With the arrival of cool weather, the season of festivals is about to close.
They are quite similar: ethnic or specialty food, traditional dance and music, and children’s activities such as face-painting and carnival rides. The general purpose of each festival is to celebrate the contributions that the particular group has made or, as with the county fair, a special event.
With festivals, of course, come some stereotypes and caricatures. Most Arabs don’t know how to belly dance, though it’s fun to try at their festival. Germans don’t just eat sauerkraut and drink tall steins of beer, and Italians don’t talk like Marlon Brando in The Godfather and only eat pasta. The Irish typically don’t eat corned beef and have never seen a leprechaun. And while stereotypes might have some basis in truth, each group’s beauty, originality, and contributions are overwhelmingly emphasized and celebrated.
I think about all of this as, once again, our city had yet another Pride festival.
Vulgar Stereotypes On Display
While Pride festivals have many of the same attractions as any street festival, i.e., food, beer, and music, it also is different from all other festivals: the presence of highly sexualized displays and persona. You won’t see drag queens, scantily clad figures, over-sexed merchandise and paraphernalia, or perverse displays on parade at any other local festival or fair. Yet these aspects are a significant presence at Pride festivals. The rainbow t-shirts, flags, and face paint do little to cover up these ever-present and vulgar aspects of Pride festivals.
Unlike green beer and “that’s a spicy meatball” jokes, these stereotypes at Pride festivals are not cute or funny. On the contrary, they are very offensive. In fact, they are vestiges of the stereotypes that the “straight” establishment has had, and held against those with same-sex attraction, for hundreds of years. Are we to celebrate the bigotry of these outdated stereotypes?
Perhaps it is a vestige of our over-50-year-old generation, but my friends who have same-sex attraction do not attend Pride parades because they are embarrassed or find them distasteful. Furthermore, all have stated that they would not take kids to a Pride festival.
What Are They Celebrating?
Which prompts the question: What is being celebrated at a Pride festival? Does promiscuous sexual activity truly represent what same-sex attraction is all about? Is that what corporations and virtue-signaling “straight” folks are promoting when they put the rainbow logos on their sneakers, store windows, and front lawns?
Imagine that you are a boy or girl with same-sex attraction (which boys and girls typically know by the time they reach adolescence.) You attend a Pride festival to celebrate whom you think you are. Then imagine how the presence of drag queens, sexualized dancing and behavior, and promiscuous activities make you feel. Is this what it means to have same-sex attraction? Is this what should be expected as a “normal” life experience?
Pride festivals denigrate the very people they are supposed to be celebrating. They perniciously groom children to believe that promiscuous sex is not only expected but to be celebrated and that sex, in varied and frequent ways, is the overarching purpose of one’s life as a same-sex attracted adult.
Stop. This is nothing to celebrate, and it is an insult to everyone.
A Different View of Pride
Like all people, those with same-sex attraction are uniquely created by God in His image. They were not created to use or be used by others but rather to use their unique gifts and talents to glorify God through the selfless love of others. Only this form of love gives us true contentment and true peace because only this form of love is proper: Selflessly willing and working for the best for others. Love does not exist in using others for our own selfish desires, nor allowing others to do the same to us, yet this is what the prevalent view of “gay life” promotes.
There is a better way to look at people with same-sex attraction.
I would argue that God has uniquely blessed them with a range of gifts and talents at a much higher rate than their small representation in our society. It is estimated that 5-7% of people worldwide have same-sex attraction. Yet a much more significant percentage of composers, musicians, artists, actors, singers, dancers, writers, and others in creative pursuits are those with same-sex attraction.
Same-sex attracted people seem to have a built-in complementarity, containing attributes from both sexes, which many native tribes have referred to as having “two spirits.” I would argue that this gives them a more remarkable ability to examine issues from different viewpoints and provides them with unique strengths. While my evidence is personal, it has been supported by over half a century of interaction with many friends and acquaintances with same-sex attraction. I find that their opinions are unusually insightful and thoughtful, their creativity is amazingly beautiful and rare, and their thoughtfulness is overwhelmingly sensitive and generous.
Blessing of Gifts
Surely not all people with same-sex attraction are like this, but those whom I am blessed to call friends most certainly are. And while they are not as famous as the many creative geniuses who have given us so much through the years, they are just as much a gift to me and many others.
Why not celebrate this at Pride festivals?
May God bless those with same-sex attraction, especially those boys and girls who are trying to figure out just how—and why—God made them. To paraphrase St Francis de Sales, may they be who they are and be that well so they may bring honor to the Master Craftsman whose handiwork they are.
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