Y It’s Time to Ditch the YMCA

With Pride Month well underway, now is a fitting time to talk to our fellow Christians about their association with the YMCA. Some of you may have nothing more than a gym membership, while some may even have the misfortune of attending church in a Y (yes there are churches), but no matter your yoking comfort level, make no mistake: you’re supporting an organization that professes Christianity but is operating contrary to your core Christian beliefs. 

Is the above a hyperbolic overstatement bordering on slander? 

Well I’m glad you asked! 

Did you know the YMCA marches in various pride parades all around the US?

Did you know the YMCA blazed the trail to provide “gender affirming care” for its employees before legally obligated?

Did you know the YMCA promotes Planned Parenthood as a resource for teenagers seeking “health” related services?

But most importantly, did you know that the “C” in Y.M.C.A stands for Christian?

The last one may be the hardest to believe for some, and to many reading this article, anathematizing the YMCA years ago seemed just as obvious a decision as not partnering with the First Universalist Unitarian Church of San Francisco.

Yet there are still many Bible believing Christians under the impression that the Young Men’s Christian Athletes, or “Y” for short, is a solid, local, benevolent Christian Ministry. After all, the ministry is 180 years old and just like most ministries of that age, it tends to get more solid with time (just ask the United Methodists).

To start this rainbow journey, all one has to do is visit the Facebook page of your neighborhood Y and look at their focus in the month of June. The pride graphics you see emblazoned all over their timeline are passed to the local Y by the national Y, but this is just the beginning. You’ll not only see a stand of solidarity to all things LGBTQ+, but you’ll see a call to action to march. Pick any city and the Y is probably marching as we speak.

The Y also offers a wide range of pride merch to wear when you march alongside them at your local pride event.

One shirt offered since 2019 titled “Where there’s a Y, There’s a Way” might cause you to ask, “What way?” The back of the shirt provides the answer– all ways and all religions.

Now, where the Christian would say there is only “One Way–Christ Jesus”– the Y.M.[insert all religions here]A., would beg to differ. 

Another expression of Christian virtue from the YMCA comes in the form of full throated support of Illinois codified gender affirming bathroom laws.

In 2023, you may have heard of a 16 year old swimmer Abbigail Wheeler, who participated in the YMCA Springfield youth female swim team. One day after practice she became the unfortunate witness to an unsettling visual: a discernibly male figure changing in the same bathroom as her.

When she and her family pressed the YMCA to take a stand for young women by petitioning the leadership and even organizing a protest over the bathroom policy, the YMCA offered no support to her. Instead, they went so far as to poke holes in her story and side with the state of Illinois to such a degree that she and her family felt they had no choice but to end their association to the YMCA.

This has happened on more than one occasion at various YMCAs; males changing around female minors in their facilities and the Y responding in the same way. Instead of aligning with Christian values and at the very least expressing a solidarity with the plight of these young women, the YMCA chooses not only to remain neutral by claiming their hands are tied, but in reality deciding to position themselves as the antagonist by their very own mission statement.

These types of horror stories go on and on. The American Life League has a great expose here.

The YMCA not only leans heavily into LGBTQ+ affirming causes, they’re also on mission to amalgamate Christian Churches into their organization. 

In many cities across the nation, the YMCA hosts a yearly event called “The Annual Good Friday Breakfast”. These events sometimes can host up to six hundred guests, many of them pastors, where the YMCA praises itself to establish credibility with its patrons and shares its current vision for the city, all in effect to unify itself to the listening Christians in the room.

Another way the YMCA is working to yoke itself to Christianity is through church planting within its many facilities. For instance, there are twelve YMCA branches in the greater Indianapolis area. Of those twelve locations, eight have quasi-independent churches paying rent within their facilities.

Now you may assume that those churches affirm LGBTQ by the very nature of yoking themselves to YMCA ministry, but you would be wrong. 

Of the eight churches researched, three were found to have a section in their statement of faith affirming the sanctity of marriage being between one man and one woman.

How can this be? Is it ignorance or just complacency? Who can know, but a church yoking itself proudly to a ministry that violates Christian doctrine so openly is definitely a product of our time. A virtue signal to the world to let them know you are enthusiastically welcoming but not quite fully affirming…yet.

In truth, the YMCA has long been a bizarre organization, even having a disco song written about the “goings on” within its many facilities, a hint as to Y the Y is the Y that it is today.

(Boy George was even commissioned by the YMCA to sing a remake of the song a few years ago.)

It’s clear the YMCA plays both sides of the fence by presenting itself as a Christian ministry to those who would consider it Christian and as an ally to those geared toward progressive ideologies. 

You cannot have both bitter water and sweet come from the same fountain, and what fellowship does light have with darkness?

With all that being said Christian, this June, the choice is clear:

You Must Cease Associating with the YMCA.

-Addendum-

The YMCA also has a goal called “Vision 2030” That they state closely aligns UN Sustainable Development Goals aka Agenda 2030. 

Yes, that Agenda 2030.

Note: This guest article was written by Ian Franklin and published with permission in its entirety.

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