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The Trouble With Pride ‘Queer mutiny Brighton!’ screams the pink leaflet thrust into my hand. Queer mutiny indeed. The crowds at Brighton’s 10th Pride are heaving; the sun is shining; the day is a blistering display of raucous camp. It’s a day when queer becomes decadence personified and ripples through streets where old-hag drag queens march side by side with beefy bears. Muscles ripple beneath skintight wife beaters, whilst men strutting down the street in dresses reveal flashes of hair no woman would dare. Children stand agape. The plethora of striped gay flags burn brightly beneath the sun, forming a river of colour that not so much meanders but floods the beachside town. And their message is… They’re demanding… They want people to know… Well, what exactly? That they’re here and queer? What do such marches ask? Or rather, what are they representing? Why exactly are gay men and women (as well as everyone else) marching down the streets? Personally, such displays seem to posit the notion that there’s a palpable difference between ‘gays’ and ‘others’ that gay people feel the need to advertise with decadent abandon. Consequently, there is a certain irony in the idea that ‘pride’ marches – far from inculcating a sense of pride and encouraging integration and acceptance – only reinforce the binary of the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ notion. The ‘here and queer’ mantra is tired and old and harks back to an era of injustice at society’s refusal to acknowledge any vestige of queerness. Devoid of this authenticity, today’s marches are a limp and pale imitation of the political rallies of yesteryear which were fuelled by a genuine frustration by gays’ lack of civil rights, government contempt and public denigration – and rightly so, because the rallies of the past have helped secure our right to be gay today. To pretend that this year’s Brighton has political resonance only propagates the notion that the queer movement has failed to progress –or failed to acknowledge the advances in gay rights. This stasis is suggestive of a regression that sits oddly with gay community’s progress: civil partnerships, anti-discrimination laws, adoption and hospital rights: we’re here and we’re queer, and we want... Well, what do we want now? Why are we here exactly? It’s this pervading silence – this ineffable articulation of purpose – that gave Brighton’s Pride a hollow quality; a rally without a cause. One of my friends asked where the political voice was – a question that stands against the surge in equal opportunities acknowledged by changes in the law and people’s attitudes in general. Whilst it would be crass to suggest that gays live in a rose-tinted utopia, few would deny that it is predominantly religion – not politics – that is holding back today’s society, fuelled by a homophobic hatred seething beneath a veneer of ‘Christian’ values. But then the more the Church desperately attempts to wield flawed influence over society, the more it undermines its own relevance, widening the chasm between politics that reflect society’s of ancient times and the politics of modern democracy in Britain. Today’s political voice lies in the active changes taking place in a society in which we are the first generation to be truly protected by the law, and thus the most liberated to acknowledge who we really are. Today’s Gay Pride is the stuff of parties rather than politics; a sustained romp of fun, colour and roller-coasters. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: the dedication and endeavours of past Prides and demonstrations have culminated in a Pride in which the partying, and not the politics, is the order of the day. And for that, we can all be grateful.
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