One of the reasons why I have an alias for my speaking and writing is that I have seen people in the workplace go after Christians and conservatives who spoke out on controversial issues. It’s not unusual for people to go after Christians and conservatives on issues like evolution, global warming, LGBT, BLM, etc. And by go after, I mean cancel them, fire them, make them pay money.

One of the people who tracks this sort of ideological pressuring of Christians and conservatives is Tyler O’Neil, who writes for the Daily Signal. He had a recent article posted where he talked about a case of cancel culture going on in Cleveland, Ohio. Now, you might think “Ohio is a red state” but cities like Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus and even Cincinnati are pretty blue. And Christians and conservatives living in these cities don’t have the same freedom to speak as people in Nashville, TN or Birmingham, AL.

Anyway, here’s the story, which concerns the attempted cancelling of Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue:

[M]ore than 100 LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations across Ohio signed an open letter denouncing the City Club for hosting Baer and urging the venue to “cancel or modify this forum in a way that does not platform an organization that has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQIA2S+ hate group.”

The letter makes four demands: cancel the event or include an LGBTQ+ activist; replace Moulthrop with a likely pro-LGBTQ+ “external moderator”; “disavow platforming hate speech”; or “structure the event so that diverse and impacted perspectives are not only present but also meaningfully centered.”

More than 20 organizations—including HRC Cleveland, the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland, Equality Ohio, GLAAD, and Plexus LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce—signed the letter, which aims to “prevent extremism from going unchallenged” and suggests a distinction between “facilitating dialogue and platforming organized hate.”

“Free speech is a cornerstone of our democracy,” Dwayne Steward, CEO and executive director of Equality Ohio, told The Daily Signal. Yet he argued that Baer’s message is “rooted in oppression and erasure.”

That part always makes me laugh – the invocation of “tolerance”, “inclusion”, “diversity”, “equality” and “free speech” by secular left fascists. I have seen this so many times with my own eyes at university, in the FT100 IT workplace, and these speeches by left-wing activists. They love to use these words, but then they follow it up with actions that show no respect for the human rights of the people they disagree with. Just look up the stories of the Christian bakers, florists or photographers. Or look up the story of Floyd Lee Corkins and his attempted domestic terrorism at the Family Research Council HQ.

And remember, this is coming just a little while after a high-profile assassination of a well-known conservative Christian by a left-wing assassin. And this combination of cancel culture and domestic terrorist actions is not uncommon among secular leftists.

I have noticed a very strange thing when I talk to regular non-apologetics-equipped Christians at church or at work about how much they advocate for Biblical views about controversial issues. On the one hand, Christians really want me to know that if they were threatened with death for their faith in Jesus, they would totally be ready to die for their faith in Jesus. But, when I look at their social media, it’s filled with non-controversial things. Their travels, their athletic achievements, their sports teams, photos of their kids, etc. So, there is this weird thing going on where we POTENTIALLY have millions of bold martyrs for Christ, but ACTUALLY have a bunch of Christians in hiding.

And listen, I don’t blame these hiding Christians, because I’m careful myself about what I say under my own name, that’s why I have an alias, and probably why I have no wife and no kids (because a wife and kids means you have responsibilities and obligations that keep you from losing your job due to speaking out). What I’m saying is that we need to have laws and policies that make it as easy for the hiding Christians to speak their minds. That’s why we have to get noisy when we see the rights of Christians and conservatives curtailed by bullies from the secular left. There are a lot of people watching who want to know if it is safe, and we have to fight to make it safe for them.

I wish I didn’t have to have an alias. But in order to survive in STEM programs at university, and then in corporate America, I had to have an alias. Some people have lives where they are strong enough financially and well-connected socially that they have what they need to speak out already, and that’s good. But many Christians and conservatives are not safe to speak out without being punished. They are running the calculations, and choosing to stay silent. We need to make it as easy as possible for them to speak their minds, so they can have the impact that they are meant to have.