From Shame to Pride

Over the last three quarters of a century, I’ve been witness to some pretty odd history, the distance from shame to pride being one of many. Today, the day after Roe v Wade was ‘overturned’ by the US Supreme Court, (the day I wrote this essay) I would like to reflect on that journey…

In 2022, my three minor-aged grandchildren all are aware of the words and lifestyles that were only hushed whispers when I was their age in the 50’s. I had no idea what a homosexual was, nor would I have recognised the word. I remember my brother who was in his mid teens at the time, referring to my favourite film star, Debbie Reynolds, as a lesbian. He made it sound dirty, to hurt me, like he did so many things, but mom dismissed it and said he meant thespian.

When I was in Bible school years later, in the late 60’s, I came across homosexuals for the first time, and learned a little of what they practiced. Instinctively I found such behaviour repulsive, but then so did most people of the day. Mind you, the school was situated in San Francisco, so that wasn’t the end of my discoveries. I also learned that friends and acquaintances from school were indulging in affairs, being kicked off the campus and ultimately out of said bible school. It was also around the time that famed evangelist David Wilkerson had opened Teen Challenge in New York City. He came to speak at a local Youth for Christ event I went to and shared how homosexuality was the hardest sin from which to be delivered. As if that wasn’t enough, my mother informed me in a lengthy phone call how someone we knew was arrested for ‘buggery’ as it was known in those days, especially when it involved a minor. I was devastated; she a little more pragmatic, hopeful that his court assigned therapy would cure him of it. That’s a long story, and not mine to tell, but it brought a way out there nastiness rather closer to home. And it filled me with shame and sorrow! Because back then, shame was a real thing. What it didn’t fill me with was hate.

The 60’s was also infamous for the sexual revolution: free love (whose costs were innumerable); the Pill, which promised protection from unwanted pregnancy after all the free love; and finally, the undoing of moral underpinnings, the end of ‘shame’!

The AIDS ‘epidemic’ brought the issue to the forefront during the 80’s, with Rock Hudson, its poster boy. A new word was coined to fight back against any opposition: ‘homophobia’. Anyone who found the gay lifestyle repulsive from the 80’s onwards were now considered homophobes, and treated with disdain by a growing number in the media. Hollywood helped to ‘normalise’ the lifestyle through television in particular to make insidious inroads on the family, particularly by making the nicest, most normal characters the gay ones. Only a few saw the agenda for what it was because it came wearing the faces of well-known, and loveable characters. Anyone remember Billy Crystal from Soap? It was a series I enjoyed (what we would call guilty pleasures) despite his character’s proclivities, and in large part because he looked so benign, so sweet, non-threatening, and so…normal! I can’t believe how naïve I was then! Of course, with all the normalisation going on, no one actually showed what the practice looked like. Even today, it’s shown as essentially heterosexual but with same sex partners. Maybe because while simulated sex between opposite sexes is titillating for the masses, the same cannot be said of same sex sex!

Perhaps because of my advanced age and adherence to the Christian faith, it surprises me, even shocks me a little to realise that there are those who claim the same faith, but do not hold to virtues that didn’t seem so odd 50-60 years ago: chastity, modesty, humility, gentleness and kindness. Instead even many professing Christians today have sex before marriage, practice exhibitionism to varying degrees, have replaced humility with pride, even elevating it to the highest of virtues, and swear like sailers! There is no shame anymore, because there is nothing to be ashamed of, except intolerance, and even that is applied with singular one sidedness! As for gentleness and kindness they seem absent from any discussion on the merits of…well, any subject! When was the last time people engaged in vigorous debate in which both sides attributed the same good conscience to the other side, and each given a voice? A discussion for another time…

Well, in 2022, we have moved far beyond decriminalisation of perversions, (and maybe that’s not a bad thing) to acceptance. But the perverse agenda reveals itself now in actually encouraging youngsters to question their gender, and not just accept the alphabet crowd, but affirm the ‘right’ness of all that is wrong. Aided by a woeful lack of understanding and knowledge of history, of all that has come and gone before, let alone of biology, children and young adults today are more in tune with fantasy than reality, totally enthralled with what isn’t real and utterly bored by what is.

There may be some excuse for the young, but what about those who know better, who can understand what is at stake in the new woke world? We have people of the same sex believing they can marry and create a proper family, despite their children being deprived of at least one natural parent; any sane adult knows it’s a deception, but if it only hurts children, who, as we know are pretty much expendable from conception, then it’s all good. As for believing one can choose their sex, maybe even their colour, and age…it’s particularly troubling that supposedly qualified doctors and psychiatrists are supporting this insanity! What’s worse, the younger a person is, the more likely the support those physicians will offer!

By that logic…forget it, there is no logic, just nonsense. You know, there used to be a saying: if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. It’s a fantasy, and I don’t believe for a moment that Walt Disney wanted the world to actually live in Fantasyland!

And finally, we come to the word upon which much of this hangs, a word which is not cause for celebration, though hoisting its multicoloured flag might indicate otherwise. Of course, I’m referring to the flagrant, and blasphemous, appropriation of God’s beloved symbol of hope, the rainbow. It has been chosen as the new symbol of pride. But is it? The real rainbow consists of 7 colours, set in the sky, appearing after every rain to remind us of God’s love and of His promise to never destroy mankind with a flood again. The symbol of pride, a sin which is heartily condemned in scripture, has only 6 colours, 6 being the number of man. But the very name which serves as the umbrella for all these perversions, pride should inform those old enough, smart enough, Christian enough, that it is not a good thing. People are expressing their pride in behaviour which just 50-60 years ago would have been cause for great shame.

How does abortion fit into this narrative? Like many virtues long since abandoned when shame was exchanged for pride, the instinct to nurture and protect has been supplanted by the commitment to self-indulgence. No longer does a woman naturally want to protect her unborn child from danger (and yes, it is a child growing in her womb, not a rabbit!), her well-being is paramount. One of my favourite films as a young adult was ‘Love with a Proper Stranger’ with Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen. When faced with ending her unintended pregnancy, she convinced her ‘lover’ of one night to take her to an abortion doctor, and this was before they were legal. Her reaction to the run-down place, to the shady people running it was instinctive. Of course, she couldn’t go through with it, good catholic girl that she was. Even more telling, the young man couldn’t let her! It was a movie with a happy ending, but it struck me at the time: what kind of people are interested in killing babies, and under those awful conditions? Of course such back alley abortions were awful, and I know people are afraid those days will return, but they won’t. Despite the basic wrongness of abortion, there are other wrongs inherent in some situations which might conceivably make it the lesser evil. I’m trying to apply that logic to taking life in general, the closest being in civil defence. A policeman kills a person to protect others. A country takes up arms against another to prevent the expansion of atrocities. And despite what many believe, doctors have been quietly performing abortions for much longer than Roe v Wade, and based for the most part on sympathy, which is the card most pro-choice folks play. I sincerely doubt that card will disappear anytime soon, when there is a need for it.

The problem, as I see it, with the pro-choice movement, is that there is only one choice under consideration in a situation which involves two individuals, two bodies, if you will, not just one. And the more we learn about the baby in the womb, the more we learn of its uniqueness, and its completeness as a human being. The Bible says we were formed in the womb by Him and that children are a reward from Him. As Christians, there is no way we can not stand in awe at the awesomeness of conception. I’ve seen videos of the spark that occurs at conception, probably from test tube fertilisations, but evidence that something happens at conception. At what point does life begin? Since it’s life we’re talking about, shouldn’t we err on the side of life? So the Supreme Court decided that abortion is not a constitutional right, but life actually is!

I am so disheartened to read the negative, angry, and inflamed comments from friends on my Facebook page and they may feel the same way about my post, but no one has to read it, after all. I’d love to change some of their minds about this, and to help them understand the joy that so many believers feel about this decision; I’d love to see my Christian friends reevaluate their anger and ask themselves why they are so adamant that mothers be able to kill their unborn for any reason, at any point in the pregnancy, and nowadays, that point is up to birth! Is that a choice they wanted? Ronald Reagan once pointed out that all the people advocating for the right to abort, did, in fact, survive their own birth!

Why isn’t the natural, instinctive response to the 60 plus million lives ended by their mother’s choice not one of horror?

I wrote this over a year ago and I realize it ends rather abruptly, so I wonder if there is more I can add, to bring it round to my starting point, From shame to pride…I have since read and listened to many authors and speakers on the subject and have a couple for your consideration. One is the book Five Lies of Our Time by Rosaria Butterfield. Another is a series of sermons on YouTube by Gary Hamrick, with a fairly recent one being A Biblical Response to the Transing of America. There is more information out there, I’m sure, but the field of apologetics is intense at times, well, all the time, really.