Pride

Yesterday was the annual Pride march in London.

It's becoming increasingly clear that more and more people are waking up to see what Pride actually is.

I have a problem with this - at London Pride.
What would a young girl see here? And what do I see?
Many people I suppose would way it's all fine. I really don't think it is. pic.twitter.com/4rkMl7tF8k

— MGadd (@Sparrlyten) July 6, 2019

You shall know them by their fruits. pic.twitter.com/C2YFLzEyoV

— Caroline Farrow (@CF_Farrow) July 6, 2019

In First Things, Ed Condon makes some good points. He begins by explaining the root of the problem; a subjectivism which reduces moral acts to individual freedom and choice:

Unmoored from concepts like Natural Law—which provided a common societal bedrock in previous centuries—the true, the good, and the right are now adrift, blown by the ever-stronger winds of legal positivism into whatever harbor awaits them. For a growing number of people, the Supreme Court’s decisions now make moral truths. Going beyond protection of common freedoms, they define the goods that underpin them.

This "unmooring" has taken place with incredible speed, the momentum has not yet been arrested and it increasingly accelerates justified by the label "progress", those who cry "caution" are wilfully ignorant:

Freedom is a zero-sum equation: Those who dispute or dissent are not coequal members of a society that values diversity of opinion, they are obstacles to progress, hypocrites against love. They are heretics.

For those like Brentwood's own Father Dominic Howarth, who are facilitating and encouraging this direction (perhaps in the hope that accommodation will quiet the anger directed at the Church, perhaps because he has no faith in the timeless teaching of the Church) the end can only be total submission, whether they recognise this or not:

The Pride marchers do not want, nor do they intend to stop at, mere freedom or equality. What they would command is what the Church rightfully claims for its own teachings: the religious submission of intellect and will. According to the new progressive orthodoxy, every knee must bend. The recognition of civil authority matters because it can shape the permissive into the coercive: Obergefell is not just law, it is moral doctrine.

It is not enough that the White House be bathed in a rainbow; until the Pride flag flies from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the struggle goes on.

In the Catholic Herald, Chad Pecknold explains that the "gay pride" flag "does not represent a common thing, or a common object of love, in which we can all participate. It is an exceptional standard. A standard built around sexual desire, identity and power is something which we can rightly call “pride”.

He continues:

St Augustine called it libido dominandi — the lust for domination. And no one can argue that it hasn’t dominated. In truth, pride is a standard which cannot tolerate a common good. It must take away from the good which is common, and become the part which rules over the whole."

On Facebook, Peter Williams posted this excellent reaction to Brendan O'Neil's Spectator piece Why I'm Sick of Pride, it's so good I thought I would share it with readers:

"As someone who recognises the Natural Law (reason applied to nature) when it comes to morality (and thus law), I think I’d reject some implicit premises in Brendan O'Neill’s piece here concerning the supposedly untrammelled good of societal change on sexuality or any moral neutrality concerning sexual behaviour or desire, though of course I’d celebrate the end of any form of unkindness or unjust discrimination against anyone, regardless of the nature of their sexuality.

With that minor caveat, this is absolutely spot on as a critique of the irritating and oppressive ubiquity of the ironically illiberal cult of sentimentality and compulsory celebration of lust and libertinism that ‘Pride’ constitutes, and which renders orthodox Christians (or Muslims, or Jews, etc.) and indeed all rational and historically-informed people, as appalling moral heretics as far as our gliberal pseudocracy in media, academia, politics, civil service, and ‘sleb’-dom are concerned:

“The riotous counterculturalists of the Sixties and Seventies demanded freedom. They didn’t give a damn what the ‘moral majority’ thought of them – they just wanted the moral majority to leave them alone.

Fast forward to 2019, and that historic human instinct to be left alone in liberty has been replaced by a needy and therapeutic politics of recognition. Now [same-sex]-rights activists don’t demand autonomy – they want validation. Everyone has to wave their flag and celebrate their lifestyle and embrace the strange new idea that trans women are literally women, and if you don’t it’s off to the metaphorical gulag with you.

It’s no longer enough to leave homosexuals alone to live however they choose and to inflict on them no persecution or discrimination or any ill-will whatsoever on the basis of their sexuality, which is absolutely the right thing for a civilised liberal society to do. No, now you have to validate their identity and cheer their life choices. You must doff your cap to that omnipresent bloody rainbow.

Today it isn’t homosexuals who are persecuted; it’s their critics, whether it’s Ann Widdecombe or Tim Farron, with their well-known aversion to gay romping, or those Muslim parents in Birmingham who don’t think six-year-old Muhammad needs to know that some men sleep with men...

But there are many reasons why it might be a good idea to dissent from the orgy of Pride conformism and to refuse to bow and scrape before the rainbow flag. That flag sums up everything that is wrong with our era. Its message is that you should be proud of yourself simply for what you are... rather than for what you have achieved...

As a symbol, it’s a celebration of the self... It’s an invitation to narcissism and, as such, it further corrodes the social solidarity and sense of community so many of us long for today. Pride, the institution, is anti-social...

[People with divergent sexualities] should be as free and equal as [everyone else]... [b]ut the fact you are [same-sex attracted] is the least interesting thing about you. Tell me something else”."

All these writers articulate much better than I could hope to what I feel about Pride. It is the symptom of a sickness in society which is pervasive, seeks to enslave our children and will not tolerate dissent.