In a small Texas town that’s fast becoming a battleground for culture wars, local MAGA officials had a hard lesson in both irony and the power of love, courtesy of an Episcopal priest. When Pastor Alan Bentrup of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church announced he would host a Pride event on church grounds, he had no idea he’d be caught in the crossfire of a political storm—and it all started with a simple invitation to pray.
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At first, the invitation seemed like a sweet gesture. The city council meeting in Keller, Texas, would include an invocation, a prayer to kick things off with some goodwill and reflection. Pastor Bentrup was chosen to lead it—because who else better to offer a prayer than someone who’d dedicated his life to service? But as soon as the local MAGA chair discovered Bentrup was also hosting a Pride event with a drag queen performance, all hell broke loose.
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“Violent Degeneracy” or a Simple Call for Love?
Local MAGA chair Bo French lost no time in condemning the Pride event, calling it “violent degeneracy” and publicly lambasting drag performers. His wrath was aimed particularly at a performer named Madame Lexical, who, according to French, posed a threat to conservative MAGA values.
“Leftists, and specifically the mentally deranged ‘trans’ community, have declared war on the right,” French raged in a social media post, sparking a frenzy of keyboard warriors. What followed was a swift backlash against Bentrup and his Pride event, which he had organized in response to a heartfelt plea from a grieving mother who believed her son might have been saved if a Pride event had existed when he was younger.
As the festival went on to be a success—700 attendees, 140 vendors, and a peaceful gathering, despite the initial uproar—the true test came the following week when Bentrup was scheduled to give the invocation at the city council meeting. But in a move that could only be described as politically motivated, Bentrup was unceremoniously dropped from the program. Why? Well, the excuse was that the invocation had been “double-booked.”
MAGA’s Battle Over Pride: Pastor Bentrup’s Prayer for Love and Justice
But Bentrup didn’t let the snub rattle him. Instead of taking the quiet road, he made sure to deliver a heartfelt message during the public comment period. As he thanked the community for their unwavering support of the Pride event, he also thanked the police for ensuring the event ran smoothly, despite the threats of violence.
His would-be invocation called for the council to “make decisions that bend toward justice, tilt toward mercy, and lead toward peace.” But in a twist of poetic justice, his words didn’t end there. Pastor Bentrup used the platform to criticize Keller’s MAGA mayor, Armin Mizani, who had previously dismissed threats against the festival as “baseless.”
In response, Mizani, who’s currently running for the Texas state House, fired back with a defiant Facebook post. He claimed that the real issue wasn’t a double-booking at all, but rather a decision to not elevate someone who was “out of step with the majority of our community and its values.” To him, a prayer from someone who had “welcomed children to attend an event that exposed them to male drag performers” was too much to bear.
What Do ‘Community Values’ Really Mean?
In the midst of this back-and-forth, Bentrup’s words cut through the noise: “If offering a prayer grounded in love, dignity, care, and respect for all people disqualifies someone from praying for this city, then we all should ask what ‘community values’ really mean here.”
Boom. Mic drop.
The incident may have started as a simple city council meeting with a prayer, but it ended up highlighting a larger, more important issue. It wasn’t just about a pastor’s invocation—it was about the very definition of “community values” in a time when the country seems more divided than ever. Is it about protecting fragile egos and clinging to outdated ideas of morality, or is it about fostering love, care, and respect for every single person, regardless of their gender or sexual identity?
The irony wasn’t lost on anyone: a town that purports to value “family-friendly” ideals is now at odds with the very concept of inclusion. So, while the mayor and the local GOP continue their battle for ideological purity, Pastor Bentrup has remained the true embodiment of the values he preaches. His prayer may not have been delivered at the city council meeting, but it’s echoed far beyond that, reminding us all what it means to truly care for one another.
Source: Dallas Morning News