This past weekend my (adult) son and I went to the Cincinnati Pride Parade. Did I suddenly become an advocate for All Things Rainbow? Is Fr. James Martin now my spiritual guide? No, we were there in order to pray in reparation and witness to the love of the Sacred Heart.

In Cincinnati, the Pride Parade begins right next to the Cathedral church of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. My son and I and a few other Catholics felt that Catholicism should be represented at the Cathedral, so we held images of the Sacred Heart and prayed the Rosary and the Litany of the Sacred Heart. It was an intense experience, and it left me with many impressions.

First, the Parade was massive. Again, this was Cincinnati, not New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco. We are the most conservative of cities by all accounts. But estimates were that 175,000 people went downtown for the Parade and/or the Pride Festival that followed it. The Parade began at 11am, and it was still going by at 12:20pm, after we had left. And that only represents the participants in the Parade, not the thousands that lined the streets to cheer it on. To say that the Pride Movement has captured our culture is an understatement.

Seeing the sheer number of participants was saddening, of course, but what truly filled me with grief were the many “normal” families in attendance. There were of course the drag queens, the old obese men in leather, and even the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on display. This is to be expected. But there were also suburban families—mom and dad bringing their young children, all dressed in rainbows. I’m sure many of them are church-going, and likely they believe they are like those who joined Martin Luther King, Jr. in his civil rights marches. Yet in reality they are sacrificing their children to the Satanic forces within the Pride Movement.

What struck me the most about the day, however, was the massive corporate sponsorship of the event. Every single float and display in the Parade was sponsored by some corporation, such as Spectrum or Toyota or Fifth Third Bank. As someone who has attended over a dozen Marches for Life, I found such a corporate presence in stark contrast to those events. 

The most egregious example was at the very front of the Parade: Procter & Gamble. P&G is a Cincinnati institution, one of the area’s largest employers and a presence in the community since the 19th century. The company also has a reputation for being conservative and boring—it sells toothpaste and laundry detergent, for heaven’s sake, not anything flashy or controversial.

Yet P&G was all-in at the Pride Parade. They were a Diamond Sponsor and at the head of the Parade. Hundreds of P&G employees and their families were marching with matching t-shirts that said “Lead with Love” where the “o” was the P&G logo and the “v” was a rainbow heart.

But most startling were the “brand bicycles.” Perhaps a dozen bikes pulled individual chariots which held a drag queen with a brand such as Febreze or Tide advertised above his head.

Read that last sentence again. On the streets of one of the most conservative cities, one of the most conservative corporations—a blue-chip of blue-chip company—was using drag queens to promote their household goods. It’s not a matter of when we will fall; we’ve already fallen.

This of course reveals the lie that the Rainbow Crowd is somehow oppressed or persecuted. It has captured the media, government, academia, and corporate America. Any institution with power now bows the knee to the Rainbow god. 

I won’t pretend that this isn’t discouraging. Seeing innocent young children being exposed to such depravity should fill any heart with righteous anger. Yet I still have hope in God’s action in the world. To my knowledge there had not been a Catholic presence at the Parade in previous years, but this year a couple dozen Catholics were there begging God for His mercy and witnessing to His love. May this mustard seed one day grow into a magnificent tree that overcomes the Satanic Rainbow Movement and brings many souls to Christ.