Local demographics and the Synod.

When I was growing up, the Parish we normally attended, if it had a noticeable ethnic component, which I can't say that it truly did, would have been Irish.  First and second generation Irish Americans, as well as some native born Irish.  There were also people of other European extractions, and a Hispanic population, although the latter was nowhere near as large as it currently is.

When I attended university in Laramie, as an undergrad, I normally went to the local parish rather than the Newman Center.  That parish had a large Hispanic population and the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe was a big deal.  A king and queen were chosen from the local Catholic school, and a complete brass band played at the Mass, which was partially in Spanish, although most Hispanics in Laramie are multiple generation Albany County residents whose ancestors moved up from New Mexico in the mid 20th Century.  I.e, they didn't all speak Spanish.

By the 2000s, one of the three parishes in my home county had a fairly large Hispanic population, as did many other parishes around the state, that included many people born in Mexico, typically Chihuahua.  This is still the case.  By the 2010s, a Spanish language Mass had been added.  By the late 2010s the downtown parish had fairly clearly, if silently, been dedicated to serving the immigrant Mexican population, with a priest who is a native speaker of Spanish (from Puerto Rico), the second priest there to have a fluent command of Spanish.  The first had been a very conservative priest who was not universally liked by the English-speaking population, but interestingly, as is sometimes the case, was loved by those who spoke Spanish.  Interestingly, the priest prior to that was an immigrant himself, from Zambia.  He didn't speak Spanish, but incorporated a little of it into some Masses, otherwise taking a "we're all Catholics and we're all in this together approach".

Additionally, an immigrant population in the county that hailed from Vietnam saw the introduction of periodic Vietnamese language Masses in one of the three parishes.  The same parish very occasionally has a Tagalog language Mass.

The priests, which at one time jokingly included a fair number of the "FBI", "Foreign Born Irish", now include Africans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Indians.  Wyoming has never generated enough seminarians to supply its own needs, and has always relied on priests from elsewhere, mostly Ireland at first (although there was an English-born priest at one time).  Now, other nations supply the need.

Wyoming has sent a lay delegate to the Synod, or rather, the Pope, through some means, has chosen a Wyomingite.  The handful, and they are just a handful, of lay delegates from North America, according to the Diocese of Cheyenne, are:

Canada 

• Sami Aoun is a Maronite academic from Montreal immersed in issues touching the Church in the Middle East. He is Professor Emeritus at Université de Sherbrooke and professor, at the Center for Contemporary Religious Studies in Quebec. He is Co-founder of the first Global Chair in the prevention of radicalization and violent extremism.
• Catherine Clifford is a theologian at St. Paul University in Ottawa who has written and lectured on ecclesiology and synodality. Dr. Clifford has been invited as a panelist, presenter and guest keynote speaker on numerous occasions; especially on topics such as: “Theological and Pastoral Contributions to Synodality from North America,” “Synodality: What Have We Learned along the Way?”, “Leaning into the Distant Goal of Vatican II: Pope Francis, Synodality, and Christian Unity,” among others.
• Sr. Chantal Desmarais s.c.s.m. is a woman religious from the Diocese of Joliette who was involved in drafting the Canadian National Synthesis as well as the North American Final Document. She is very involved in catechesis and evangelical animation for her diocese. Sr. Desmarais also studied religious education and physical education.
• Linda Staudt is the Director for Safe Environment Services for the diocese of London. She has extensive experience as a leader in Catholic education in Ontario. The Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario appointed her chair of the committee to prepare the provincial synodal report.

United States 

• Cynthia Bailey Manns, D.Min, is the Adult Learning Director at Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Community in Minneapolis and adjunct professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Dr. Bailey Manns was a delegate from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to the Continental Assemblies. 
• Richard Coll is the executive director of the Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He was appointed as the liaison for the U.S. bishops for the Synod in the United States in 2021 and is a member of the North American Synod Team. Mr. Coll is a parishioner at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.
• Rev. Ivan Montelongo is a priest of the Diocese of El Paso and serves as the diocesan contact for the 2021-2024 Synod. Fr. Montelongo is Vocation Director and Judicial Vicar for the diocese and was a delegate from the Diocese of El Paso to the Continental Assemblies.
• Wyatt Olivas is a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. He serves as music minister at his parish, St. Paul’s Newman Center in Laramie. Mr. Olivas was a delegate from the Diocese of Cheyenne to the Continental Assemblies.
• Julia Osęka is an international student from Poland attending St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She has been active in the Synod through her participation in Synodality in Catholic Higher Education in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (SCHEAP). Ms. Osęka was a delegate from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to the Continental Assemblies.
• Sr. Leticia Salazar, ODN is with the Order of the Company of Mary Our Lady, a religious order. She is the Chancellor of the Diocese of San Bernardino, and the diocesan contact for the Synod. Sr. Leticia was a member of the U.S. National Synthesis Writing Team, and a member of the North American Synod Team, and she was a delegate from the Diocese of San Bernardino to the Continental Assemblies.   

The NCR regarding the participants notes the following regarding Wyoming's contribution are:

Wyatt Olivas

Non-episcopal pontifical appointment

Wyatt Olivas is a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, where he is studying music education. He attends St. Paul's Newman Center, where he is a music minister and works with high school parishioners. He is one of the youth representatives on the Cheyenne Diocese's Pastoral Council.

Olivas believes the synod is especially important for young Latinos, who recent studies suggest could make up more than half of U.S. Catholics under 30.

"It hurts our feelings when people don't want to listen to us and when people push us aside and make us 'tomorrow's church' and not part of our universal church," Olivas said. "The youth feel pushed aside and not getting bigger responsibilities because it's not 'their turn.' "

Olivas is from Cheyenne, where he attended St. Joseph Parish. He served as a music minister and catechist there, teaching third graders and assisting with confirmation classes. This past summer, he served as a missionary with the Catholic youth evangelization program Totus Tuus.

I'd note, this states, as other things do, that he's from Cheyenne, and he does seem to have graduated from high school there.  Other things claim him for St. Rose of Lima in Torrington. That's significantly different.

I know very little about him personally, and what I do know is solely from what's available online.  He seems to have graduated from high school in Cheyenne a couple of years ago, and is, as noted, a music minister at the Newman Center.

Cheyenne has a large Hispanic population. Torrington, however, not so much.  Cheyenne's Hispanic populations' origins are much like Laramie's, and both are tied to the Union Pacific Railroad. 

 I have known a fair number of Hispanics in Natrona County over the years.

I have no doubt that Olivas is a devout Catholic.  I have some reason to doubt, although its all just preception, that he may be either conservative or fully orthodox in his view, but that's preception only.  Beyond that, I wonder how representative he may be, but then maybe representative isn't what was fully sought.

In southern Wyoming, the Hispanic population, as noted, stems from New Mexico originally.  It's interesting for lots of reasons, one of which is that the original Wyoming Hispanic population that came in after the Mexican War also did.  That population had roots dating back to 1598 when Spain first colonized what is now New Mexico.  In that region, which includes Southern Colorado, they formed their own, very long-lasting, culture, which still exists.  That population supplied immigrants for railroad and agricultural labor to Wyoming starting probably around the 1910s and stretching into the 1950s.  For a fairly long time, the population actually had a significant number that moved back and forth, but of course not everyone did and that ultimately ceased.  The agricultural employment eventually faded, but the blue collar railroad jobs were still going strong in the 1990s.  Perhaps they still are.

The post 1990 oil booms, and the collapse of American border enforcement in the 1970s, brought in a new Mexican immigrant population since then. They do speak Spanish, of course, but they are particularly well represented by people who were born in Chihuahua.  They've found employment in the oil and gas industry and in the trades, where they are very heavily represented.  

Olivas has stated, “once younger generations begin to take ownership of the church, things will change”.

That may be the point.  It will, and it has been, but not really in the direction that would seem to be indicated by the photo of a young man wearing a rainbow wristband and majoring in music, quite frankly.

That recalls the Church of the 1970s more than the one of the 2020s, save for the fact that the Boomer generation that took so influenced the Church back then is partially still in control, but less and less every day.  Indeed, Masses today, nearly anywhere, incorporate more of what once was, than those of the 80s.

And hence the point.

I don't know if Olivas' parents were born in Mexico or not, but a lot of the Hispanics locally were born there, including the young. They're in early adulthood or high school right now. They don't tend to go to university, just as their earlier immigrant predecessors from other countries didn't.  And there's a lot more of them working construction than attending university, anywhere.

Olivas has been asked what Hispanics want from the Synod.

What not ask a 20-year-old from Chihuahua working laying concrete in Rawlins? It wouldn't be hard to find one.

And hence the concern.

Julia Osęka isn't an American at all, but Polish. The young woman is also a university student and has expressed her support of LBGQT causes.  Her native land is sending very conservative representatives to the Synod.  In  her, they get a liberal one, by some appearances, unless of course she stays in the US, which we have no reason to suspect will be the case.

Fr. James Martin, SJ.  Well, we hardly need to comment regarding him, other than perhaps noting that he was born in 1960 and therefore is a late period Baby Boomer.  Fr. Martin became deeply involved in the faith, ultimately leading to him becoming a priest, after watching a documentary on Thomas Merton, which is interesting in that the Merton was both a priest and a monk, and a deeply mystic one who was attracted to Eastern Mysticism.  He was, in some ways, a mystic for his age.

Cardinal Robert McElroy is another, like Martin, who has called for a radical reassessment of what St. Paul condemned in this area.  He called, in the case of divorce and remarriage, for the allowance for Communion in an article in the Jesuit publication America.  This lead to an American Bishop to accuse him of heresy.

Fr. Iván Montelongo is from Chihuahua, Mexico.  He's commented that he has no agenda but wants to address the divorced and remarried, migrants and members of the LGBTQ community.

The others?  

Well, I don't really know anything about them.  You don't either.  The Canadian ones, which are four in number to the American six, seem to be more conventional and potentially conservative.  Interestingly, given though the population of the US is about ten times that of Canada, Canada has nearly equal representation.  Also interesting is that while two hail from Quebec, which makes sense, only one is a French Canadian, which is the most deeply Catholic, and most deeply imperiled Catholic demographic, in that country.

The idea, of course, was to get a cross sample of Catholics from around the country, and indeed from around North America.  That makes some sense in the abstract.  A Hispanic, for example, from a rural state would fit that description.  But only if he's representative of real rural Hispanics. . . A Polish student at an American university isn't representative of a significant American demographic at all.

And the ongoing focus, at least to some degree, of accommodation for sin that St. Paul expressly warned against is interesting.  Indeed, it's worrisome.  It's so threaded through this by now that the Synod almost has to make some statement about it, and it won't be what St. Paul stated.

Indeed, while this body isn't as slanted as often suggested, there remains a bizarre ongoing focus on homosexuality.  No matter which way the bread is sliced, this present three pretty significant problems, which are: 1) St. Paul is blisteringly blunt on condemning homosexuality and gender bending conduct, 2) its mostly a culturally European (which includes American culture) thing for whatever reason which also burdens a very small, but very vocal, percentage of the population; and 3) no mater what people wish to say, its the demographic that in the Church has been heavily associated with scandal.

In other words, if we wish to present problems and joint approaches to healing them, ratifying them as non problems really isn't hte solution, to African and Asian Catholis this must appear hopelessly strange and largely irrelevant, and to non Catholics that already suspect every Catholic Priest is a homosexual this goes a step or so in reenforceing that view.

Or perhaps it distreassingly just tells a select group that their cross to bear need not be borne.

And if we're discussing representation from the young, and we should, why are the increasing number of young Trads I see at Mass every Sunday not represented.  Even five years ago, I rarely saw a young woman wearing a mantilla at Mass.  I see that now.  I have no reason to believe that the young, unmarried, early 20s woman I see every Sunday morning so adorned doesn't represent her generation, or an aspect of it, just as well as Olivas does. Why is he there, and she isn't?

In short, the lay panel isn't as one sided as some suggest, but it does have an unusual number of people who express views that are outside of the historic norm of Catholicism with there being no clear reason why that should be done.  And at least locally, if I were a Mexican man driving 80 miles one way to the oil patch each day, and trying to catch Mass on Sunday, with a Mexican wife at home taking care of the children, I'd wonder what a musically inclined University of Wyoming student had in common with me.

LDS reaffirms its position on gender and marriage.

This is only one of two stories on religions on this topic this week, the other being less clear and more significant, as it involves a much larger religion.

Be that as it may, the leadership of the Mormon church, which has quite distinct and unique views on marriage within that body, has reaffirmed its understanding of the same, and reemphasized the binary nature of gender in human beings.  That position, which is supported by science, has been under assault in Western culture in recent years.

Pride and Unintended Consequences.

Yesterday, I ran this item, which noted the following:

Lex Anteinternet: On Pride Month, the nature of Pride, and compellin...: 

All of this fuels part of the counter reaction which is raging in our time.  People wonder how a late septuagenarian serial polygamist with weird bad hair can openly demand to be crowned Emperor and stand a good chance of having it happen, or how a thirty-something single Californian who has never held a real job but who spouts conspiracy theories and cloaks himself in the mantle of true conservatism can win office and be prayed over by college Republicans, or how individuals can be voted onto school boards with the intent to remove books.  Well, an administration that demands you accept the unnatural, a political party that requires you accept the new eugenics, and the stocking of books in school libraries that are openly sexually perverse are a big part of the reason why.

In other words, going from the widely accepted "look, we don't tell you what to do in your bedrooms, so just leave the same sex attracted alone, and they won't bother you", to "you must accept children being taught sodomy" and "you must let gender mutilation of minors occur" is a big part of that.  People on the left might claim that's the manifestation of Christian Nationalism (which it really isn't), but a lot of the reaction is just a species knowing what is biologically correct and reacting to being attacked. 

It wasn't the first time I noted this.

It's sometimes claimed, although I haven't researched it, that the moral descent of Berlin in the 1920s lead in part to people voting for the Nazis in the early 30s.  I.e., their revulsion over what they were seeing lead them to an extreme reaction, it's claimed.  At least one writer has noted:

It seems grotesque in retrospect, but Hitler posed as a moral crusader gallantly battling the forces of iniquity, corruption, and even deceit. Many Germans, horrified by the loosening of moral standards in Germany after World War I, were duped by his promises of moral rejuvenation. Hitler’s project resonated with many who were disgusted by the rampant hedonism and carnality of Weimar high culture and popular culture. Whether one views Hitler and Nazism as a Utopian and technocratic expression of the modernist project, or as an atavistic reaction against modernity, or as some blend of the two (“reactionary modernism” or “conservative revolution”), or as something completely unique, it is clear that Nazism promised a resurrection or awakening of the German people that involved a revival of morality that was in the process of decay and degeneration.

Hitler as Moral Crusader and Liar, Richard Weikart, abstract.

Extreme wealth in upper Russian society certainly contributed to the rise of the Communists in late imperial Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution.

The point of this is this.  While the Southern Populist ethics that have spread into the American middle class country wide (more on this soon) are full of hypocrisies, people do have a limit. Most people don't think night and day about politics, which opens the void to people like Rep. Ward of Casper, whose reaction to a Pride event in Casper lead to this headline:

Wyoming Lawmaker Calls For Boycott Of Businesses That Sponsored Casper Pride Fest

Ward's rise as a legislator in a state that she has almost no connections with stunned me.  She's of the extreme right and has a Weltanschauung that she's imported from the Rust Belt, where she previously lived and politiced. She's associated herself in politics with Christianity, but in a way that suggest she doesn't understand her claimed faith very well.  In Illinois, she showed up associated with some outrage over a school teacher who claimed that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, which in fact they do.  In Wyoming's last legislative session, she made the claim that Christians are not their brother's keeper, and that the story of Cain and Able in the Old Testament really only meant that you just weren't supposed to kill your brother, but otherwise could let him suffer.

Middle Class Germans of the 1920s were heir to a long Christian tradition.  Upper class Germans were as well, and frankly lower class Germans were too, that latter class being the one most vulnerable to Nazi and Communist agitation.  Russia had a long history of Christianity, leading into 1917.  

Wealthy societies produce largess.  Largess produces self-indulgence, and a lot of the self-indulgence will, seemingly almost inevitably, turn into sexual narcissism and individual domination.  Disgust inevitably results by those who don't chose that path, which is, at the end of the day, most people.  But when a society becomes focused on it, those willing to stand most in the opposing spotlight, no matter how extreme they are, will take up most of the opposing light.  

Immoderation leads, inevitably, to immodesty, which leads, almost inevitably, to opposing immoderation.  When toleration becomes a demand for absolutely acceptance, in categories of extremes, those masses simply trying to get through their days will listen to the loudest voices.

Southern Populism gave us what the Southern Strategy took into the GOP.  Losing the moorings on genuine civil rights, amongst other things, gave us a warped left wing view that individualistic self definition is a right, no matter how destructive or delusional.  That latter left wing view is pushing the other, far right populist view, to success, at least temporarily.

On Pride Month, the nature of Pride, and compelling opinions.

The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind.

G. K. Chesterton, in ‘On Certain Modern Writers’. 

Von Max Liebermann - Eigenes Werk, Yelkrokoyade, aufgenommen 16. Juli 2015, 10:52:45, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46254188

This is "Pride Month".

I wasn't going to comment it at all, for a variety of reasons, part of which are cowardly.  But because that is in fact cowardly, I'm commenting on it now.

Indeed, the fact that I was disinclined to post on it shows something.  Over the span of fifteen or so years, roughly dating to the Obergefell decision to the present date, the nation went from agreeing to tolerate a small minority of people who exhibit was largely regarded as a deeply peculiar unnatural trait, to one in which that particular trait is now so mild in comparison to what is now forced upon the population that it doesn't even make the charts.  That is, no matter what you may think of it, same sex attraction, which has in no means ever reached the point where actual science has determined that its origins are not environmental and psychological, rather than organic, is now fully accepted, both culturally and by force, as dictated by nature, and we're now being forced to accept that surgically and chemically mutilating minors is health care.

If you don't agree with any aspect of that for any reason, you will be subject to open hostility and repression.  You will, moreover, be tagged something like "homophobic", a word which in strict translation means "afraid of man", but is supposed to imply fear of anything other than the biological norm in regard to sex even if, in reality, your actual view is that the science doesn't back something that only a tiny, but growing, number of mostly European culture people exhibit.  Indeed, only social science, and really only social science in North America and Europe, and nations heavily influenced by European culture, are of the view that any of this is normal.  The fact that European cultured people are of the view that this is now a culturally and scientifically settled question shows, therefore, an interesting retention of cultural colonialism that is no supposedly passé.  

That alone is an interesting example of the evolution, and decay, of Western Society.  We are now at the point where most of the real fundamentals of Western Society, including an appreciation of its intellectual history and the profound influence of Christianity upon it are abhorred in the benighted, enlightened, and well off classes, as a rule, but in regard to left wing theory, we are arrogant enough to demand it be accepted by the whole globe.

A lot of that decay set in eons ago, and indeed, as we noted the other day, the rot really started to set in on October 31, 1517, when a psychologically troubled misplaced Augustinian German monk determined that he knew better than anyone else on certain topics and struck a blow for radical individuality.  LGBTQIAP2S+? comes directly from that day, and from that individual, in part, although he'd no doubt be horrified, maybe, by the development.

Native Ameican students at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pennsylvania, c. 1900.

Pride Month is also an example of cultural colonialism.  It's highly akin to the late 18th, early 19th Century Reservation System pushed on Native Americans, which had the idea that Native Americans would become Protestant farmers.*  It didn't matter if they didn't want to become either, they were going to no matter what, and no matter what it took to get that result, right down to separating children from parents, was okay.

It's interesting to note that the widespread result instead was cultural destruction, crime and chemical dependency. . . all of which are on the rise in the wider culture now.

Quite a few Natives long attempted to keep on some aspect of the old life, and of course it was never fully given up, even to the present day.  But the element of force was attempted for a very long time.

Prime Month has that aspect.  No matter what your view on the scientific authenticity of the concept that young women on the spectrum can decide in their mid-teens that they want their boobs removed and to receive chemical injections, something that has Sweden, Finland and the United Kingdom all now ban and which Norway is getting set to on the basis that it is not evidence based, you are going to have to socially choke it down.** It's better, society asserts, that you shut up and agree with what is contrary to nature and science and allow the mutilations to continue than to voice any opinion in opposition to it on any basis whatsoever.  

Custer, after all, was a hero, right?  He was putting those Indians back on the Reservation for their own good.

But what about the concept of "pride" itself?

Designating something a "month", if it receives some sort of official recognition, is a way of officially blessing what the declaration stands for.  It's not clear when it really got started, but in some ways it's both less than and more than declaring something to be a day.  I haven't researched what the first "month" in honor of something was, but it might be Black History Month, which had its origin in 1926 with an African American History Week.  Kent State proposed Black History Month in 1970, and it's grown since then.

Black History Month has to be regarded as fairly successful, although frankly its more of a way for educators to focus on the contributions of African Americans to American history than anything else, although official organs of the government recognize it.  Its success lead to Women's History Month, which is March.  Black History Month is February.  November became Native American History Month under President George Bush, which is also Aviation History Month.

The interesting thing of the focus of all of those months is their focus on history.  The thought was that the history of the group may have been forgotten or inaccurate, and this was a chance to redress it, although as Aviation History Month shows, this can devolve into a focus on what is a specialized topic or interest.  Over time, the latter has really taken hold.

For example, take January for the United States:

• National Codependency Awareness Month
• National Mentoring Month
• National Healthy Weight Awareness Month 
• Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month
• Stalking Awareness Month
• Veganuary

Hmmmm.

"Pride Month" fits into the latter category, but its an attempt to recall the former.  In both instances, conceptually, its problematic.

Pride does not go before a fall. Pride is a fall, in the instant understanding of all the intelligent who see it.

G. K. Chesterton.

Pride itself is problematic.

The online Oxford Dictionary defines pride as follows:

1. a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

   "the team was bursting with pride after recording a sensational victory"

   Similar:

   pleasure

   joy

   delight

   gratification

   fulfillment

   satisfaction

   sense of achievement

   comfort

   content

   contentment
2. 2.

   consciousness of one's own dignity.

   "he swallowed his pride and asked for help"

   Similar:

   self-esteem

   dignity

   honor

   self-respect

   ego

   self-worth

   self-image

   self-identity

   self-regard

   pride in oneself

   pride in one's abilities

   belief in one's worth

   faith in oneself

   amour propre

   Opposite:

   shame

verb

1. be especially proud of (a particular quality or skill).

   "she'd always prided herself on her ability to deal with a crisis"

Clearly the first definition doesn't make sense here, although it's probably the one that was in mind, maybe, when June was declared Pride Month.  LGBTQ+ don't claim to have achieved that status.  Perhaps they're celebrating the things that people who fit into that category, which isn't a real category as it's far too broad, have achieved.  Maybe the second category makes more sense, actually.

Indeed, what I really think Pride Month is supposed to refer to is absence of shame, which isn't the same thing.   People have certainly been shamed for things in the past that they should not have been, and a same-sex attraction (which is now only a limited part of this broad category) is one such thing.  Pride Month was probably really intended to be an absence of shame month, so to speak.

The problem there is It's gone from "don't shame", which is related to "tolerate", to accept.  

It's one thing not to be ashamed.  A person can have attributes and conditions of all types that others regard with some element of disdain, which they are not ashamed of, or should not be ashamed of.  I'd wager that almost everyone has felt this at some point in time.  When I was a kid, I was ashamed that I had asthma, and I still somewhat am.  Most people probably wouldn't be, but I was.  I still keep it pretty much to myself, although it rarely afflicts me know.

I wouldn't ever, however, consent to being "proud" of having asthma.

As an adult, I've been curious subject to an element of shame about having chosen to be a lawyer, which is a really strange personality quirk for somebody who has been successful at it. The fact that it bothers me, bothers me.  My mother was quite proud of it, but I hated it whenever she told somebody that.  For that matter, I hate it when somebody asks me "what do you do?", which is a routine question for men to receive.  I recall being at a small local bar once with a coworker, who is immensely proud of being a lawyer, when he answered that immediate upon being questioned with an enthusiastic "We're lawyers!".  

Oh, great.

More on that, at some other time.

There are some things I'm genuinely proud of, and there are others I'm genuinely ashamed of.  I'm not going to publish either of those here, however.

To be ashamed, of course, means to have a sense of shame.  Part of the experiment of modern life has been to banish shame, and that's one of the tragedies of the modern world. There are things that people should be ashamed of, including sexual things, which Pride Month is on, in a fashion.  People who cheat on their spouses, have "sexual addiction", delve in pornography and prostitution, those being two sides of the same coin, and the like should in fact be ashamed.  Some of those people have fallen so deeply into those things that they have a very hard time getting out of them, but hat doesn't mean that they shouldn't be ashamed. Their shame should be, and if properly ordered is, their motivator, in part.

Which brings us back to the LGBTQ+ topic.

A major problem here, from the onset, is that this entire area when from homosexuality, which doesn't even appear to really be the same in men and women, to being all sexual abnormalities. From there, it's become an outright assault on normality, and that's the problem with the month.  It's gone from "accept that there are people who have same sex attraction" to "nobody is really heterosexual so you must join us".

And that's both scientifically invalid and wrong.

Starting off with the broad nature of the definition, it should be obvious that this is a problem in and of itself.  If every sexually deviation from the mean fits into a category, and the category must be not only tolerated but celebrated, then there is no bar whatsoever to any sexual deviation.  

Put more bluntly, if you have to accept transgenderism as real and worthy of celebration, you have to accept child molestation the same way, and there's no bar to that which is anything more than sophistry.

Of course, we all know that's wrong, except for a tiny number of pedophiles who argue just what I noted.  That brings you to the flip side.  If pedophiles are mentally ill, then you can have a departure from the mean, which is a mental illness.

That is in fact the reality of it. The question then becomes what is a mental illness and what isn't. . . assuming that any of these departures from the mean aren't.

Well, the ones that pretty clearly aren't always are the old male/female ones where somebody is a bad actor.  That is, men who screw every woman that will let them, and women who behave the same way. That's bad behavior, and wrong.  It's also now being "polyamorous".  

Having said that, according to modern psychology, which is often wrong, this may be sexual addiction, which is a mental illness.

Some of the categories in the LBGTQ+ group are, quite obviously, mental illnesses.  Transgenderism definitely is.  Others may simply be strong compulsions, or even weak ones. For those, Pride Month serves to pigeonhole people where they wouldn't otherwise go, and may not wish to.

Everyone has known some people with some sexual deviation compulsions.  Some of them hold them strongly, and others not very much.  The interesting thing, however, is that until the Obergefell era, many simply had that as an aspect of their personality, with many of them emphasizing it hardly at all.  Only the most aggressive, who are often those who demonstrated a pronounced deviation, were really aggressive about it.  Those people are now, however, driving the bus and the entire culture.

Part of that bus driving is mowing down anyone who won't get on, and that in part is serving to drive the nation apart.  Pride Month has been co-opted, or perhaps always served, to force accepting every sexual deviation down the throats of everyone else.  If you don't believe that it's all natural, you are liable to intellectual assault.

It's the racist eugenics of our era.

From Government websites from every branch of the government all the way to corporations are forcing the agenda.  As you can't force the unnatural on everyone indefinitely, it will fail, but it might fail in destructive ways.

It's also in advertising, which is interesting in that this is the second time in fifty years that advertising has gone down this road. The first time was in the 1970s, when it became heavily sexualized for a decade or so, and it delved into pedophilia.  Reaction to the worst of that pulled it back out, but it serves as a model.  Conventional advertising in the 70s used juvenile female models as sex objects until the consuming public said "enough", and then they stopped, but not before entertainment became briefly pedophilia as well.  Pretty Baby, The Blue Lagoon, etc., donned the movie screens.  "Does Your Mother Know" and "What's Your Name" the airwaves.

Right now you can't swing a moribund felis domesitcus without hitting some advertising effort to get you to adopt the concept that maybe you ought to crawl into bed with your own gender, and perhaps frequently, or at least that's A-OK.

All of this fuels part of the counter reaction which is raging in our time.  People wonder how a late septuagenarian serial polygamist with weird bad hair can openly demand to be crowned Emperor and stand a good chance of having it happen, or how a thirty-something single Californian who has never held a real job but who spouts conspiracy theories and cloaks himself in the mantle of true conservatism can win office and be prayed over by college Republicans, or how individuals can be voted onto school boards with the intent to remove books.  Well, an administration that demands you accept the unnatural, a political party that requires you accept the new eugenics, and the stocking of books in school libraries that are openly sexually perverse are a big part of the reason why.

In other words, going from the widely accepted "look, we don't tell you what to do in your bedrooms, so just leave the same sex attracted alone, and they won't bother you", to "you must accept children being taught sodomy" and "you must let gender mutilation of minors occur" is a big part of that.  People on the left might claim that's the manifestation of Christian Nationalism (which it really isn't), but a lot of the reaction is just a species knowing what is biologically correct and reacting to being attacked. 

In other words, toleration is one thing.  Brutally forced acceptance of what you were formally asked to tolerate, quite another.

Pride itself is a curious thing, and in our Lutherarian society, worshiping individualism as it is, and declaring self-worth and worthiness in everything, grossly overdone.  You can be legitimately proud of an accomplishment that has some merit, particularly difficult ones.  Having pride for overcoming something, such as a difficult task, including overcoming a personal problem or vice, is fully legitimate.  Being proud of a greater group of which you are part is as well, when that group has done more than simply exist, is as well, but much, much less so.  "Taking pride" is different, but can have merit as well.  A person can legitimately take pride, for example, in their appearance, or in their occupational or social status, assuming the latter has some merit.

Merely being proud, however, with no investment in something, tends to be arrogance.  Often statements like "proud to be an American", while that can indeed have worth, are just that.  Extreme cultural pride can cross over into something really vile.  Members of the SS were, after all, proud to be German.

Being proud of something biological, in any sense, is totally misplaced.  A person can't be proud to be tall or short. They can, however, lack shame for the same thing, which is totally different.  In the category that we're dealing with, sort of, a person with a high sex drive can't really legitimately claim pride in it.  Depending upon how they react to it, they may claim to be proud, in handling it in a dignified and moral fashion, or they may be in the category of those who should bear shame for how they handle it, that latter concept having gone out of fashion, seemingly, in the libertine era in which we live.

Having pride for being a member of a group that has a minority sexual inclination, which is now unfairly and bizarrely all lumped together in "LGBTQIAP2S+?" makes no more sense than being heterosexual does.  Those who fit into one of those categories claim not to have achieved it, but to have had it imposed upon them, in some fashion. That's not much different than being short or tall.  It comes dangerously close to endorsing a sort of racism in the same fashion that "White Pride" does.

It's also distinctly different than not being ashamed.  There are plenty of reasons that those with deep-seated sexual minoritarian inclinations should not be ashamed.  There's no reason, for instance, that homosexuals should be ashamed of that inclination.  They didn't chose it.  Not being ashamed is not price, it's not being ashamed.

That's also separate, of course, from how we react to a deep-seated inclination of that type.  For eons those with such drives struggled to contain them, which we will confess was in part because of cultural norms and beliefs, and in part because of repression.  Be that as it may, it wasn't all that long ago that most with such drives may have been aware of them, but they didn't dominate their existence and didn't define who they were.  Now the cultural gatekeepers demand the opposite.

That doesn't touch, of course, where we are compelled by nature or morality to act towards restraint or reform.  It wasn't very long ago that the Hefnerian view of the world so dominated that we openly winked at people forcing sex upon women, and those with money and power were granted the right to do so. We can all pretend that we were shocked, shocked, to learn that Bill Cosby drugged women and then had his way with them, but we knew for decades that he was hanging out at the Playboy mansion which was dedicated to no other purpose than female sexual chattel slavery.  We can pretend that we didn't know that juvenile female actresses were often expected to trade in sex, and that young women in the workplace were subject to constant abuse, but it was so widely known that it was hinted at repeatedly in the movies themselves.***This leaves us with there being things we should not be ashamed of at all, things we should not be ashamed of but not yield to, and things which shame should compel us to act upon.

We should not take pride in simply having a sex drive, no matter how it is oriented.  And those who question things that only yesterday were regarded by nearly everyone, including those with minoritarian inclinations, as deeply disordered, on a scientific basis should not be shouted down and be forced to shut up for not going with the flow of the day.

Indeed, we've done that before.  We did it on race based slavery.  We did it with destruction of indigenous cultures.  More recently, we did it with eugenics, part of what became the foundation of at first Planned Parenthood, and then later, the Holocaust.

Footnotes

*Not "Christian" farmers, Protestant farmers.  Indeed, Catholicism had made inroads into Native populations everywhere already, with it being the case in what became the Louisiana Purchase and Canada that their conversion was simply religious, but not cultural.

**As with abortion, it's worth noting that its the United States that really has the extreme liberal allowances in this area.

***This is portrayed, somewhat veiled, in The Godfather.  It the book its not only portrayed, but not veiled, leaving the reader with the oddity that to a degree the Mafia is portrayed as more moral than the movie industry.