Pride organizers, who have set up a COVID-19 International Coordination Group, are devastated that the Chinese virus is "bringing unprecedented challenges for the pride movement."

"We shouldn't be surprised pride organizers are frustrated at canceling these events," Catholic theologian Gavin Ashenden told Church Militant.

"The pride movement is many things, but it is at its heart an exercise in power that seeks to impose on society a false and perverse anthropology," the former chaplain to the Queen observed. "As we draw the theological dots we recognize that this frustration derives from a spiritual rebellion that is enraged by any constraint on its autonomy."

Dr. Ashenden explained: "The irony of the term 'pride' is not lost on us because it has always been a celebration of a spiritual vice which is pride -- a vice that brooks no opposition. It is ironic, therefore, that only an outbreak of the plague can contain this mass-expression of human hubris and expose it for what it is."

Ashenden, a recent convert from Anglicanism remarked:

St. Paul starkly warns in Romans 1 of God's wrath being revealed against all who pervert the truth. Gay pride represents a perversion of nature. Nature now appears to have acted as an agency of God's wrath -- and where moral voices protesting against pride failed to halt the marches, Mother Nature instead has ruthlessly ended them.

More than 170 LGBT+ pride parades have announced cancellations of the events, according to a regularly updated spreadsheet on the EPOA website. Many more are expected to follow suit in the coming days.

EPOA's Steve Taylor said he had expected up to 1,000 pride celebrations to take place in Europe alone in 2020.

Large-scale gay parades from the "One Big Pride" in Manila, Philippines to "Wagga Wagga Mardi Gras" in Wagga Wagga, Australia have downed their shutters.

At least 25 states in the United States, including eight parades in California alone, have announced they will not go ahead. Los Angeles pride's 50th anniversary event has also been postponed.

However, Peter Lawrence Kane, communications manager for San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and Celebration, says that "Pride 50 will go on as scheduled on June 27--28, although we are beginning to look at options for what the celebration and parade might look like if the current period of social distancing continues for more than a few weeks."

Similarly, while Brighton Pride, Britain's most popular festival, hopes the event is expected to go ahead in August, London's Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan announced that the capital city's parade and events, which "are a key time of celebration and solidarity with our LGBTQ+ community," would be "postponed until it is once again safe for us to celebrate together."

At least 55 other pride events in different parts of the United Kingdom have canceled their parades. Pride celebrations have also been mothballed in Brazil, Spain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Japan, Norway, Hungary, Belgium, Austria, Estonia, Romania, Greece, Singapore, Ukraine and South Africa.

Meanwhile, the Northern Italian cities of Parma and Vincenza, at the epicenter of the epidemic, have both canceled their pride events. Umbria, in central Italy, has also canceled. Milan and Rome have yet to announce if the June events will go ahead.

The Isle of Man, which was expecting its first-ever parade in June 2020, has also been forced to scrap the show.

Poznań and Kraków in Poland have also been forced to abort the parades. Pride marches in 2019 turned blasphemous with anti-Catholic LGBT activists profaning the Blessed Sacrament by carrying an imitation monstrance in the form of a vagina topped by a gold crown.

LGBT parades also profaned the icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa by depicting her with a rainbow for a halo.

"Pride has come to symbolize several things: the long history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer dignity; the freedom of all people to meaningfully and proudly express their sexual and gender identities; and the commitment of LGBT people to combating oppression," the San Francisco pride website proclaims.

"For Christians, part of the problem of the gay pride movement is that we are being presented with one thing in the name of cosmetic compassion whilst we are at the same time shown completely different," Dr. Ashenden commented, adding:

The gay pride culture is one of celebrating lascivious and unbridled sexuality, which it does in the public face of our Children. Trying to disguise this lasciviousness with a call to compassion fools some of the public but has no effect on the Christian community's evaluation of the moral hierarchy that the gay pride movement assumes.

Church Militant has learned that WorldPride, an international organization licensed by InterPride, is behind the promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT pride) issues on an international level through parades, festivals and other cultural activities and is one of the bodies coordinating the parades and cancellations.