Earlier this month, Facebook rolled out a special rainbow flag reaction emoji, allowing users to honor the LGBT community when responding to friends’ photos, statuses and other posts. Facebook officials said they created the reaction in an effort to “celebrate love and diversity” while reaffirming the company’s stance as “a platform that supports all communities.”
The move did not sit well with some extremist right-wing “Christians”
On June 24, Facebook user Hikmat Hanna posted an image asking the social network to create a cross reaction emoji. The next day, Hanna’s post was shared by Arizona-based anti-LGBT evangelist Joshua Feuerstein, who shared the image with his more than two million bigoted Facebook followers.
Feuerstein’s post had racked up more than 19,000 likes, and had been shared more than 9,000 times. “You can’t cheat nature. God cannot create people of the same sex to ever fall in love with one another,” one person commented. “He can’t.” Added another: “People took a symbol like the rainbow which means beauty and a non-destructive action and turned it into a destructive sinful symbol.”
Despite the many requests from Feuerstein and his lemmings followers Facebook won’t give in. “This reaction is not actually available on Facebook, and is not something we’re working on.”
Feuerstein’s anti-gay alt-right conservative views are well-known. In 2015, he unsuccessfully tried to order a cake that read, “We do not support gay marriage,” from a Florida bakery. Later that year, he made headlines when he recorded a video blasting Starbucks for using minimalist red cups without any direct reference to Christmas during the holiday season.
Feuerstein also uploaded a video onto the video-sharing website Vimeo.com in which he is shown saying, “I say, tonight, we punish Planned Parenthood. I think it’s time that abortion doctors should have to run and hide and be afraid for their life.” [sic] The original video was taken down on November 30, 2015 in the aftermath of the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting but it was saved and reposted onto YouTube by many of his followers.