Start Date: June 29, 2023

Someone asked me the other day what I thought about “PRIDE”.  I knew what she meant but I had been thinking of it in another context.  In fact I was thinking of it along with its counterpoint, shame.

I know many these days that are so ardent about their shame over their ancestors conduct in some regard, be it the indigenous peoples, or other long past historical events. The purpose of history is to learn from the past. Yet I hope they don’t lose sleep over things that happened centuries before they were born, in a context they can never appreciate. I suppose that on some level I generally find myself averse to the notion that the “sins of the father” are passed on to the child. Thus I don’t ask people to own an infinite past of injustices, which would be universally shared if you go back to the beginning of life.

I also wonder if it is a matter of deflection. We all have issues within our own and our families’ lives that are less than meritorious. Is it possible that volunteering to feel some vicarious shame, knowing that no sane person would say you are personally at fault, is our way of evading culpability for problems closer to home?

Perhaps it is the counterpoint to vicarious pride. Think of all the paraphernalia and logos for your sports teams, the merchandise sold at concerts, excitement when your choice wins the award. It is all good fun. But the truth is I didn’t score the go-ahead run or win the gold medal. I only sat on the sofa and cheered “Yeah Team!” There is the direct pride of “I got an A on my test“ and the indirect sort,“my team won the World Series”. We probably engage in more of the latter than the former, as there is an awful lot less heavy lifting. Though if you spent a century being a Cubs fan, you did earn your day in the sun.

Returning to the the “Pride” of which my friend inquired. Homosexuality has always been known to exist. But historically it was mostly deemed to be a behavioral choice, and perhaps a deviant one at that. To avoid prejudice and ruination, people, especially performers who were leading men types, often had brief marriages or phony bios to avoid suspicion. Then, in the later stages of the 20th century, homosexuality came to be defined as an intrinsic feature like having blue eyes. We were told that it was given at birth and nothing better or worse than the more common construct of heterosexuality. Certainly there are legions of examples of betrayed or unfaithful marriages within heterosexuality to know it is no guarantor of good conduct.

Social awareness and comfort level proceeded in the 1970’s and onward. I recall seeing coverage of a Pride parade in SoCal in 1992. Dick Sergeant, otherwise known as the 2nd Darren on the 1960’s-19070’s sitcom “Bewitched”, and Elizabeth Montgomery, his former co-star, were the grand marshals. It was like the Rose Parade. They were dressed in what would have been “office casual”. They waved gracefully the way beauty queens do. It was well mannered and dignified. It was their St. Patrick’s Day parade. Homosexuals felt safer declaring their status. Now average Joes and Janes were coming out

Legal status went through a fuzzy period of “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” in the 1990’s on to the legalization of same-sex marriage and full civil rights. Not all agreed morally,but the basic framework of civil rights, as previously defined for other minorities, was established. Again based on the premise that being born gay was the same as someone who was born black or Asian.

In the 1990’s some gay authors wrote books largely focused on the notion that many homosexuals were, with one intimate exception, the same common sense boring day-to-day people as the heterosexual couples you know.

But now, over two decades into the 21st century, things have changed, with regard to the notion of innate alignment from birth, and also with regard to how people express the their pride in “PRIDE”.

Oddly, the challenge to the accepted notion of men and women whose distinction is simply that since birth they were wired to be attracted to people of the same gender, is now coming from the many lettered community itself, albeit I suspect an extreme and very loud minority. Now we are told that gender itself is not binary, or it has infinite gradations, or may be non-existent. Not only that, it is apparently a moving target. Gender fluidity would render some relationships heterosexual at some point, and homosexual later as the gender drifts. Is a man who likes men gay or a non-yet-affirmed trans-female heterosexual? The participants don’t just gently suggest a process but aggressively demand accommodations of choice, with punishment for any error. Incorrect gender pronouns are violence. This is rich from a generation that rarely knows when to use subject or object pronouns, and is willing to engage in threats of physical violence to speakers who present ideas they find uncomfortable. These endlessly mutable identities undermine the long held and promoted notion of an intrinsic feature. We are back to the basic question. Nature or Nurture? Choice or Not?

It is also no longer a matter of having nothing to be ashamed of. We are subject to a litany of events, parades, and weeks, and months of display. But of what?  Surely everyone should have something to be proud of beyond their sexual inclinations. I love chocolate but I don’t consider it an accomplishment. Just “being” is an awfully low bar. And frankly a month of anything seems a bit much. But if it is to be, use it well.

If I was in charge of a Women’s History event I can imagine wanting to highlight Marie Curie, the only person to win a Nobel prize in two scientific fields. I would tell the story of Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut, or pioneering athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

For a PRIDE event I could imagine having a literary festival about the works of Oscar Wilde. I would want to see if I could have Greg Louganis, one of the greatest athletes in Olympic history, speak about his life. I would have historians teach about the work of Alan Turning, explaining how it was pivotal to winning WWII. Why would you not? “Pride”, the sentiment,  is after all about remembering our finest hours. So take the time to lift up the best and brightest.

But instead, what do we see? Naked men and women. Mermaids? Guys made up like Kiss band members, wearing nun’s habits. Crazy people screaming they are “coming for your children.” A trans [M-to-F] went topless, fondled and flounced artificial breasts, and then twerked on the south lawn of the White House. They flaunt and scream. They bully and harass. Most of all there is just so much hate. They claim “inclusion” but exclude gay police officers from their march. I can’t think of a more challenging place to be different than the first responders and the military. So if they can be accepted there how can their own supposed “community” close the door and claim to be inclusive?

I read of a middle aged gay man who was mortified that after decades of advocating that normalizing homosexual relationships was not a slippery slope to sexualization of children, porn in the library, drag queens in elementary school, pole dancing in the park, twerking in church, topless trans women etc., only to see such travesties. I have no way of knowing what happened other than, like all demographics, it is the outliers that seem to take all the oxygen out of the room.

In an article published by gay author Bruce Baker about the hijacking of the movement he states:

“if anybody is upset more by this sideshow than straight parents, it’s gay people who feel that their honorable movement for equal rights has been shanghaied by a gang of psychologically disturbed egomaniacs“ [1].

Initially I considered the counterpoint of pride and shame and whether it is direct, with regard to self, or vicarious.  Perhaps the other point is the continuum.  I thought of this when listening to Pastor Bobby Schuller insightfully discuss the relative merits of pride and self-respect. Many things in life are fine until taken to excess. Taking in sustenance is a simple joy. To extremes it leads to “gluttony”, which along with “pride”, was deemed one the seven deadly sins. Originally they were the eight deadly thoughts but St. Gregory rearranged them, placing pride as the ruler of the others [2].

Cultural phenomena seem to have taken the virtue of simple decent self-respect, labeled as pride, and put it on steroids, leading to a path to vanity, arrogance, narcissism, and exhibitionism. Imagine what St. Gregory would think.

REFERENCES

[1] Bawer, Bruce, “Drag queens chanting ‘we’re coming for your kids’ hurt gay rights “, New York Post, June 25, 2023, https://nypost.com/2023/06/25/drag-queens-chanting-were-coming-for-your-kids-hurt-gay-rights/

[2] Little, Becky, “How the Seven Deadly Sins Began as the Eighth Evil Thoughts”, History, July 25, 2023, https://www.history.com/news/seven-deadly-sins-origins