When the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement burst onto the scene, many people of goodwill, including myself, initially expressed support for its efforts to fight racism. Nevertheless, we quickly learned that BLM’s mission extended far beyond overcoming racism. 

Reading the group’s mission statement, I was surprised to learn that its founding leaders admitted to being trained Marxist revolutionaries committed to “dismantle the patriarchal practice” and “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family.”¹ They eventually scrubbed these references from their website. 

BLM’s attack on “patriarchy” and the “nuclear family” reminded me of an article written by Mallory Millet, the sister of Kate Millet, a founding member of the National Organization of Women (NOW). Kate authored Sexual Politics, a book the New York Times called “the Bible of women’s liberation.” Mallory, a practicing Catholic, wrote the article shortly after her sister’s death. 

Mallory mentions a shocking description of a meeting she attended at her sister’s invitation of women in the earliest stages of launching NOW: 

At the beginning of every meeting for “consciousness-raising” was a litany of scripted goals and responses such as: “Why are we here today? . . . To make revolution. . . . How? . . . By destroying the family. . . . By destroying the American Patriarch. . . . By taking away his power. . . . By destroying monogamy. . . . By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, and homosexuality!”²

Like BLM, NOW’s founding leaders were Marxist revolutionaries determined to “make revolution”—to radically change the entire political and social order. What stood in the way of their revolution? The traditional family and the authority of the father. Their weapon of destruction was a sexual revolution, the total undermining of the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic.  

In Awake, Not Woke, Noelle Mering identifies the origins of this revolutionary consciousness in the Frankfurt School, a collection of Marxist intellectuals who moved to New York City in 1935. They brought with them the “dramatic convergence of Marxist philosophy, Freudian psychology, rank perversion, and all manner of lurid ideas and practices introduced for the destruction and dismantling of Western culture by way of the destruction and dismantling of the family.”³

According to the Frankfurt School, the Marxist Revolution failed to take hold in Western society because of its commitment to God and family, especially the traditional family, with the father’s role as its protector and defender, which served as a bulwark against the revolutionary ideology. The first step to undermining this “internalized authoritarianism” was to depose the father. Mering summarizes their strategy:  

If authoritarianism was the subconscious obstacle to revolution, the remedy . . . [was] the subversion of the father. Making men lecherous would engender suspicion and distrust in wives and rebellion in children.⁴

Weakening the sexual mores of culture is at the heart of dismantling the family by way of the father . . . Through sexual coarseness, the father becomes weak and devoid of moral authority, the wife becomes devalued and resentful, and the children grow cynical and rebellious. Everyone becomes wounded.⁵

It’s sobering to see how effective this strategy of breaking down the political and social order of society by a conscious deconstruction of the traditional family has been. In the minds of its creators, the sexual revolution was fundamentally the instrument for political revolution. 

The dramatic rise of the trans movement represents an even more radicalized expression of the same strategy. On the surface, it’s about compassion and rights; underneath, it is rage against nature and the created order. Susan Stryker, a trans woman and founding theorist in the trans movement, said, “I am a transexual and therefore I am a monster. This body is destined to channel its rage and revenge against the naturalized heterosexual order, against traditional family values, and against the hegemonic oppression of nature itself.”⁶

Like the traditional Marxist, these movement leaders see all human relations as relations of power—a battle between oppressors and oppressed. Family, father, Church, and even nature itself are seen as a constellation of oppressive powers that dominates the weak. Nature itself becomes an enemy to overthrow. And finally, God, the creator of the whole oppressive story, must be deconstructed if the revolutionaries are to reach political utopia and radical autonomy.  

People embrace such movements for many reasons: to achieve political utopia, to escape abuse at the hands of bad men, or to navigate sexual identity confusion, etc. These movements attract because they seem to be all about compassion, freedom, helping the oppressed and marginalized, and providing a place to belong and a mission to live for. Even Christian leaders champion and defend their cause.  

These movements, however, will never deliver on their promises. They may effectively deconstruct the social order, but they will never construct a healthy social, political, and cultural life. They have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Rom 1:25). They’ve fallen to humanity’s constant temptation to “suppress the truth” about God (Rom 1:19). In their refusal to “honor him as God and or give thanks to him . . .  they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened” (Rom 1:21). Pope Benedict XVI describes this dynamic:  

The entire life of a society, political as well as personal decisions, can in this way rest on a dictatorship of untruth: of how things are presented and reported instead of reality itself. An entire society can thus fall from the truth into shared deceit, into a slavery of untruth, of not-being . . . What is unnatural becomes normal: the person who lives against truth also lives against nature. People’s power of invention no longer serves what is good but the ingenuity and refinement of evil. The relationship between man and wife, between parents and children is dissolved, and in this way, the sources of life are blocked up. It is no longer life that reigns but death and a civilization of death has become established.⁷

It’s a rebellion of the creature against the creator. Society is falling from truth into a shared deceit. The fundamental battle is not political or cultural; it’s spiritual. The power behind it is not a handful of atheist revolutionaries; it’s demonic. The battle is for the eternal destiny of human beings. 

Our Lady’s prophetic words to Sr. Lucia of Fatima describe what we’re seeing in these revolutionary movements:  

The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and family. Don’t be afraid, because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue . . . however, Our Lady has already crushed its head.⁸

We don’t know whether this is the final battle. We do know that this is a battle between kingdoms of light and darkness, between Christ and Satan. We also know this battle has already been won! 

He himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil . . . (Heb 2:14-15) 

Our Lord has won the victory! Let’s move forward in faith and confidence. Let’s not get discouraged by the tactics of the devil. As our Lord said, “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).

 Endnotes 

1. Mike Gonzalez and Andrew Olivatro, “The Agenda of Black Lives Matters is Far Different Than the Slogan,” The Heritage Foundation, July 3, 2020, https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-agenda-black-lives-matter-far-different-the-slogan.

2. Patti Maquire Armstrong, “You Need to Know This About the Age in Which We Live,” National Catholic Register, March 11, 2018, ncregister.com/blog/you-need-to-know-this-about-the-age-in-which-we-live.

3. Noelle Mering, Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology (Gastonia, NC: TAN Books, 2021), 27.

4. Mering, “Awake, Not Woke,” 129.

5. Emily Glover, “Chris Rufo Releases New Documentary on Trans Takeover,” Catholic Vote, July 13, 2023, https://catholicvote.org/chris-rufo-trans-takeover-documentary. 

7. Benedict XVI, The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope and Love (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad Publishing, 2005), 87.

8. “Fatima visionary predicted ‘final battle’ would be over marriage, family,” Catholic News Agency, Oct. 13, 2021, catholicnewsagency.com/news/34155/fatima-visionary-predicted-final-battle-would-be-over-marriage-family.

This article originally appeared in Renewal Ministries’ January 2024 newsletter.

Image: Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist by Luca Signorelli