If you need the worlds of sports, entertainment, education, media, and government to celebrate your sexuality in order to feel proud, maybe your conscience is trying to tell you something. Might it be that deep down—behind the torrent of rainbow flags and the blitz of billionaire sponsors—God is speaking to us a different word?
In case you haven’t heard, June 1 no longer marks the end of the school year or the unofficial beginning of summer. It’s the start of Pride Month. Initially conceived in 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Pride Month has become a government-promoted, corporate-sponsored, 30-day celebration of LGBTQ acceptance and achievements. When rioters threw bricks and tried to burn down the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village with police officers barricaded inside, even the most optimistic gay liberation proponent could not have dreamed that an illegally operated, Mafia-owned gay bar would eventually join the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon on the select list of protected national monuments.
Pride Month is at once a brilliant marketing strategy and a striking reminder that the conscience is a terrible thing to waste.
By linking gay liberation to “pride,” LGBTQ advocates—and it’s worth mentioning, that the five letters only fit together in an uneasy alliance—hit upon an ethical and strategic coup. The rallying cry of “pride” transformed their quest for culturewide moral legitimacy (a daunting task) into a personal plea for therapeutic well-being (a much easier goal). The debate would not be a head-on, rational discussion about whether the sexual revolution was acceptable by the standards of God’s Word, natural law, or Western tradition. The debate would not be about what was good for children, good for the public, or even good for those drawn to LGBTQ behavior. Instead, “pride” made the debate about feelings of personal acceptance. Changing the culture is hard work and takes a long time (about 50 years, it turns out). Convincing people to stop making other people feel bad is a much easier sell.
