Goodness gracious! I just remembered pride is one of the seven deadly sins. Fact bible Wikipedia says it is the worst, leading to all the others. Yet here we are holding a parade and festival for it. Surely, there has been a mistake in the translation of the ancient tongue. What is there to celebrate?
I’ll tell you what. Plenty!
Once labeled pedophiles and evil creeps we were ashamed to admit to anyone, sometimes ourselves, we were homosexuals. Through the efforts of a great many who sacrificed much, sometimes even to the ultimate, that shame has been erased and we are openly LGBT to our neighbors, co-workers and family members. We have reached the once unbelievable point where we can have a parade and festival with 200,000 people of all ages and sexes standing and applauding as we show our diversity from the drag queens and bike riders to the church groups and Armed Forces.
If that isn’t something to be proud of, what is?
With pride, we honor our brothers and sisters marching down University Avenue and Main Street America.
With pride, we declare our determination to be who we are, love who we love and marry who we cherish.
With pride we show our support for the LGBT marching units and those of our friendly supporters letting them know we are together in our continuing fight for equal respect, justice and opportunity.
Pride a sin? Well, we’ve been called sinners before, so come on seniors (and those who will be), this is our celebration. Get out there – cheer, shout and march!
Strolling for a topic
In search of a new topic, I decided, since I’d taught 40 years at a Jesuit run school, I’d visit the Catholic university here. Unfortunately when it comes to the various colleges and universities around San Diego I get completely flummoxed by UCSD, SDUC, CDUS, CSSD, SDCU, CUSD – whatever!
Assuming C meant Catholic, I gave one bunch of letters to a taxi driver and ended up on a beautiful, huge campus. I was surprised, however, to notice it lacked the plethora (love the word) of religious icons and art which I had become accustomed to. Raised as a Congregationalist, I felt uneasy the first few years around such religiosity, especially the various orders of teaching nuns all in full rigging.
In later years, they changed; first to a wide (and wild) variety of self-designed outfits and then finally all the orders at my school went to modern dress. The exception being the two nuns in a strict Spanish order.
They kept their voluminous habits and tight-as possible wimples. Unsmiling and seldom speaking to others, they stared at the ground six feet in front of them. This was called “Chastity of the eyes” and was long ago decreed by the men in charge to keep the weak women from giving into the temptations of the world (which the men seemed fully aware of).
I thought of them as I wondered how many nuns and priests were walking by me in their modern clothes.
I was impressed with the landscaping and the perfectly appointed trees, fountains, modern buildings, etc. The only wrinkle was the crazy library. Either the architect was mad or the builder drunk; it was upside down!
A delightful day, although I can’t understand how I missed the gorgeous church I’d heard about.
