Recently, we had a party check into one of our yurts, a grandpa and adult son coming up to help the grandson build a house up the road from us. It was their first time staying at the ranch. During our check-in routine, grandpa pipes up, “my wife wanted me to ask, is your business name a reference to the Gay community?”
My answer was, “While it’s a hat tip to our LGBTQ community roots, it’s actually a filter to prevent us from serving the wrong guests.” This completely flummoxed him. “What do you mean?” He asked.
I told him, that our business name is a blessing because it’s a trigger word for the kind of person we do not want to have patronize our business. We don’t discriminate, because it is illegal to do so, but, if one is a Conservative, a radicalized Republican, or a Christian nationalist, they self-discriminate for us.
As it turns out, trigger words like “Pride” or “woke”, or clutch-the-pearls, “diversity, equity, inclusion”, stop the Intolerant, who actually discriminate, in their tracks.
Does a “Christian Bookstore“ discriminate against Jewish or other religions, along with gay people, by their name? Well, they certainly aren’t stocking items to celebrate Jewish holidays (also looking at you Hobby Lobby), and they certainly aren’t attracting their business either. Are they ok with that? Absolutely, you know they are.
Does a business with the word “Pride” in it discriminate against Christians? Not in the least. In fact, if Christians can swallow their “pride”, and get past their own trigger word, they find themselves leaving us a five star review. But, for those who are so embedded in their righteousness, that word stops them in their tracks.
Their own world view, (the one where they loathe gay people) prevents them from seeing beyond that sense of entitlement. Consequently, our business name, hanging proudly from our front gate, acts as guardian and gatekeeper. Like a magical ward, it has prevented those with ill intentions from patronizing our establishment.
“Oh, but aren’t you afraid of losing business?” Grandpa queries further. “Not at all! In business, it is so important to serve the right customers. Just like that Christian bookstore does a brisk business in their religious niche.”
Right from the start, anyone other than a Christian, would know they won’t find what they are looking for inside that bookstore. The assumption that the religious ilk, who don’t like the LGBTQ community, somehow hold enormous power over business because corporations are scaling back on DEI efforts, is not only misplaced, it is disingenuous and destructive for their own religious belief system.
It is, in fact, doing generational damage to their own brand. Churches in America are closing in droves. An epidemic of pedophilia is found across their leadership and in practically every house of worship. So much so, that insurance companies offer special coverage to churches for molestation charges. If you attend any Christian church, your church carries this coverage. Those who double down on their religion are circling the wagons around mega-churches, clustering themselves together in increasingly cloistered communities that are the essence of Extinction Bursting behaviors which occur prior to ideological death.
Are we losing business from these types? Nope! Again, point in fact, our largest spiritual event of the year at the ranch is the Winter Solstice Bonfire Ritual. There is a hunger for spirituality going unanswered. Each year our event has been growing. Last year saw over 125+ persons walk the fire between 4-6pm. We’ve leaned into that Law of Attraction and the call is being heard by those who would definitely not get hung up on a word like “Pride”.
In an age where the religious are trying to power grab the government and impose their worldview on the rest of the nation, where corporations are trying appeasement strategies in cancelling DEI programs, where names and labels are imbued with manipulative perceptions, we don’t beat around the bush with the word “Pride”.
So, when we are gingerly questioned about whether it’s a reference to our community, which it obviously is, we are going to point out instead, how it is a better filter for avoiding the wrong kind of guest. That really gets them thinking about the world we live in and how such entitled Christians, are actually, not welcome everywhere like they would believe. It works like a charm.
