A Deadly Sin called Pride

Even though I am not a Christian, I had to learn about the `Seven Deadly Sins´ during my childhood. And Pride is one of them. During the last years, I had many conversations about those deadly sins and their importance for our lives. Although I am nowhere close to agree to the bible and what religion does to humankind, we should avoid committing those deadly sins. Our lives would be more healthy in all directions.

Ever since this challenge came up, I started thinking about it and what it means to me personally. As you already suspect, I am not as fond of pride as the others for many reasons. However, I acknowledge what it has given to the community during the last decades.

There was a time, when we needed to stand up for our rights and tell the world that we are proud of who we are. And indeed, we still should be self-confident of who we are, no matter what sexuality we have. Nevertheless, the moment we accept to be proud, the moment we let pride enter our lives, we also start putting us about others, yet our worth is neither higher nor lower than everyone else's.

For me, and I had the bad fortune to experience it a lot during the last years, pride means to exchange one intolerance with another one.

Before, we had to face discrimination for not being `normal´ and suddenly that changed to different subjects. In fact, the pride community is one of the most intolerant communities in this world. May it be your age, your look, your queerness, or whatever, you face quite a lot of discriminations within the protected space of this community.

Nowadays, pride means to come out of the closet, straight into a box to get labeled again and again. And with every label, with every box you get put in, discrimination and intolerance appear. And the worst of all, this community gets split into smaller groups that have to face the homophobia from the outer world, as well as the intolerance within the overall community.

During the last years, we seem to have reached the turning point. The more rights we got, the less satisfied we became; we wanted more and most of all; we wanted to be acknowledged as something special. Suddenly we need more protective laws than the human rights provide. A crime against a member of the LGBTQIA+ community should be something different from a crime against a straight person, although it actually is the same; for example: Murder is murder, no matter what the reason is.

That is one reason the homophobia is rising again. The support is falling apart, the unity of the community is falling apart. Every new box, every new label weakens our rights.

And pride is one of the reason this fight for our human rights is falling apart. Pride means to close the own eyes towards others and pride also opens the door to intolerance and discrimination.

Pride always comes before the fall.

I am fully aware that I will receive criticism for this; however, we need to state the problems; we need to find solutions that will unite all of us and we need to find them before we lose what we gained. Pride should not stand in our way as it does today.

For me, there is no place for pride, no place for intolerance (unless it is against intolerance) and discrimination. Of course, I also prefer some things to others, but there is neither a need to exclude anyone, nor to put it on a poster to show the world. Every one should have the same right, as the human rights already give us.

Are we really different human beings that need special laws, that need more acknowledgement than straight persons?