Moving Past Pride and Into Dignity
Embracing Innate Respect as the Core Value for the LGBT Community, Supplanting June’s Pride.
Dignity: the innate respect due to all for the sake of existing.
This will be a series of essay-styled articles about exploring the concept of Gay Dignity and what that looks like.
Pride as Tradition
Each and every June, a rather unique and newly perennial ritual occurs all across social media – the Pride theme corporate logo. And darling, I truly do not recommend reading the comment section and heart-and-like to the laugh-and-angry-face ratio for these profile picture posts. Whether or not someone may desire these logos to be changed, they will happen, ad infinitum, each June, signaling the beginning of the new season: LGBT(insert preferred ending here) Pride. It’s been called “pride” for decades and will probably be celebrated as such for decades more. However, have we ever actually questioned why it is called pride, and why is it always focused on the concept of pride itself? Do we gays and trans people have other qualities, traits, or values which we could uplift for, and lift the world with us?
Though it is a tradition for us gays to shore up a remarkable sense of self-worth and value, A.K.A pride, due to our innate biological reality of sexual orientation - each and every June, must we remain fixated on the tradition of pride, or can we realign and consider new ideals? Gays and traditions aren’t always exactly convenient or familiar bedfellows, so why can’t we reevaluate our we celebrate ourselves? Importantly, this article doesn’t aim to explain exactly why the term Pride is used, nor criticize the original gay activists who chose the term. Instead, I offer a contemplation about how we gays can look towards the future and reach for the sky, instead of being locked in a tradition we were born into. Ironically, gays have fought against the tradition of heteronormativity through existing authentically, why clasp ourselves further into a tradition? We can do this while still honoring our gay elders who fought for the rights and liberties we enjoy today. Pride shouldn’t be considered our sacred, golden calf, a relic within itself that is too holy and important to address and change. Pride has certainly changed – as has the auspices of society for gay people, and the sheer material reality of being a gay person in 2024 compared to just 10 years has drastically changed.
Let us change with the times - and consider what is the true essence of how gay people, our relationships, our bodies, and our lives should be celebrated, uplifted, and respected. To this end, I propose moving past Pride and Into Dignity.
The Essence of Pride, The Essence of Dignity
The main critical difference between pride and dignity is twofold. Firstly, pride is something you produce for yourself, either earned or not, pride is something you must foster. Compare this to dignity, which is an innate quality afforded to all. No matter the circumstances, I have this inherent respect owed to me by others, formed as an inalienable right – to go assail against this innate respect is a grave offense against my humanity and the rights I am born with, as well as against most ethical principles. The same cannot be said of pride.
The second critical difference between pride and dignity is within the first difference, but we may have to zoom in and analyze who is conducting the actions of pride of dignity. Pride is something we give ourselves, generally – “pride is something you must foster.” (I will go further and contend that while unearned pride is something we give ourselves, earned pride is something our actions give us). Dignity is something others give to us – “an innate quality afforded to all.” Part of (gay) Pride is ultimately an ask, a demand is still an ask – an ask to respect us, our lives, our relationships, our rights, and our innate humanity. To me, this in earnest is not asking for pride for us, but asking, maybe even pleading for others to provide the dignity we are owed. Of course, we can demand something until we are a problem, but true action is often bred from going through the proper channels to change things and to be heard, because we live in a society.
Because I exist, I ought to be owed dignity by others. Dignity is a relationship enacted between people. It is something we should give all others, ourselves, and others to give to us.
Pride as a Sin, Dignity as a Virtue
One of the giant (and pink!) elephants in the room during every discussion about the concept of gay pride is that pride itself is considered a sin in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, as well as many other religious, beliefs, and values systems. Because pride is considered a sin nearly universally, the fact we use pride to celebrate and uplift being gay is consequently, no matter how bluntly or untactfully, used as further ammunition in the plight of undignifying homosexuality by many traditionalist religious types. In part, we do have a responsibility to continuously facilitate (literally meaning to render easy – “facile”) fruitful dialogue with those who hate us or feel ambivalent about us, to instead respect us and see us as essentially normal parts of the diversity of humanity. If we do not facilitate this dialogue until homophobia doesn’t exist regularly, then we may slip into a worsening scenario for how we gays are treated, which may already be the case. We have already and quite successfully persuaded the majority of society to dignify homosexuality, and while there always be laggards, why can’t we do this further?
In my own life, I have seen many homophobic people with traditional Christian views, including Catholics and Evangelical Baptists change their perspective to, at the very least, respect and dignify gay people as equals – often from just knowing gay people, and seeing them as everyday normal people. So, in this effort, there is a rhetorical benefit in choosing words that do not denote an inherent sinful quality, so emphasizing dignity, not pride, may help promote a stronger and more acceptable narrative with direct action. Even if someone, regardless of their beliefs, views me, a gay man, as just normal enough to respect me – that’s a win. Even if they don’t understand me, that is much better than hate. Honestly, I’d prefer a neutral respect over being made into some chick’s gay best friend as she tells me “Yass, slay queen” and asks me to help her go bra shopping, and clamor about drag race, while I stare blanky, befuddled.
Another important boon is what dignity means in a Christian mindset. To dignify someone else is one of the main tenets of Christian virtue. The corporal and spiritual acts of mercy, as well as Liberation Theology, are rooted in promoting human dignity. To be a Child of God is to be born with innate dignity that is owed to you. It is honoring your human soul. Instead of focusing on our own pride, we can instead ask others to dignify us. To me, this feels like a much stronger value to uplift for the sheer rhetorical factor – whereas pride focuses on us taking space, dignity humbly acknowledges our space innate to us and asks others to respect it. We will always have to live with traditional religious types, especially us gays who live in much more religious and conservative areas, let’s not forget gays who are part of traditional religious institutions, so let us remember that reality, especially if you happen to be in some progressive and ivory tower bubble.
Though you may not necessarily care about the thoughts and machinations of people who disagree with your existence (though Sun Tzu would suggest we know exactly how our “enemies” think), I would like for us to consider what truly makes something a sin – without any specific religious or spiritual understanding of the term. From my perspective, from a perennial lens, I would suggest that sin is anything that produces negative outcomes from the act itself, in an attempt to summarize the function of sin in a cultural context. Socially, no one likes an overly prideful person – we soon wish and maybe love to see them being knocked down off their high horse. Why? Because their pride is undeserved if it isn’t produced from any accomplishments. Tasteful pride should equate with accomplishments, but even someone humble with their accomplishments is preferred to those who brag about them – a quiet, wise innate esteem is preferred. Why do we socially dislike unearned pride? I would argue at least in part because pride itself produces negative outcomes from the act itself, thus a sin. This may be why so many value systems negatively associate this behavior.
Pride, as a sin, can create negative outcomes within the act itself, and at the very least facilitates many bad outcomes. Inherently, pride causes us to be uncritical of ourselves. When we are uncritical of ourselves, we often do some of the most stupid things we can do. This is because being uncritical of yourself is a form of self-indulgence, where we are unable to grow, unable to think outside our narrow scope, and unable to see things as they truly are and how they could be. The uncritical man goes around life never questioning things and just drones away, never rising to fuller potential, and he makes avoidable mistakes and falls for traps due to poor judgment. At worst, the uncritical man does things actively against his best interests, such as reckless sex, breaking the law, not caring for your health, and so on, really anything that makes you dig the hole deeper. You assume you know the way of the land, preventing you from checking your map, and then you get lost. While being entirely critical and always questioning oneself is unhealthy and not conducive to growth, being uncritical is equally a mistake. Now, consider the concept of pride when you are responsible for other people – as a leader, pride isn’t just your downfall but also the downfall of everyone else who depends on your sound judgment.
There are certainly many missteps the gay community has taken, either as individuals or as representatives of a larger group and idea, which would have been avoided if we considered to not be prideful and questioned ourselves. Those missteps are for other essays, but I am sure you can think of many scenarios. In this manner, pride creates a veneer of quality that quickly tarnishes when it goes unquestioned (J’Lo anyone?). Essentially, pride is a trait that prevents us from being uncritical of ourselves, so we never grow and make avoidable and possibly catastrophic mistakes.