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The Emerald City’s leftist leaders victim-blamed the Christians for “being inherently opposed to the city’s values” and are now openly defying the First Amendment and encouraging Antifa violence against citizens who hold traditional moral beliefs.
Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, announced on Tuesday that the FBI will investigate the recent attacks on Christians at a worship event held on May 24 in Seattle, writing, “Freedom of Religion isn’t a suggestion.”
Mayday USA, a Christian group seeking to “stand for our children, restore the family unit, and proclaim the gospel of Jesus,” had held an approved worship event in the city’s Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill.
However, large numbers of Antifa, Trantifa, and other leftist groups, such as Radical Women Seattle, Revolutionary Communists of America, and the Freedom Socialist Party, who protested the event crossed barriers and even attacked some of the organizers and attendees, which led to police arresting 23 left-wing protesters.
According to Seattle police, violence began around 1:30 p.m., hours before the event was even slated to officially start. Seattle Police said that the left-wing protesters began throwing items at those attending the event and when officers moved to arrest them, the protesters assaulted police officers, resulting in the arrest of 22 adults for charges of assault and obstruction and one juvenile for obstruction.
Ross Johnston, one of the event organizers, and Pastor Russell Johnson, pastor of Pursuit Seattle and also an organizer of the event, said that protesters threw water balloons filled with urine at the worshippers, assaulted attendees of the event, and performed lewd sexual acts in front of children.
Shockingly, after the arrests, city leaders blamed the Christians, not the protesters, for the violence and chaos, and the local media amplified their take on it by referring to those in attendance as “far right extremists” and the worship rally itself as a “fascist family values” event.
Mayor Bruce Harrell, D, swiftly released a statement condemning those who had attended the rally, saying,
“Seattle is proud of our reputation as a welcoming, inclusive city for LGBTQ+ communities, and we stand with our trans neighbors when they face bigotry and injustice. Today’s far-right rally was held here for this very reason — to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values, in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.”
Harrell claimed that “anarchists infiltrated the counter-protestors group” and “inspired violence.” For this reason, he said that his office would be conducting an investigation into how the event was permitted to occur at Cal Anderson Park, a location known as being in a highly LGBT area and which was taken over by Antifa rioters in 2020. At the time, Antifa set up the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (also known as CHAZ), and police were ordered to retreat and leave the area to be run by Antifa for several days.
“I am grateful for those who make their voices heard in support of our neighbors without resorting to violence,” he added. “In the face of an extreme right-wing national effort to attack our trans and LGBTQ+ communities, Seattle will continue to stand unwavering in our embrace of diversity, love for our neighbors, and commitment to justice and fairness.”
Harrell wasn’t the only elected leader to condemn the Christians and praise the leftist protesters.
Washington Rep. Shaun Scott, D, posted, “We should celebrate Capitol Hill counterprotestors who aren’t letting anti-trans extremists into Washington’s historic stronghold of LGBTQ life without a fight, and are standing up to unaccountable police in the process. Hate has no place in the 43rd Legislative District.”
Councilmember Bob Kettle, D, also claimed the organizers targeted Capitol Hill, saying, “I believe in the group’s ability to protest and to come and protest, [but] to be blunt, it was a mistake to grant it at Cal Anderson Park. It was a mistake. There’s many parks, there’s many locations that could have accommodated the group. Cal Anderson should not have been on that list. That was intentional. I think you can have your First Amendment rights, but then we can do it in a respectful way.”
Meanwhile Councilmember Alexis Rinck, D, wrote, “I was at Cal Anderson throughout the event of today in opposition to the far right, anti-trans extremists who attempted to intimidate our community. They have no place here and I want to thank members of Seattle Pride and the Seattle LGBTQ commissioners who worked with me to address the situation.”
But even Rinck, who called the worshippers a “hate group,” pointed out a key problem with Harrell, Scott, and Kettle’s claims: The Mayday organizers never wanted to be in Cal Anderson Park, but had been directed there by the mayor’s office.
Pastor Johnson released screenshots of an email exchange with the mayor’s office in which an official denied their request for a permit to hold the event at Pike Street and instead suggested Cal Anderson Park or South Lake Union Park.
Johnson wrote, “The @MayorofSeattle caught in yet another lie. He said we intentionally chose Cal Anderson Park for our worship rally to ‘provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are opposed to Seattle’s values’. Oops. He must have forgot about the email HIS OFFICE sent us on March 7th denying our permit to gather at Pike Place and SUGGESTING we go to Cal Anderson Park instead.”
Following the mayor’s accusations, Mayday called for Harrell to retract his statement or resign and organized a protest at City Hall on Tuesday.
That protest was also met by left-wing counter protesters, leading to the arrest of eight more protesters for assault.
Legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) wrote on X that it is considering suing the City of Seattle, saying,
“The City has a legal obligation to ensure the safety and rights of all citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees people of faith equal protection to express their views without fear of violence or harassment.”
Seattle is ripe for a lawsuit and a civil rights investigation because it has clearly established its own state religion and engages in viewpoint discrimination. Its elected leaders are responsible not only for placing Christian worshippers and police in a dangerous situation on Saturday, but for slandering them and for creating a city in which such a situation would be expected to occur.
Harrell’s statement called Mayday’s beliefs “inherently opposed to our city’s values.”
Rinck went so far as to say the attendees “have no place here.”
Scott celebrated the violent protesters and denigrated police.
In the United States, city governments do not get to choose a set of values to which the rest of the city must adhere. And it is astoundingly unconstitutional for political leaders to claim that an entire group of people, whose religious and philosophical beliefs are shared by tens of millions in this nation, “have no place” in Seattle.
It is also impermissible that the government has so entrenched LGBT ideology as its sanctioned orthodoxy that it believes an entire area of the city is now off limits for the exercise of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Of course, Capitol Hill and Cal Anderson Park are not “sacred” religious sites for LGBT people nor are they exempt from the dictates of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, as Seattle’s leaders show, they clearly believe that to be the case.
Yet no one should be surprised: Seattle fully gave itself over to leftist secular ideology years ago and ceded its governance to radical revolutionaries and their Antifa thugs.
The Seattle Police Officers Guild rightly noted that the city’s tolerance of Antifa violence has created a political reality that perpetuates more violence.
Seattle’s government is grossly violating the First Amendment and regularly endangering its citizens by praising and encouraging a violent group like Antifa, but unfortunately, it’s going to take more than a lawsuit or a federal investigation to get its attention.
Seattle has exchanged morality and civilized society for debauchery and violence. The only way “the atmosphere here will change,” as one Christian attendee stated at the MayDay worship rally, is to “come out” of the church building and “show the true love of Jesus even to the people that are opposing right now.”
Christians should do and pray for exactly that, because short of a revival that would turn the people’s hearts away from depravity and back to God, it’s hard to see how this ends soon — or well — for the Emerald City.
Photo: Antifa and Trantifa protesters push against police officers protecting the MayDay USA Christian worship event in Seattle on May 24, 2025. CREDIT: YouTube Screenshot.
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