It’s a problematic word for me.

I’m pretty sure it’s one of the deadly sins in Judeo-Christian teaching.

It is sometimes called vainglory. Its antonym is humility.

It’s adjective is proud.

Now mostly we hear about Proud Boys. They are clearly proud of themselves, a gang of self-named folks who carry semi-automatic weapons. In my town, I have seen them storm up to the governor’s house in my neighborhood intimidating people.

I feel sure their mothers did the best job they could bringing them up to be kind and well-behaved. Bet those mamas aren’t proud.

I think sometimes my mother said, “I hope you’re proud of yourself!” and I don’t think she meant it in a nice way.

I sometimes say I am proud of one of my children. Since I occasionally helped them along their way, I can possibly justify saying that. “So proud of you for getting your driver’s license”, since I took them to an empty parking lot on Sunday afternoons to practice backing up and parallel parking.

But saying to a young friend, ” I’m proud of you for getting that new job,” makes no sense at all. I have no right to take pride in that.

As for me, I can’t remember the last time I felt proud of myself. That’s not a sin I regularly commit.

And I’ve aged-out of lust. But on the subject of sex (gender), I never felt proud about being heterosexual. My “gender-orientation” was not something I had anything to do with. It just was.

I deeply regret the pain people of other gender orientations suffer. They didn’t choose theirs either.

Last night, I watched a horrifying documentary on PBS titled “The Lavender Scare.” It tells the little-known story of an unrelenting campaign by the federal government to identify and fire employees suspected of being homosexual during the ’50’s. It included a clip of President Eisenhower speaking to it. Homosexual employees in federal jobs were thought to be dangerous because they could be bribed by the Communists into spying. One young woman in a desk job was described as “wearing severely tailored suits, having short hair, and using little lipstick.”

I knew nothing of this. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was well into my twenties before I heard the word homosexual.. I did hear the then derogatory word queer but I had no clue what queers did. To be honest, as a girl, I really didn’t know exactly what anyone did. It was the ’50’s.

Now, it’s Pride Month. So many groups want to be included that the initials for them has grown exponentially. It is presently LGBTQA+, I think. If I have excluded anyone, please forgive me. It’s unintentional. That pretty much includes everyone but me.

Maybe I should ask to be included since I support their cause, if not their pride. And I like their colorful flag.

Maybe I could start a group of my own. Its initials could be PCOWW. Presently Celibate Old White Woman. I bet you didn’t want to know that much about my sexual activities or lack thereof. That’s the way I feel about everyone’s sexual activities. It’s possibly the most private and personal thing we do in our whole lives.

On a related matter, I think one of the hardest challenges that a child and his/her family might face is to discover that the child was born in an inappropriate body. That cannot be kept private. The medical guidelines for dealing with that now include things which in some states parents are criminalized for.

Who knew until recently that in England the Sexual Offences Act 1967 marked the decriminalizing of “sodomy.” It was the first gay law reform there since 1533, when anal sex was made a crime during Henry VIII’s reign; all other sexual acts between men were outlawed in the Victorian era.

When you studied the “Ballad of Reading Gaol” in school, did you know Oscar Wilde wrote it when he went into exile in Normandy after being released from prison for “gross indecency.” I would have had no idea what that might have meant in any case and I’m sure my teacher would not have explained it.

I can think of so many things that are grossly indecent and none of them has anything to do with what people do in their private lives.

But I digress.

Back to pride and being proud of things, particularly things you had no control over and cannot rightfully take any credit for.

This is Pride Month. I think we now have a month for almost every oppressed group. I doubt that any of them win any supporters and possibly offend more folks than they win over.

I believe March is National Women’s History Month, which seems like a nice idea since historically women were neglected in history books.

I believe last month was South Pacific Americans Month.

I am a European American and do not feel offended that there is no month for that.

I’m not proud of being a woman or of European ancestry since neither really has anything to do with anything I ever did.

I believe people who were born in Texas are very proud of that, but really it’s only an accident of where their mothers happened to be when they gave birth.

My sins are many: sloth, envy, gluttony come to mind. Pride? Not so much.