.
While that view is held by the most conservative of evangelical and Catholic Christians, it is not the dominant view among Christians in America. Even a large number of conservative Christians who oppose full inclusion of the LGBTQ community in the church do not deny they can be Christians.
Judie Brown
American Life League President Judie Brown said the YMCA has become “the antithesis of Christian teaching.”
Katherine Van Dyke, American Life League’s lead researcher on its Charity Watchlist project, said the YMCA “would rather defend the deceitful transgender ideology to appease a small group of individuals than defend God’s purposeful design in creating the male and female person in his image and likeness.”
No explanation was given as to what these concerns have to do with abortion. ALL maintains a watchlist of national charities it deems to support or oppose “life issues.” Among the national charities earning its “red” designation meaning not worthy of support are the Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, American Red Cross and Amnesty International — just to highlight the A listing. The Catholic group even opposes the Catholic Relief Services.
As to the transgressions of the YMCA, it promotes LGBTQ Pride month, ALL says. “Throughout the month of June, YMCAs across the United States coopt rainbow icons and promote events to celebrate ‘pride month.’”
The news release also cites three incidents where YMCAs honored the gender identity of transgender patrons.
“The blame sits squarely on the YMCA’s radical policies and promotions that place ‘inclusivity’ above all, even over the safety of women and children and prevention of sexual abuse,” the release says.
National research has demonstrated — repeatedly — that transgender men and women are not sexual predators. Yet Brown asserted: “The YMCA is protecting child predators and making them its new priority, not your children and certainly not Christian values.”
ALL sees the YMCA as abandoning the biblical principles on which it was founded: “The YMCA’s support and promotion of nonbiblical behaviors, including its embracing of LGBTQ lifestyles and transgenderism, along with its implied endorsement of abortion and Planned Parenthood, are in direct conflict with the organization’s stated mission built on ‘Christian principles.’”
ALL was founded in 1979 with help from Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Focus on the Family and other anti-abortion Americans after a schism with the National Right to Life Committee. It has ties to far-right individuals and groups, including Howard Phillips, the Heritage Foundation, Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie.