A group of Christian men protesting through Newtown during WorldPride and Christian Lives Matter leader Charlie Bakhos (Image: Instagram/@charliebakhos)

On the last Friday evening of Sydney WorldPride 2023, a group of Christian men walked through Newtown chanting the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary prayer.

Mostly dressed in black, some wearing balaclavas and hoods to cover their face, the group was accompanied by police through the usually LGBTQIA-friendly neighbourhood. Police walked alongside what they later called an “unauthorised protest”. 

Footage of the group initially circulated on social media Friday night with warnings for those in the area. 

Soon after, Charlie Bakhos, the administrator of an anti-LGBTQIA+ Facebook group Christian Lives Matter, posted a video taken by protesters with the supportive caption: “Huge turnout with the boys praying powerful rosary in Newtown tonight. #christianlivesmatter”.

Bakhos has denied on social media that he attended the protest or that he or his group were involved in organising it.

For half a decade, Bakhos and his Facebook group have played a role in amplifying anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment and calling for action against people perceived to have disrespected their Christian beliefs. Bakhos has endorsed increasingly frequent acts of vandalism during WorldPride.

Bakhos did not respond to a request for comment, instead blocking this reporter and this publication’s Instagram accounts when approached. 

Who is Charlie Bakhos and what is Christian Lives Matter? 

Christian Lives Matter is a Facebook group with more than 25,000 members that was started in 2017. Bakhos, whose Facebook profile lists him as being from Beirut, Lebanon, and has spoken at Maronite Catholic churches in Sydney’s southwest, is the group’s only administrator and uses the online community to mostly broadcast his messages about “defending the faith”. 

Ostensibly created out of a concern that “Christian brothers and sisters [are] being persecuted in the Middle East”, the group grew in the lead-up to the same-sex marriage postal survey. Bakhos frequently campaigns against LGBTQIA+ causes and supports anti-LGBTQIA+ figures, accusing the LGBTQIA+ community of “mocking God”. 

Bakhos has also promoted other fringe views. He was opposed to COVID-19 vaccinations, citing his religious beliefs, and organised a petition to Parliament against “Experimental vaccines being tested for COVID-19 virus Is going against the Nuremberg Code if made mandatory.”

He also accused Meta of blocking posts “linking many world leaders especially many of our American ones including Clinton, Obama, Biden and co as well as Hollywood to their pedo [paedophile] rings which Trump has been trying to expose”, a belief that forms the basis of the QAnon conspiracy. 

Since the group started, Bakhos has frequently targeted murals. In 2017, he used his Facebook group to criticise a mural by Scott Marsh depicting singer George Michael as a saint: “WE CALL UPON all the people of Australia from ALL RACES, RELIGIONS, SEXUALITY and GENDER to ACT URGENTLY”.

When the mural was vandalised that night, Bakhos posted a video of someone painting over it and celebrated its destruction: “What legends cleaning the streets of Sydney from porn, discriminating against Christians.” Benjamin Gittany was later charged for the act and later found guilty for malicious damage. OutinPerth reported that police were investigating death threats made against the sentencing magistrate on Christian Live Matter. 

Over the past two weeks, Bakhos has also posted about a pair of murals for Sydney WorldPride that were subsequently vandalised. Both times, Bakhos has shared footage of the vandals ruining the murals or the destroyed murals afterwards with messages of support. Crikey is not suggesting that Bakhos was involved in the vandalism of the murals. 

Bakhos has also organised protests against Australian public figures, businesses and groups that he claims are not respecting Christianity, often pressuring them into apologising.

In 2019, Kyle Sandilands and his radio station KIIS’ owner Australian Radio Network apologised in response to a Bakhos-fuelled campaign about the shock jock’s comments that the Virgin Mary was a “liar” who got knocked up “behind a camel shed”. In 2021, Bakhos’ Christian Lives Matter tried to drown out a LGBTQIA+ concert on Cathedral Square, opposite the St Mary’s Cathedral. 

And most recently, Bakhos has led a campaign against The Project and comedian Reuben Kaye for an X-rated Jesus joke. The controversial joke fuelled interest in Bakhos’ online organising, which he recently moved over to WhatsApp and Zoom. He claims that “1500+” attended a call on Thursday night where they decided on forthcoming protests outside of the Ten Network’s headquarters and Hyde Park.

‘One of them got past security, entered the pub, and grabbed a mate of mine by the head’

Despite Bakhos claiming Friday night’s protest was “peaceful”, others claim to have been targeted by the group.

Malcolm Grant alleges one of his friends was assaulted by a member of the group of protesters. 

They were in the Bank Hotel in Newtown on Friday night when the protest group initially passed. 

“They threw some light stuff (it might have been popcorn) through a window at us, so we clapped back at them. I responded with ‘I love dick!’,” he told Crikey via email. 

Grant said that “20 or 30 minutes later”, the group came back. 

“A group of them lunged through the open window and tried to make contact with us. The police finally acted by forming a barrier between the open window and them. Up until this point it hadn’t seemed like the police were attempting to do anything to ‘manage’ them,” he said.

“One of them got past security, entered the pub and grabbed a mate of mine by the head. The guy was removed (I don’t know whether it was security or the police).”

NSW Police issued a statement saying that “officers attached to Inner West Police Area Command, along with specialist police resources attended King Street, Newtown, in relation to unauthorised protest activity”.

Police also said that they are investigating an alleged assault at a venue and connections with the protest.

In a video posted to his Instagram on Monday morning, Bakhos claimed that the “police had spoken to him beforehand” but that he wasn’t involved in organising it. Another of his posts, this time on Facebook, promised that this was going to change. 

“I never organised or attendeded [sic] this but I will be attending the future Protests that are being organised God willing.”