For a group of people long labeled sinners–and understandably sensitive to a charge that’s still made–it’s more than a little ironic that gays and lesbians should select a sin as our annual rallying cry. And not just any sin, but the sin Pope Gregory the Great called “the queen of them all.”
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Gays and lesbians embraced the sin of pride 30 years ago to combat something that was, at the time, a much deadlier problem for queers than any of Evagrius’s wicked passions or Greg’s capital vices–shame. Webster’s defines shame as a “condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute,” and until the late 60s shame was a poison killing queers. Not only did straights view homosexuality as disgraceful, but most gays and lesbians did too. Shame kept us closeted and fearful, made our oppression possible, and led some of us to write very bad plays and wear too-tight trousers. Clearly, strong medicine was needed. We searched for an antidote that would purge us of this poison and found it in pride.
But 30 years after the antidote arrived–in the form of a riot and an annual parade to commemorate that riot–gays and lesbians stand in renewed danger of being poisoned. The poison threatening us now isn’t shame, however; it’s pride. In medical terms, once the antidote cures you, you’re supposed to stop taking it. Why? The funny thing about antidotes is that they’re often poisons themselves. Many of the antidotes for snakebites and scorpion stings are toxic, and even Tylenol will kill you if you take too much.
Patriotism, as the saying goes, is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But in the last 30 years, pride has become a sort of gay patriotism and the first refuge of gay scoundrels–and certainly the first marketing ploy of countless beer and vodka companies.
