Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18, Revised Standard Version
Pride has long been considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins. In this sense, it is hubris; the kind of overweening and delusionary self-satisfaction that invites the wrath of nemesis.
The English language has several meanings for the word “pride”. Some of them are positive, such as having a reasonable and proportionate self-esteem. For example, a diligent craftsman should take a well-earned pride in his work.
However, it is the hubristic form of pride that leads to destruction. This tragic sort of pride is on display now, as it has been in recent years for the month of June. As I am certain you must have noticed, in the United States and across the Western world, June has become “Pride Month”.
In this special month, we are invited to stand in solidarity with those who are sexually attracted to others in manners that diverge from biological necessity. In the past, such attractions were considered by most mainstream societies around the world to be unnatural.
The Judeo-Christian West is by no means alone in having traditions which reject homosexuality and other diverse sexualities. For example, in the Islamic Middle East, the penalty for being revealed to be homosexual is defenestration from a very tall place.
Hindu India once had women’s heads shaved and a fine paid for lesbian acts involving an unmarried maiden. Ch’ing Dynasty China mandated 100 days in prison as well as 100 clubbed blows. Communist China had deemed alternative sexualities to be a mental illness. Until 1979, so did Sweden.
Across much of the Western world, homosexuality was designated as a crime until the 1960s or 1970s. Being exposed could end careers. It was a cause for blackmail. Penalties included execution, chemical castration, and mandatory institutionalization in an asylum.
Homosexuality was often conflated with Pederasty; child molestation which destroys innocence and blights entire lives. It was also tied with forms of sadomasochism which replaces intimacy and the natural excitements of love with pain and humiliation.
Homosexuality was understood to be part of a broad spectrum of activities which were at variance with both what the mainstream culture saw as healthy sexuality as well as what it saw to be a wholesome society where children could be raised in relative safety.
And, of course, the Bible does not endorse same-sex relationships as being an acceptable Jewish or Christian lifestyle. While contemporary liberation oriented social justice theologians desperately strive to reinterpret Scripture to suit their “inclusivity” agenda, Monotheism has never normalized alternative sexuality.
How differently our current cultural moment seems from all of this! From the 1960s and 1970s, today’s secularizing West has legalized homosexuality. For the past half-century, many among our culture’s cultural and business elites have been working overtime to try to fully normalize homosexuality and its variants as being merely one of many perfectly acceptable lifestyle choices.
This is really what is behind the incessant drumbeat of rainbow flags, gay-pride celebrations, and drag-queen story hours for prepubescent children. A normalization agenda is behind the “redefinition” of marriage away from being a uniquely important commitment between one man and one woman, which might result in a next generation of well-adjusted legitimate children.
Homosexuality has been renamed as a never-ending set of alphabet soup with a plus sign on the end. Entire Christian denominations are trying to redefine Jesus as being himself homosexual, by for example twisting the Gospel of John’s, “disciple whom Jesus loved” into something other than John referring to himself with humility and gratitude into something else entirely.
Alphabet-Mafia activists are systematically deconstructing traditional cultural and religious understandings to replace them with their “new-and-improved” version of truth. There are no limits to their insatiable appetite to rewrite humanity into a species which has no default sexuality, no biological necessity, and no objective social characteristics; not even any differences between men and women.
After so much time being oppressed, the attitude that contemporary homosexual activists have to our more tolerant society is not gratitude. There is no warm loyalty to a West which chose to invite them in out of the shadows. There is no appreciation of how fortunate they are to live at a time and in a place where they are not persecuted for being as they are.
Instead, they evoke an incandescent rage at anyone and everything that is not in conformity with their retributive agenda. Like all advocates of identity politics, they damn a West that gave them acceptance as being uniquely guilty of crimes against their slice of humanity; crimes that make us worthy of utter destruction.
For my own part, I personally do not care whom other adults find attractive, so long as there is no compulsion and children are not involved. I try to interact positively with everyone whom I can, both on and off the job. To the best of my fallible ability, I endeavor to accept people as they are. I try to focus on the good in each. To me, this is not only the Christian thing to do. It is basic good manners. Despite this, I am damned as being a “homophobe” because I believe in the toleration of homosexuals without the full normalization of homosexuality as a lifestyle within our society.
Self-evidently, eliminating the tyrannical persecution of those with alternative sexualities is not sufficient for homosexual activists. Only when children are raised in an environment suffused with infinite sexualities (no more innocent childhoods) in a society that makes absolutely no distinction about anything sexual will such activists be satisfied. Honestly, though, I suspect that even then they would not be satisfied.
It would be wise for those who now benefit from social tolerance to practice some toleration themselves. It would be better if “pride” were reserved for our genuine accomplishments as human beings and as Americans. So long as activists insist on attacking the society that now tolerates them for not matching up to their utopian ideal, in terms of the goodwill of the mainstream public, pride will certainly go before a fall!
