Pride on Campus

This is the name of the RDC student group that defends and promotes a variety of sexual preferences except, of course, heterosexuality, which need not be defended. The list of "alternative lifestyles" that they support has become so long that I wonder how long it will be before they decide to shorten it to something more reasonable, such as, I don't know... non-heterosexual.

Now, before anyone starts calling me the traditional names for having tried to describe what Pride on Campus is, let me state that I am totally opposed to discrimination against anyone on the basis of what turns them on in the sexual sphere. I am also appalled and disgusted by any act of violence - verbal, physical or of any other type - against individuals, especially when it is motivated by differences of gender, race, culture or sexual orientation. So, if you don't want to look silly, don't say I am a homophobe, whatever that means (Hey, I notice now that Blogspot's spell checker does not even have that word! Is there a conspiracy?)

Of course, as a catholic, I do not share for a minute the idea that all lifestyles are to be equally respected, not that any sexual attraction should be equally considered and valued. If you want to know (really want to know, rather than rhetorically ask) what the Catholic Church teaches in this area and why, there are plenty of documents available, so I will not go further into that.

But I have often wondered why so many non-heterosexual groups, including this one, include the word "pride" in their name. Granted, the word pride is one of those words that has acquired different nuances of meanings over the years and it is often used now to indicate approval and/or satisfaction for certain accomplishments ("I am proud of my students' performance in the last exam." "I am proud of having taken my stats book to a reasonable state" etc.)

But it seems to me that the meaning referred to by "Pride on Campus", "Gay Pride days" etc is of the original sort: "I like myself, I consider what I do as the standard behaviour or even the ideal to strive for and don't you tell me that I am wrong because that is out of discussion." In other words, this is the kind of pride that affected a couple of people in a middle-eastern garden a few years back.

In Catholic theology pride is a sin, in fact the primary sin, to which all others are related and with good reason. Pride turns us within ourselves, makes us focus on number 1 (me) and makes us blind and deaf to any input that others offer to us. As such it leads to death, meaning spiritual, intellectual and personal, if not physical death. Of course this view is shared by many other religious groups, christian and otherwise, and I am sure that non-heterosexuals, many of whom are very smart and well educated, are aware of this. So why do they use that word? Why not "Sexual freedom on Campus" or "Sexual alternatives parade"?

Why so much emphasis on "pride"?