By Rubashov
All across America, parents want the right to control the sexual indoctrination of their children. They are trying to re-establish primacy over when and what their children will be exposed to. Until recently, parental primacy over such matters was a given – universally accepted. My house, my rules.
Special interest money – their lobbyists and activists – ran a successful stealth campaign that undermined parental rights. Until the COVID pandemic sent school children home and distance learning exposed their parents to the curriculum they were learning from. The backlash was predictable.
Many in the academic, media, corporate, and political establishment are in hock to the special interest money that looks upon public schools as their house, their rules. Of course, what they forget is that property tax payers pay for most of the public education in New Jersey – and income tax payers pay for the rest. That’s whose house it is. The establishment are really just a group of squatters. Illegal trespassers. Which is why they need to cheat.
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If you are a member of one of the world’s traditional religions – and literally billions of people are (billions) – the word “pride” carries a warning with it. Throughout the world’s great faiths, “pride” is something to keep in check. The Buddha warned to “let go of anger, let go of pride.” In Hinduism, pride is a poison that presents an obstacle to one's peace and happiness. Islam warns us that “evil is the abode of pride.”
In the Christian tradition, pride is the original sin. Thomas Aquinas argued that all other sins stem from Pride, making this the root sin and the most important to focus on: “Inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin...the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule.”
In modern America (and elsewhere in the West) we no longer celebrate many of the Christian holidays, but we do celebrate the Advent-long festival of Pride, named after one of the seven deadly sins of the Bible (listed, in order, as “pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth”). What anthropologists of the future will make of it we can only guess?
Who came up with such a name might be their first question? Apparently, it is generally accepted that the term was first used during an act of violence – specifically, a riot, directed at the police. Think of it as if America celebrated the Boston Massacre instead of Independence Day. The Stonewall Riot (“Stonewall” being the name of a bar) took place on June 28, 1969. It has also been called the Stonewall Uprising and the Stonewall Insurrection. The term “Pride” came from the brain of one of the insurrectionists, Brenda Howard, known as the “Mother of Pride”.
Brenda Howard was a Marxist and anti-war activist who became a feminist because she believed the anti-war movement was too dominated by men. According to Wikipedia: “In 1987 Howard helped found the New York Area Bisexual Network to help co-ordinate services to the region's growing Bisexual community. She was also an active member of the early bisexual political activist group BiPAC/Bialogue, a Regional Organizer for BiNet USA, a co-facilitator of the Bisexual S/M Discussion Group and a founder of the nation's first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals. On a national level, Howard's activism included work on both the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation where she was female co-chair of the leather contingent and Stonewall 25 in 1994. In addition to being openly bisexual, Howard was openly polyamorous and involved in BDSM.”
That said, Brenda Howard’s most profound accomplishment must be her etymological feat of turning what had been every religion’s sin – Pride – into America’s foremost high holy month. A stunning achievement by any measure.
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The advance of so much of the “Pride” agenda has been done apart from the democratic process. Public pressure, threats, name-calling, and ostracization have featured heavily in moving the agenda forward. Special interest group lobbying, political contributions, and appointed judiciaries won victories instead of democratic argument and the votes of both legislatures and electorates. America didn’t get it done the way countries like Ireland did, by a democratic vote of the people, and so the winners have never been comfortable in the way that those who win the hearts and minds of actual voters can be.
And so the ceaseless, insecure demands continue. The insistence that more can always be done… must always be done. What should have been a celebration of “live and let live” or “do your own thing” has taken the form of religious proselytization – a replacement religion of a kind America has never had: Standardized, mandatory, practiced everywhere and by everyone… or else, face the consequences.
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Democracy requires humility. It requires the wisdom to reject certainty, that one side has all the answers, and the good nature to accept that “this time we lost but there is aways next time”. Religion is not like that. Religion seeks adherence because it believes that there is only one truth and that everyone should accept it. That is how “Pride” resembles a religion – because it leads otherwise honorable people to subvert democratic solutions in favor of “getting the job done, one way or the other”.
And so, we come to the NJGOP and its Chairman, Bob Hugin. Instead of calling for a meeting of the members of the Republican State Committee, to put before them the question of whether they wanted the NJGOP to formally go on the record as celebrating the secular/religious holiday of “Pride Month” (just as they acknowledge and celebrate the secular/religious holiday of Christmas), either Hugin or someone in authority at the NJGOP arbitrarily did so without a vote. The May meeting was cancelled. A June meeting has yet to be held.
Sussex County’s Nick D'Agostino, the newest member of the Republican State Committee, bravely took on the party. Under the “Pride flag” posted on the NJGOP’s website, Nick wrote:
“You don’t speak for all of us in the NJGOP. Many of us believe the American Flag represent ALL of us and refuse to pander to the woke left. Many of us believe God is in control and not cancel culture. Many of us understand that voters choosing between a Democrat and a wannabe Democrat, will choose the actual Democrat… almost every time. Ultimately though, the people are in charge. They are waking up and they are sick of losing elections and their freedoms. Soon, every weak Republican will be replaced with true patriots and principled conservatives. Then, and only then, NJ will turn red!”
Nick D'Agostino spoke up for democratic principles and the consent of the governed. Nick spoke truth to power. That took guts and leadership. Godspeed.
