Pride is an annual event in Brighton in which the gay and the good take to the streets and march to show they are proud of their sexuality. It feels more like a big party though, and very little like a political march, and at times in this town feels about as necessary as having a straight pride. Indeed, its not even called gay pride anymore, merely Brighton pride, as if it was simply created to celebrate being proud of living in Brighton. These were my thoughts before this years pride at least.

As a straight man attending pride I am far from a minority, and so when I invited my neighbour to join us I was surprised by his response ‘don’t want to look at mens bums thank you very much’, fair enough, bums may be seen, but I was surprised by the reaction of this normally pretty liberal neighbour. It seems for some people going to pride is a step too far, although of course, as everyone agrees what ‘they’ get up to in their own bedrooms is their own business.

Those of us with stomachs for it then watched the parade opposite the co-op in London Road, and observed another surprise. The national front appeared, all 7 of them, to a chorus of boos. Again for some reason I was surprised by their appearance, and it seemed unfair that they disturb the party. Others agreed, and a couple of people decided to run forward and tear down their (2) banners. Their leader, a extreme right wing racist from Saltdean called Pete was left holding a long wooden stick, which he then looked like he was preparing to charge into the crowd with. A fight broke out, and the 2 police which were there arrested a pride go-oer. These ‘people’ then stood their ground, along with at least one child, which is just plain criminal. Someone threw a bottle at them. What a surprise, a handful of nazi’s and hundreds of gay people and supporters, not a recipe for success. Oh - and in case you missed it, let me again re-iterate - they had children with them. I’m not going to bother to spell out the problem with the situation, but all we can do is feel sorry for the kids.

All this occurred before the march had started. This left the group holding sticks with one man holding a ban the GPA (gay police association) placard. When the GPA arrived a few moments later, leading the parade, they waved and cheered at the NF members. This inspired one elderly NF member wearing a furious scowl and looking every inch the pantomime villan to creep into the parade and start taking photos. People posed for him, assuming he was an official photographer and he then grimaced at them. On a more serious note - why was he taking the photos? Surely not to add to his ’special wall’.

After this the parade continued and the NF disappeared. After a fabulous parade we wandered down to Preston Park where we were met by more protesters, this time elderly dodders and joyless young people from that bastion of all that is holy (that being prejudice and hate) Christian voice. They held aloft posters quoting from the bible proclaiming homosexuals to be evil. Now, whilst I don’t agree with them, I can understand where they’re coming from. Have you read the bible? Its true - it is absolutely against homosexuals and it seemed odd that not long ago I had seen gay christians marching.

I can accept that some people choose to be Christians, and some are gay. However if you are a Christian, you must believe in the bible it would seem, and the bible tells us homosexuality is a sin. It seems a strange thing, to choose a religion which has at its helm a book which does not accept you, and still to follow other parts of the book. The real truth in my humble opinion, and that of facts, is that the bible is written by man, not god (who, incidentally, is incredibly likely to not exist) at a time when people just didn’t like gays. So why not pick and choose. But then if you’re going to do that anyway, why bother?

So anyway, we have protesters coming from 2 angles. One group are just plain unaccepting, and the other have been confused by a book of homophobic propaganda. Or have they? I see very little difference between the two, not all Christians feel they must promote their viewpoints, whether they believe in them or not. Whilst my neighbour didn’t like the idea of pride, he didn’t come down bearing placards. It seems some people just don’t like anything much, and use political parties and religion as an excuse.

I suggest everyone should just ignore these people, rendering them pointless and invalid. Unfortunately, in tearing down the NF banners and booing we may have given people a reason to hate pride even more, and perhaps next year many more NF protesters will try to spoil the party. One gay couple went as far as to accuse an elderly man protesting for Christian Voice of being a pedophile, along with the rest of the Vatican. I can see why they were angry, but accusing the countries most renowned right wing evangelical christian group of being Catholics isn’t perhaps the most informed or well chosen insult.

At the end of the day, protesters aside, it was a good day out, with lots of wondefully dressed people, line dancing, drag queens and more. I its sad though that the most interesting thing I could discuss was the opposition, but perhaps it does indeed still help to be homosexual to get the most out of a celebration of homosexuality.

A casual visitor sneeks a peep at a boy whilst chatting to a transvestite!

Enjoy the parade

A documentary about the GPA from 2006

As you can tell from this video, the parade was wild!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.