(LifeSiteNews) — On April 9, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a resolution recognizing the month of June as “Nuclear Family Month” instead of “Pride Month,” triggering backlash from LGBT activists. Tennessee House Joint Resolution 182 passed the House of Representatives 72-18, and the Senate by 26-4.

The resolution defines the “nuclear family” as “consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children” and observed that it is “God’s design for the familial structure” and has been “the bedrock of society since the creation of the world.”

The resolution emphasizes that the nuclear family has been “the basic building block of Tennessee’s society throughout her formative years” and “built the United States of America and created prosperity within our nation,” while, conversely:

[F]atherless families are four times more likely to live in poverty than married-couple families; children without fathers are ten times more likely to abuse chemical substances; children from fatherless homes are more likely to have mental health and behavioral issues; sixty percent of youth suicides are from fatherless homes; seventy-one percent of high school dropouts are from fatherless homes; fatherless youths are twenty times more likely to be incarcerated; eighty-five percent of youths in prison come from fatherless homes; and in a 2016 study by Peter Langman on the psychology behind fifty-six school shooters, eighty-two percent of the shooters were raised in an unstable family environment or without both biological parents together.

The resolution also specifies that “Tennessee’s values do not align with the humanistic, globalist ideologies of the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and like-minded organizations that fight for population control through the means of promoting sterilization and abortion practices” and that “the nuclear family is God’s perfect design for humanity.”

GLAAD, one of America’s most influential LGBT lobby groups, predictably condemned the move. “Resolutions like this do more to reveal the cluelessness of elected officials whose own families and those of their constituents have various family dynamics and structures,” GLAAD told The Advocate.

Last June, the Trump administration recognized June as “Title IX Month” rather than “pride” month to draw attention to the fight to dismantle gender ideology and remove transgender-identifying males from female facilities. Ohio proposed a “Natural Family Month” in 2025, although thus far the initiative is stalled in committee. Utah, Idaho, and Montana have banned flying any flags – including the LGBT flag – other than official banners from government flagpoles.

Cynics might characterize these moves as largely symbolic, and they would be right. But symbolism is powerful. Symbolism matters. LGBT activists understand this, which is why these moves have so outraged them. Why are they so angry when government flagpoles opt for neutrality and refuse to fly the flag of their ideology? Because they recognize that flags mean something to people, and that their flag over a government building signals occupied territory.

As Carl Trueman noted in 2023: “How do you take over an empire?” The answer: “You simply need to control time and space.” If you have any doubt that the LGBT movement has done that, take a walk in any town or city in the month of June. Colonizers always come with flags, and the rainbow flaps everywhere. And when their flag comes down and their name removed from the month of June, it matters to them – and that is why it should matter to us.