Minneapolis this weekend has hundreds of thousands of people celebrating LGBT Pride month, a month-long (June) celebration and remembering and prideful awareness of all things lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
A lot of conservatives are starting to pull back on this. I have not thought much about it one way or the other, but to get up to speed on this important topic, I am taking notes on an excerpt of Prager’s 6/1/2023 Fireside Chat on this subject, and then will respond to his criticisms of this celebration.
Prager: LGBT Pride Month is not a meaningful phrase though he knows why it is being done. This movement and event is an extension of group pride rallies. Prager does not believe in group pride, even those celebrating his Jewish group.
Dennis never had in him the concept or idolization of groupthink (I am similar, and would argue that individual-living individuators could not engage in groupthink or worry about group pride steeped in the groups that they grew out of, though they would enjoy being members of those derivational personal associations that they sprang from organically.).
Dennis offers that the great American ideal that the individual is sacrosanct,(I add: this fetishizing one favorite or dominant group-affiliation as one’s cause for living is what collectivists and Leftists engage in, and they seek to take over America and the world to gain power for their group, supreme over all other rival groups, and this is assuming that life is an endless strife and warring of group versus group, the eternal power struggle between the victors and rulers versus the vanquished and ruled.), and he accepts that so any movement of group pride like LGBT Pride Month flouts this American tradition, so he opposes them on these grounds, and he is correct and I side with him.
I say: we should develop as individuals and our group-affiliations inform our moral choices, but are not moral ends in themselves. Prager accepts only two groups as being worth noting—dividing people into the decent and the indecent categories (And our moral worth or status is what we have created for ourselves by our actions and choices, and this character-assignation is individual and personal, not collective, and general to thousands of people, I add.)
Prager does not divide the world into gay and straight, or Jew and non-Jew, American or non-American. Black and white. He learned this wisdom from Viktor Frankl, and it is illuminating. He is only concerned if you are a good person or not, and it is hard to be good, and that is the greatest achievement of one’s life.
One’s group association is natural, a given, and one did not achieve anything so why are you proud of what you are, but you did not work hard to become it, like what happens when you control yourself and become a good person.
No group is good or evil, to be condemned or praised or celebrated, because goodness or praiseworthiness (I add as implicit in Prager’s argument here.) is not a choice but is what one is born with, but individual choosing to become a good person can be celebrated, or denounced and communally shamed if one elects to be a bad or wicked person.
What does this all mean, Prager asks. It means that society must celebrate the LGBT movement, not just tolerate it, the old liberal idea. The Left-wing idea (command for all Americans to groupthink and elevate LGBT prominence and social elevation, I add) is that we must celebrate the LGBT movement, but Prager refuses to celebrate it, though he tolerates them and would not bother them in any way if they are sane, consenting adults. I agree.
Prager criticizes the Pride movement as an imposition upon society that you MUST celebrate this movement. Dennis refuses to go along, although it is our duty to treat all kindly. He thinks it is tragic that men and women seek to transition, and he loves them and wishes them well, but he will not celebrate their worldview. He would accept their transitioning, leave them in peace, and call them by their preferred pronoun but not celebrate them. He will not allow children to transition. He will not be joining the celebration of the Pride Month, and I agree.
Dennis wants no pride months for groups of any kind. For example, black pride movement celebrates blacks if they are not conservative blacks like Larry Elder or Thomas Sowell, and Gay Pride groups denounce conservative Dave Rubin.
What Dennis is criticizing is that all these group-pride movements are intersectional but identical movements that are just fronts for Marxism, groupist and collectivist values and power-grabbing, and they are not for the individual members in those groups. These fanatics reject you if you do not submit immediately and wholeheartedly conform to their Left-wing values.
Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager both celebrate the sacrosanct prominence of the ideal of the individual in Western culture, and they are close to understanding my individuators emphasis on individual-living and maverizing first as the ethical choice for the good person, while secondarily in one’s life non-individuating and group-living as a minority behavior and personal life style.
To conclude, Dennis is right in urging the ending of pride months of any kind, for groups should be enjoyed but not culturally celebrated as in need of ascendant worships as superior by all members of the society.
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