Heaven on Earth

It's Pride Season.

Yawn.

I've caught all sorts of strange looks, comments, and hell this month when I said I'd rather attend a combine demolition derby in Lind, Washington than Spokane's or Seattle's or Portland's contribution to the phenomenon of pride.

Then it was inferred that as if by not attending I was a traitor or something. One person told me that if a "normal guy like me doesn't attend" than what hope do gays have to gain further acceptance?

No guilt there.

I finally responded that our future is based more on daily interaction than one big drunken annual parade.

And that for the record, I know plenty of people who would be the last to label me as anything close to their definition of "normal".

Normal, just like everything else, is in the eye of the beholder.

In my case, not attending Pride is not about self hatred or about being stuck living all Brokeback Mountain scaredy cat in the closet or trying to be terminally unique just for the sake of ultimate diversity. Aquarius's live to swim upstream against the flow, but it's not about that either. When I need to swim upstream against the current, I do it.

I'd probably drown in the process, but that's another story.

My lack of interest in Pride falls into the reality that on the few occasions, usually about once a decade, when I have ventured near a pride parade, I haven't felt all that good about the experience.

There I said it and Oh God, now I am for sure going to gay hell. Not that I am the first to say Pride sucks, but I know I've just committed the ultimate unforgivable lavender sin-not feeling proud about gay pride. There goes my Bud Light endorsement.

The depth of this brotherhood of in-common commonality has to extend far beyond a parade day. Religious intolerance and discrimination still gets under my skin, but so does the phrase "honor diversity".

I don't see the need to honor everything under the sun. I don't honor terrorism. I don't honor greed. I don't honor honor killings. I don't honor dishonesty. I don't honor neo cons or communists. And I really have no room in my heart to appreciate all the cultures that slaughter human dignity, freedom and creativity on a regular basis. I certainly don't want to get into the trap of honoring every human behavior, "even if it doesn't hurt anyone else" or march to support activities that someone, somewhere once defined as consensual. Meth houses are definitely consensual and users claim they aren't harming anyone else as they tweak their brains into no man's land...you get the point.

To me "Pride" is about living day in and day out, honestly just where you are. Sexual orientation is not a quality that makes one person better or worse, more gifted or understanding, more fabulous and sensual than anyone else. Sexual orientation is just one of the millions of different ways that humans are created by God to witness the miracle of existence.

And I choose to witness that magic right here, looking at a big red barn, out in the middle of nowhere. Accompanied by the wind, the ospreys, and the nearing of the summer solstice.

Sounds a bit arrogant and prideful, don't ya think?