Fairness - The Commentary

By now everyone should know that June is going to be celebrated as LGBTQ+ “Pride Month.” That’s well-established in cultures across the globe whether anyone else likes it or not. Anti-LGBTQ forces use the public celebration to their advantage - to raise more money in their fear-based fight to roll back equal rights and to turn public ire against almost anyone who doesn’t feel ashamed about LGBTQ people. Their gripe often comes down to the fact that if LGBTQ people have to be around they just can’t stand that those LGBTQ people look and act proud . A self-identified straight guy who’s proud of the fact that his whole career is one where he kicks footballs around for money and notoriety recently told a captive conservative Roman Catholic commencement audience about his kind of Catholic “pride” in contrast. He righteously boasted that his is: "not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, but true God-centered pride." Such well-worn claims are foist...

Every generation that has ever existed on the planet, it appears, has complained about its younger generations . In the 4 th century B.C.E., to cite one example, Aristotle wrote: “[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances.…They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.” Psychologists have studied the why behind it. And at the heart of the phenomenon, they seem to agree , is flawed memory of what younger generations were like in the past, especially one’s own. As poet Adrienne Rich, put it: “Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around.” This creates divisive and unhelpful generational feuds. So, as one writer confidently predicts : “Today’s ‘OK boomer’ Gen Z will complain about the youth one day.” “It’s safe to assume this is an immortal aspect of human society: Young people always exist, and older people will always complain about them. Young people, in turn, always say, ‘Ugh, o...