Andrew Kay: Glad to be normal

A few weeks back I wrote about attending an event at which the organisers of Pride gave monetary grants to a group of local organisations that support gay men and women, transgender, youths and the undecided. It was the first time in some time that I felt that the word Pride had any real value.

I’ve done Pride since being 20 years old, I marched for equality, I shouted at Thatcher on Westminster Bridge with Steve Nallon in full Maggie drag. I listened to Peter Tatchell, the most relentless campaigner for what so many of us
held to be our undisputable human rights. I waved flags, blew whistles and along the way I had a few drinks, a bit of a dance and lots of fun too.

Pride was a campaign, a fight for rights and on the way we made things happen. We now have not only civil partnerships but gay marriage, we beat Clause 28 and the sundry other bits of bureaucratic hypocrisy that stuck to it like bodily fluids to a tissue. We fought for and raised money for AIDS research, and for hospices when we first needed them and we campaigned for better health education. In Brighton people fought to uncover scandals where money allocated to one cause was being used in other sectors, lies were revealed and justice was sought and to some extent found. Pride was after all a political force – not a party.

Not that I’m against that party, we have much to celebrate, as year on year the world starts to accept that what we are is not gay, or trans, or bi or any other stupid label that people would like to sticker us with. What we are is normal, normal like anyone else. My sexuality has never made me special in any way. Indeed, if I am special in any way it might be despite my gender preferences.

“If I am special in any way it might be despite my gender preferences”

If that sounds like I am shirking my gay pride I’m not. I’m glad to be what I am. I’m happy to campaign and delighted when that campaigning gets the right results.

Pride in Brighton has a superb knock on effect. For one weekend the hotels are full, the bars do a brilliant trade and the city is full of people spending money and making the most of Britain’s greatest resort (I love Blackpool, I really do, but come on…)

So given that the weekend is a money spinner for so many, can we perhaps get them to give something back?

Perhaps you are a business who benefits, maybe you could sponsor a float in the parade for one of our charitable organisations. Maybe you are a hotel that for that weekend is chocablock – perhaps you could give a cut back to the organisation that makes that weekend one of your best of the year.

I know that the introduction of ticketing the actual event was not universally loved but it has made the park a much more comfortable occasion, safer even. But that money hardly touches the sides of what it costs to stage Pride, without it the event simply could no longer happen. And with the council probably withdrawing the funding that they have provided in the past the situation is harder then ever. Not that I believe that funding from public bodies is the answer, far from it, I know that from my work with the utterly unfunded food festival which twice a year does the same as Pride in drawing vast crowds of money spending people into the city.

I’m proud to be normal is what I’m really saying. I’m glad to be gay as Mr T Robinson chanted back in the day, and above all I’m determined to raise awareness of what Pride should be about once again. Last summer was a brilliant start but it’s time to rally the forces and make this one even better. Brighton Pride has the chance to be the best in Europe if not the world… if we get totally behind it and if that means dipping our hands in our pockets then so be it.

Follow me: @latestandrew