AK Soufflé: Not just here for the ride

With Brighton Pride looming on the horizon I started to wonder whether I would be going along this year. I started to go to Pride events when I was 21. Back then it was very much a protest march and if my memory serves me, we gathered at Thames Embankment and marched through Westminster, on the way shouting at Number Ten and challenging the police with our chant of “2-4-6-8, is that policeman really straight?”.

How times have changed. These days the police are likely to be leading the parade in a flamboyant display of uniformed solidarity which, given the weird – in my view – penchant for uniforms that so many gay men have, would seems thoroughly appropriate. It would seem that everyone wants a finger in the Pride pie and surely that has to be a good thing. I mean after all, we did fight for equality and in my book that equality has to be a two way thing.

A carnival with a stage filled with prepubescent boy bands

So why did I stop going to Pride a few years ago? Well I think I was not alone in this, I lost faith in what it was all about. I loved it as a protest with an element of celebration, but when the politics started to be stripped away and it simply became a carnival with a stage filled with prepubescent boy bands and girly groups I started to question what was going on. Was this simply an opportunity to drink too much and for the corporate wheels of the pop industry to launch new “talent”?

Of course I am being cynical, and for many the campaigning element remained at the heart of Prides worldwide. Then along came a number of people who brought the whole into disrepute and the whole thing started to fall apart here in Brighton and Hove. Fortunately there were an equal number of people who were equally motivated to restore the event to the sound and legitimate organisation that it once again is, with the opportunity for political voices and campaigners to be heard and the global struggle that the LGBT+ world undeniably still has. We may have come a long way in the UK but elsewhere horrific crimes are being perpetrated by homophobic governments and regimes.

It must also be noted that here in Brighton & Hove, our Pride celebrations play a significant part in boosting the city’s economy. If you look at the statistics and work out how much money will come into the city across that week in terms of hotels and bars alone, let alone the money that the train companies will make, then it is far from insignificant.

So will I be going this year? Too right I will. I will be there, out and proud as ever.