The Stonewall Riots of 1969 were a fitting origin story for what would later come to be known as “Pride Month.” The riots — sparked by a group of cross-dressers at a gay bar that was raided by police in New York’s Greenwich Village — have earned a kind of religious reverence in the mythology of the LGBT movement and its annual holy month. (“Why we owe Pride to black transgender women who threw bricks at cops,” read one 2019 USA Today headline). Accounts of the event differ: Some suggest “that the tipping point came when police tried to arrest a gender-nonconforming ‘butch’ lesbian,” while others argue “it was a Black trans woman.” But whichever sexually confused barfly threw the first brick, the riot that followed has been afforded its own month-long commemoration — one-twelfth of the calendar year — replete with generous indulgences, loyalty oaths, and displays of solidarity from practically every major institution in America, and the inheritors of its legacy take to the streets every year to grace the public with graphic displays of their own sexual urges that would make even the original patrons of Stonewall blush.

This tradition was formally institutionalized in the political calendar by Bill Clinton in 1999, and has since become a mainstay of modern American life. Antiquated American traditions such as President’s Day — previously George Washington’s birthday, before it was watered down to its more ecumenical modern form — and Memorial Day are only afforded 24 hours, and others, such as Columbus Day, are rapidly going the way of the dodo bird completely. But Pride Month, like Black History Month in February, is given the entire month of June.

Whether or not enjoying homosexual sex is really something to be proud of is not a question that is asked, much less answered, very often these days. The explanation for Pride, when it is offered, tends to be something along the lines of honoring those who are “living their authentic selves.” Devoting countless dollars, political kowtowing, festivities, and a flurry of corporate product-hawking to celebrate the fearless indulgence of an unusual set of sexual urges likely would have struck previous generations of Americans as bizarre. But today, the entire affair has become so entrenched in the public conscience that people rarely stop to even question the premise at all.

As a political matter, however, there’s long been something bigger afoot with Pride Month than the mere veneration of licentiousness. The rainbow-colored kitsch that we will undoubtedly be inundated with next month is a ritualistic expression of a deeper set of social mores and beliefs, as most traditions are. Pride Month, like Black History Month, Juneteenth, and even MLK Day, are the symbols of a revolutionary transformation in the American self-conception, representing an altogether different nation and people, which even now is vying to delegitimize and replace the ideas, myths, culture, and identity of the old one.

The purpose of Pride Month, as an institution, is not merely sex and sexuality, but subversion. It is hardly a coincidence that the customs and symbols of the LGBT movements are so viscerally graphic and explicit, or that the activists who employ them often seem to revel in the offense they cause to Christians, conservatives, and just about anyone else associated with the old America. The half-naked men, gyrating suggestively in front of young children, the substitution of the American flag for the rainbow one, the topless men dressed as (and often surgically altered to resemble) women at the White House are meant to scandalize and offend. The now-common talk of “normalization” and “destigmatization” is the language of a distinctly and self-consciously political movement, which understands that they must mock, undermine, and delegitimize the old moral code before they can replace it with their own.

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