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Notes -
It's interesting that Vance can see the parallels between pride parades and civil religion, but I wonder if he can see how christianity and wokeness fit in. Pride parades are positive rites - they celebrate the existence of LGBTs without demonizing straight people. Then wokeness came along, and its core thesis was original sin: you are born racist, sexist, and homophobic, and only through listening to marginalized voices, unpacking your racism, and de-toxifying your masculinity can you ever hope to be saved.
I would argue that the shift from the Pride flag to the Progress Pride flag more explicitly aligns it with the hard left and makes it a more exclusionary movement. It is now a flag that excludes only one group (straight white people). And that's the flag that you see flown from government buildings and put up in school classrooms.
The Pride flag says "we're gay!". The Progress Pride flag says "We represent everybody but straight whites!". So it is kind of a short hand for the left coalition.
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