(When I say “young and gay” I’m using an expansive definition of youth. Simple pride in being gay or lesbian–simpleminded pride, I should say–is useful, but should be thought of as a stage young queers must pass through, like puberty, and not an ecstatic state all queers must live in, like Ohio. Of course, all gay or lesbian people have to struggle with shame prior to and during their coming out. American gays and lesbians act like cancer patients who, having been cured, remind themselves that they aren’t sick anymore by dropping by the hospital every once in a while for a little chemotherapy.
![unsuspecting gay pride tattoo unsuspecting gay pride tattoo](https://76crimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/71-Countries-blue-v3-3-13-2021.jpg)
#UNSUSPECTING GAY PRIDE TATTOO FREE#
The only way to be truly and finally free of stultifying shame is to break free of equally stultifying (if better-accessorized) pride. Surrounding oneself with constant reminders to feel prideful–rainbow flags, freedom rings, “family” bumper stickers, pink triangle tattoos, “freedom tumblers,” rainbow-striped dog collars (!)–is to constantly be reminded of shame. Pride isn’t killing anyone–not yet, anyway–but the fwap of rainbow wind socks is definitely making us dull and slow, leading to a resurgence of bad plays and tight pants. Many of the antidotes for snakebites and scorpion stings are toxic, and even Tylenol will kill you if you take too much. Why? The funny thing about antidotes is that they’re often poisons themselves. In medical terms, once the antidote cures you, you’re supposed to stop taking it. The poison threatening us now isn’t shame, however it’s pride. We became less closeted and less fearful, making it increasingly more difficult to oppress us, and we started writing better plays and wearing more comfortable clothing.īut 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. Webster’s defines pride as “inordinate self-esteem,” or “a reasonable and justifiable self-respect.” Whether inordinate or justifiable, pride was an effective antidote: As more gays and lesbians committed the sin of pride, fewer were victimized by shame. If it took a deadly sin to undo the damage done by shame–a condition imposed on us, not something we did to ourselves–surely Eva, Greg, and Thom would understand. We searched for an antidote that would purge us of this poison and found it in pride. 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. Not only did straights view homosexuality as disgraceful, but most gays and lesbians did too. Webster’s defines shame as a “condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute,” and until the late 60s shame was a poison killing queers. 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. This made pride not only the deadliest of sins “but the beginning of all sin.”
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In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas piled on, observing that before a person could lust like a weasel or go green with envy, he first had to commit the sin of pride. Gregory’s revised list–pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust–were known to his contemporaries as the Seven Capital Vices we know them as the Seven Deadly Sins. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great took Evagrius’s list and cut it down to seven, combining some (sloth and sadness, vainglory and pride), and adding a brand-new sin, envy. And not just any sin, but the sin Pope Gregory the Great called “the queen of them all.”Īn early Christian monk, Evagrius of Pontus, made a list of “wicked human passions,” of which he determined there were eight, and listed them in ascending order of all-around wickedness: gluttony, lust, greed, sadness, anger, sloth, vainglory, and pride.
![unsuspecting gay pride tattoo unsuspecting gay pride tattoo](https://www.curvemag.com/wp-content/uploads/images/Tattoo.jpg)