Pride in a Time of Crisis - Shokti
I have been going to Gay Pride events since the mid 1980s, seen Pride grow in size, seen the emphasis shift from protest to party to diverse and inclusive community parade; seen the spread of Pride events to cites and towns around the UK. I've often been on the London march and went for years to the Park parties across the city in Jubilee Gardens, Kennington Park, Clapham Common, Brockwell Park, Finsbury Park and Victoria Park. I've been involved in the debates about the presence of the military, police and corporations at Pride and was part of the D-I-Y 'La-Di-Dah' alternative prides held in response to the over-hyped commercial nature of the ridiculously titled Pride Mardi Gras in London in the mid 2000s.
In recent years I have held back and observed Pride – and been utterly impressed by the atmosphere of celebration, playful free expression alongside important political statements and a stunning, smiling manifestation of the incredible racial, sexual and generational diversity of our global community. The streets of central London are filled with colour and joy – and feel SAFE - the positivity is palpable – so is the energetic shift when one leaves the Pride zone into the more usual monochromatic, edgy, guarded cultural vibrations of the age.
What I see is we are doing much more than celebrate queer liberation when we march, we are offering a vision of freedom for everybody on planet earth. We represent he possibility of a world where women can love women and men can love men with the same safety and liberties that opposite sex couples enjoy. We do this not to replace heterosexual coupling – and not to recruit the children of heterosexual couples. We know from our own experience of coming out that sexuality is innate – after all, the hetero propaganda of the past did not make us straight! Yet some straights distrust our motives. They see us sexually driven – but we know that to be gay or lesbian or trans is not really about how we have sex. It is about the nature of our souls, about what is in our hearts and how our minds work.
PRIDE COULD BECOME A CELEBRATION OF LOVE IN ALL ITS FORMS
AND INCLUDE A CELEBRATION OF OUR HETERO ALLIES
Yet in 2025 we march at Pride at a time when our queer tribe is under attack in ways not seen in decades – the venom directed towards the Trans community reminds me of the vilification directed at gay men when I was coming out in the 1980s. And within our broad and diverse community there is a division, a crisis unlike any our community has ever faced: unlike during the AIDS epidemic, or during our response to Section 28 gay propaganda law in the UK, this challenge is splitting us.
Brewing up for a few years now, the movement among some lesbians and gay men to split away from our trans siblings, whom they see as having different social and political goals to same sex attracted people, has recently gained wings in the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court judgment on the definition of woman in the 2010 Equality Act.
I see this attitude as utterly blinkered and uneducated. Gender non-conforming people have always been part of the Pride movement since it began in the early 1970s, as well as trans women such as Marsha Johnson being prominent in the Stonewall Riots of 1969 that are seen as kicking off the modern gay rights movement.
To those G, L and Bs who would split away from the Ts, I offer this quotation from gay rights pioneer Harry Hay: “Assimilation is the way you excuse yourself. It absolutely never worked at all. You may not think you are noticeable. But they know who you are. They know you're a degenerate, and they've never forgotten that.”
Historically, the persecution of same-sex attracted men and women has always been related to our threat to the established patriarchal order of society, which seeks to limit the gender non-conforming nature of gay sexual activities, and the expression of the quite-apparent-to-most mix of both masculine and feminine traits in us, (more apparent in some than others and most clearly expressed in the androgynous ones we nowadays call transgender). History has had many words for genderqueer people since ancient times– such as androgyne, epicene, hermaphrodite and in more recent centuries womanish-men, mollies, tommies and intermediate types.
The historical, religiously inspired origins of both homophobia and transphobia come from the efforts of the ancient Hebrews and then the Christian establishment from the 4th century to control the sexuality and gender expression of the population. Genderfluidity and same sex eroticism were both prominent and normal features of the ancient pagan faiths. “The Christian oppression of women and Gay people was no accident. Their freedom and high status in the old religion made them prime targets for the new religion, which was profoundly anti-sexual.” (Arthur Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counter-Culture, 1977)
For centuries the Church issued decrees forbidding cross-dressing on feast days, and in the 15th century Joan of Arc was executed because her cross-dressing was seen as sign of heresy, of pagan magic. The Church's attitude towards sex between men became laws against it as political states sought to take over powers held by the Church – the death penalty for sodomy was first decreed in the last century of the western Roman Empire, this then adopted by western European nation states during the Middle Ages. England took longer than other nations to adopt the death penalty – it was first decreed here under Henry VIII in 1533 – and it was another couple of centuries before persecution of gay men really took hold, but after a slow start the English laws persisted much longer than on most of the European mainland and were spread around the world via the Empire, the British becoming responsible for importing homophobia into parts of the world where it had been previously unknown.
In India the British tried to eradicate the transgender Hijra community in the late 19th century by making their very nature illegal, at the same time as they were enacting laws against homosexuality. These natural human traits had never been seen as negative in Indian culture. The ancient Kama Sutra text includes mention of third gender and same sex attracted people – as in all Asian cultures these qualities were seen as giving certain spiritual gifts, as they had been in pre-Christian Europe and the Middle East, as they were in the Americas, Africa and Oceania too.
I am so disturbed when i see gay men or lesbians declaring that they consider the LGB to be separate from the TQ+. For me as a gay man it's not that I dropped G and became Q – I added Q, seeing Queer as a term of solidarity with my lesbian, bi and trans comrades in our collective liberation journey. As a spiritual person I see that gender-fluidity is a potential in everybody - for we are all a mix of male and female in our nature - It's maybe the denial of this obvious, basic truth that is causing nature to birth so many people seeking to embody the other gender to that they were assigned.
I think we could drop the alphabet and become simply Rainbow People, whose mission is love and liberation (from oppressive religious, sexual, social and political norms). We can invite straight people who believe in everyone's right to live with respect, to express their identity as they wish and love whomever they choose, to join us and become a global force for peace on earth. (So finding unity with the counter culture Rainbow movement that is out there seeking ways to change the world). Our big gay parades could celebrate love in all its forms - and the safety, creativity and community spirit that open minds and open hearts create. We could celebrate the potential in all men to love other men and in women to love other women, celebrate the sacred history of third/trans gender people and wake up people to the possibility of knowing the masculine, feminine and transcendent aspects of themselves.
Gay men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Trans People belong together because in all our variety we represent freedom from prescribed, normative gender and relationship norms and roles, from societal and religious control over our romantic, erotic and creative self-expression; from hate; from domination of one part of society over another.
As we march with Pride we show the ability of humanity to give each other respect, love and the freedom and safety to be ourselves. Let's make sure we are doing that for each other!
