This season, known in gay circles simply as "Pride," will be particularly emotional because of the gay marriage avalanche. While gays and lesbians have much to be proud of (such as early organizing around the devastating AIDS epidemic) gay history since Stonewall is unfortunately stained with moments of selfishness and arrogance - traits that ironically were once themselves called "pride," back when that wasn't a compliment.

Having experienced the closet and coming out as a gay man in my late teens, I understand the common gay experience of overcoming shame and the constant need to reassure your self-esteem. But I've also come to realize that sometimes gay esteem is not without victims, and I believe it's time to balance out gay pride with some gay humility.

To examine the gay community's self-absorption, look no further than the event celebrated this month that has been commemorated with parades for four decades: the "Stonewall Rebellion."

WHY IS IT that in all that time, no gay leader has acknowledged that there were non-gay victims at that event, which we should regret, if not apologize for?

Stonewall was sparked by a legitimate bar raid on an unlicensed, Mafia-run drinking establishment. The gay "heroes" threw glass bottles and bricks at police, and at one point tried to set the building on fire while people were still inside.

Even if you celebrate Stonewall for sparking feelings of gay pride and leading to nationwide community organizing, shouldn't we acknowledge that our self-esteem didn't have to come at the expense of other people's safety?

Another example: During the late 1980s and early '90s, gay activists insisted that a wave of "heterosexual AIDS" was just around the corner in the United States, even though no data existed proving that was going to happen - and even though HIV spread through heterosexual sex has always been and continues to be a small percentage of the transmissions of the virus in the U.S.

Out of fear that Americans wouldn't devote enough energy to treating and curing a disease spread mostly through drug use and gay sex, AIDS activists consciously distorted the size of the minuscule threat to Americans who didn't use drugs or have gay sex. As a result, huge sums were wasted on education about and prevention of a "coming health epidemic" that would never materialize.

People made major lifestyle changes to protect themselves from what was essentially a phantom menace.

The gay parenting movement is still more evidence of the fundamental selfishness of post-Stonewall gay America.

While many gay couples bring parentless children into their homes in an act of loving and giving, thousands of others who could have adopted use various technologies and arrangements to make babies who from the start either have no mother or no father. This act - thoughtless to one's own child - is almost never criticized in the gay community, which is so focused on everyone's freedom and self-esteem that it doesn't seem to want to notice that children are surely being hurt by being denied upfront the right to have both a mother and a father.

The gay and lesbian community today is infected with what I like to call "equality mania" - the belief that there's nothing more important than total equality between gays and straights, no matter what the cost.

They are willing to sacrifice other good and important values - like the religious freedom of same-sex marriage opponents, the welfare of children and (in the case of gays in the military) even national security - in the name of gay equality.

Forty years into this particular social movement, it's not too late to re-evaluate our priorities and find more selfless ways to give gays and lesbians what they really need. *

David Benkof is the author of "Gay Essentials: Facts for Your Queer Brain" (Alyson, 1999). He blogs at GaysDefendMarriage.com and can be reached at DavidBenkof@aol.com.