Nashville Shootings Create Forceful Pushback Against ‘Pride’ Event in Nearby Franklin

by Roger L. Simon

Nashville, Tennessee, is a city turned inside out—with justification. The multiple murders at the Covenant School on March 27—including three 9-year-olds—are such a great tragedy, it may take years to digest.

The perpetrator’s “manifesto” still hasn’t been revealed to the public, perhaps out of civic concern for what it says.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) may be correct in calling this a “hate crime” against Christians.

Meanwhile, the local, even national, mood, is shifting on the transgender movement, and creating a predictable reaction from the left.

That was evident on the night of March 28, when an extraordinary and vociferous protest occurred against approving a permit for the “Franklin Pride 2023” festival in Franklin—basically a part of Metro Nashville——at a meeting of the city’s Board of Mayor and Alderman (BOMA).

Slated for June 3, that annual event “seeks to Celebrate, Support, Engage and Unite the community on behalf of our LGBTQ family and neighbors and their allies. Join us for entertainment, vendors, food, drinks, and more!” according to its website.

In the wake of the shooting, the local citizenry has apparently had enough of these celebrations that have been going on locally and nationally for years now.

They showed up in droves to oppose the permit.

Listening to the speeches, one is struck by the repeated concern for displays of age-inappropriate nudity and hyper-sexuality in front of children, similar to the drag queen controversy. Many were, not surprisingly, given with reference to the Nashville shootings only a day earlier.

Among the speakers against the permit were Robin Steenman, Williamson County chapter chair of Moms for Liberty, and Miki Cutler, Tennessee chair of Gays Against Groomers.

Taken aback by the opposition—they delayed open discussion until 46 minutes into the meeting—the aldermen did what they often do in these situations, postponed their decision for two weeks, hoping that the current mood would die away.

Speaking with The Epoch Times, Steenman said that, in reality, the aldermen were pushing decisions they should be making on aforementioned age-inappropriate behavior (how much nudity is legal?) on benighted cops, who already have to deal with the anti-police sentiment pervasive at these events.

That’s particularly ironic in view of the heroic role many agree was played by Nashville police officers who moved with bravery and alacrity, dodging bullets, to save many young lives at the Covenant School, which operates as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church.

Steenman added via text message:

“The Pride folks were visibly angry and even included one shouting outburst last night when community members spoke of indecent acts before children at their 2022 event, claiming the commenters were lying. (We know they aren’t lying bc we have seen the photos/video.) But hiding behind this resolution is a massive sell out of the cops and ultimately the community.”

The left is, of course, enraged by normal people waking up for once, in some cases—including Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’s now-former press secretary—calling them “transphobes.” Some went so far as to whine on Twitter the transgender shooter was unfairly “misgendered.”

The underlying question here is who is actually being more tolerant—the supposedly intolerant average person or those seeking tolerance.

Appropriate to an age of transgenderism, there has been something of a role reversal.

The people—many of them just what we used to call ordinary citizens—who have been branded intolerant of the ever-expanding LGBT world, whether they were or not, are turning out to have been more tolerant of the LGTB crowd than the sexual radicals ever were of them.

But because of the tolerance of the average citizen, those radicals—if you can call them that—have pushed on as if they had a compulsion not to be tolerated. (You say you tolerate that. Well, how about this?)

This pattern has reached the level of violence at the Nashville church building, just as it did in a similar manner with the ultra-reactionary Antifa and Black Lives Matter, burning buildings as they branded white people automatically racist because they were born white.

We see fear all around us, but in this case, in Nashville and Franklin, it seems to have come because things went too far, at least for the nonce, to a dead end.

I leave the last words to a text I received from Cutler, who also attended the Franklin meeting:

“Children are being targeted by the gender and sexuality agenda now more than ever and Gays Against Groomers will not stop fighting this fight until we know that children are safe and protected.”

First published in the Epoch Times.