If it took a deadly sin to undo the damage done by shame-a condition imposed on us, not something we did to ourselves-surely Eva, Greg, and Thom would understand. We searched for an antidote that would purge us of this poison, and found it in pride. Shame kept us closeted and fearful, made our oppression possible, and led some of us to write very bad plays and wear too-tight trousers. And straights weren't the only ones who viewed homosexuality as disgraceful-most gays and lesbians did too. Webster's defines shame as "a condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute," and until the late '60s, shame was a poison that killed queers. Gays and lesbians embraced the sin of pride 30 years ago to combat something that was, at the time, a much deadlier problem for queers than any of Evagrius' wicked passions or Greg's capital vices: shame. This made pride not only the deadliest of sins, but "the beginning of all sin." Thomas Aquinas chimed in, observing that before a person could lust like a weasel or go green with envy, he first had to commit the sin of pride. Gregory's revised list-pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust-were known to his contemporaries as the Seven Capital Vices. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great took Evagrius' list and cut it down to seven, combining some (sloth and sadness, vainglory and pride), and adding a brand new sin, envy. He listed them in ascending order of all-around wickedness: gluttony, lust, greed, sadness, anger, sloth, vainglory, and pride. And it's not just any sin but the sin Pope Gregory the Great called "the queen of them all."Īn early Christian monk, Evagrius of Pontus, made a list of "wicked human passions," of which he determined there were eight. FOR A GROUP OF PEOPLE long labeled sinners-and understandably sensitive to the charge, which is still made-it's more than a little ironic that gays and lesbians should select a sin as our annual rallying cry.