Be Not Proud Of Heart

It is Sunday, a day for a Sunday-style post.

A few months ago, Trivago magazine listed eleven gay pride parades "where you can be loud and be proud" (also, Warsaw).  On Friday, Red State's Brandon Morse maintained of the "Straight Pride Parade" being planned for later this year in Boston

You can have a parade for all sorts of reasons, and having one to celebrate heterosexuality isn’t a horrible reason to have a parade. A lot of people are straight and like being straight. They may want to celebrate the idea of two members of the opposite sex coming together to form a union that has the potential to create life. It’s a common phenomenon, but it’s still pretty amazing when you think about it.

Therefore, it might- but shouldn't- surprise you that Morse maintains "I don’t care if someone legally organizes a parade around being homosexual. As long as I’m not forced to attend it or promote it, then have at it."

So Morse is down with both a gay pride parade- now  commonly known as "pride parade" ("gay" being redundant, apparently)- and with parades boasting heterosexuality.

Wrong on both counts, guy.

Until a few years ago, there existed a common- and largely winning- argument that gay people should not be denied the rights of straight people because sexual orientation was not a choice. Virtually no one chose to be gay any more than one chose to be straight.

Now we apparently are to believe otherwise.  Being "proud" of a sexual orientation- homosexual or heterosexual- one did not choose but had imposed upon him or her belies the concept of pride.

One can be generally proud of a son, a daughter, a parent, or any relative upon whom he or she has had an impact. And it is legitimate to be proud of personal accomplishments such as earning a college degree, being promoted at work, scoring 40 points in a basketball game, or losing the weight the doctor recommended.

But if you are proud because of the way you were born or, as Jeremiah had it, as you were formed in the womb (best anti-abortion rights argument; not good enough), you are distorting the concept of pride.

Endorsing an Old Testament proverb, James, probably the brother of Jesus and son of Mary, asserted "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." But now we are to credit an individual, a mere mortal, with being gay or alternatively, with being straight. Our sexual orientation, most scholarship confirms, is a status assigned to us by biology, or to many Bible-believing Christians, God.  It is not a choice or decision, thus rightfully denying us grounds for pride.

Unsurprisingly, Morse believes "straightness" is "just a sexual preference." However, "preference" is the "power or opportunity of choice." But I no more chose to be straight than participants in any of those eleven (or more) pride parades chose to be gay. 

If they did, then they should celebrate their accomplishment while straight men and women can celebrate their own. Otherwise, there is no cause for pride- or shame- on the part of either heterosexuals or homosexuals.

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