Boycott Balenciaga
By Emily Huseman
“It’s trash day @balenciaga,” Brittany Aldean captioned her Instagram post picturing her holding two trash bags stuffed with her merchandise from the luxury designer.
In the past year, moral degeneracy has rapidly infiltrated the offices of our government, the entertainment on our screens, and the classrooms in our schools. From drag queen story hour for kindergarteners to gender-reassignment surgeries for minors, the sexualization of children is sweeping the nation.
More alarming is that the fashion industry has joined the trend. In its latest marketing push, however, Balenciaga did not stop at LGBT propaganda, now a kitchen table consumer product. In its 2022 holiday campaign, the company flirted with the sexual exploitation and pornography of children.
The disturbing photoshoot featured toddlers holding BDSM-themed teddy bear handbags. In another picture, the Balenciaga x Adidas Hourglass handbag sat atop multiple papers, folders, and legal documents. Within the pile of documents was a printed copy of United States v. Williams. This 2008 Supreme Court case involved charges of possessing sexually explicit images of children, including some sadomasochistic.
The opinion of the Court, authored by the late conservative justice Antonin Scalia, ruled that a federal statute prohibiting the circulation of child pornography does not violate free speech protections under the First Amendment. The constitutional stalwart adeptly argued that the practice inflicts inexplicable harm on the most vulnerable in our society.
Scalia wrote: “Child pornography harms and debases the most defenseless of our citizens.”
Conservatives cherish freedom of speech and despise censorship. However, offenses so despicable to natural law as the sexual abuse of children should not be immune from cancel culture.
Differences in opinion and free expression should not be stifled simply because of ideological disagreement. However, businesses, entertainment, and other institutions that normalize the barbarism of the sexual grooming of children should be boycotted and strongly rebuked.
While Brittany Aldean and The Conservateur condemned Balenciaga’s profit-motivated attack on the innocence of children, the Left was curiously hesitant to “cancel” the brand.
“If Balenciaga did something that offended the LGBT Community,” Blaire White tweeted, “Every celebrity would have cut ties instantly. They promoted child porn and nearly every celebrity is silent. Really makes you think, huh?”
The Left at large wasn’t perturbed, suggesting their agenda is complicit in the imagery Balenciaga presented. Early third-wave feminists declared that the goal of their movement was not merely the empowerment of women and elimination of gender but also the sexual “liberation” of children.
As Byron Donalds pointed out: “The power structure in our nation is actively attempting to indoctrinate, propagandize, & prostitute our children & our nation’s future.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers us a warning: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
The Left turning a blind eye to Balenciaga’s behavior has exposed for many middle-grounders the reality of the culture war, the pawns of which are our children. We must hold Balenciaga, and other influential left-wing entities, accountable for its perversion by speaking out, shopping elsewhere, and taking out the trash.
Emily Huseman is a columnist at The Conservateur and works with the Standing for Freedom Center at Liberty University.
