As the calendar flips to July, what a welcome transition it is to celebrate a worthy occasion of our nation’s birthday. After a month of you know what, President Biden back in June said, “LGBTQI+ Americans are defiantly and unapologetically proud…”

“Pride,” Thomas Jefferson said, “costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.” Ben Franklin also remarked, “Friends and neighbors complain that taxes are indeed very heavy… but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly.”

Making the connection between pride and folly official, President Biden claiming constitutional authority proclaimed June 2023 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month, vainly spiritualizing it with the words “in the year of our Lord” and imploring us “to wave [the] flags of pride high.”

While Biden officially accepts, affirms, and esteems “pride,” our nation’s founders expressed the exact opposite. Before our country declared independence, John Hancock called on the colonies and marked May 17th 1776 “as a day of HUMILIATION, FASTING, and PRAYER; that we may with united hearts confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere, repentance and amendment of life, appease [God’s] righteous displeasure and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness…”

It did not stop in 1776. Such a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer was declared by governors and presidents, like John Adams and James Madison. One of the most noteworthy declarations for “humiliation” came from Abraham Lincoln, mere months before the Battle of Gettysburg, when he observed how the nation had “forgotten God” and was “too proud” to pray to Him.

Known for her abrasive agitation as a fanatical forerunner to pride month, Brenda Howard proudly wore the title of “Mother of Pride.” How much closer can a “mother of pride” get to the flamboyant female figure garbed in gaudy purple in Revelation 17? The glittering pride flag of a hijacked rainbow of God’s original one makes waves everywhere not symbolizing God’s mercy but man’s haughty ideology.

Was humility present in pride during a month entirely devoted to it? Did the drag queens pridefully parading in NYC in June chant, “Be humble” or “We’re here. We’re queer. We’re coming for your children?” When does pride reach the line of enough? According to Rachel Levine, Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health, we need a summer of it.

It’s not pride but humility in all of us that’s needed urgently. There was neither a pride flag for a month of pride at the founding of our nation, nor was there a flag of humility for humility month. If both options were present then, would those God-fearing individuals who led the nation through thick-and-thin against great odds have chosen the flag of lustrous colors for pride or a flag of off-color sackcloth for humility? Our beloved nation can’t afford more pride of the ungodly sort but a humility that turns us contritely to God.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis is a Frewsburg resident.