This year s Pride festival promises to be the biggest ever staged in Ireland, with organised events taking place in Galway, Belfast, Derry, and Waterford. It is likely that groups in Limerick, Cork and Drogheda/Dundalk will also host celebrations. For the first time, the various festivals span a period of over a month, with Dublin Pride kicking off on June 24th and the Waterford event finishing on August 29th. The Dublin event has been extended to a two-week festival, featuring club nights, musicals, workshops and readings, culminating in the Pride march in the city centre on Saturday June 24th.

For those unfamiliar with the ethos behind Gay Pride, here s a brief explanation. Firstly, the phrase Gay Pride has become outdated, as organisers countrywide are keen to stress the diversity of the celebrations. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gendered people are represented, and straights who wish to party on down with their queer brothers and sisters are also welcome. You don t have to be gay, though it probably helps!
My own involvement with Dublin Pride goes back to my days as a staff writer on Gay Community News. As a token straight boy, I wondered about the reasoning behind the event; why is it so important for the queer community to celebrate their sexuality?
While there s no single reason, some of the answers I got to that question made me realise that even the most liberal of us heteros really don t have a clue about what being homo really means. Straights have never had to question their sexuality in the same way that many lesbians, gays and bisexuals have. Straights have never had to hide their sexual identity from others and even from themselves. Straights have never had to fear prosecution for honestly and passionately loving a partner. The Pride festival might be seen as a celebration of the gay community s triumph over straight society s treatment of homosexuals in the past and in the present. In this year s Pride programme, committee member Izzy Kamikaze writes that Pride has never been about how the world sees us. It s about how we see ourselves, our lovers, our friends. Pride is the opposite of shame. Pride is about our delight in ourselves.
It s also about visibility. Although many gay men and women have no interest in taking part in Pride celebrations, for those who do it s an opportunity to show that sexual orientation comes in many guises, celebrate diversity is the cry, and there are as many different types of queer as there are queers. For many gay men and women in the past, the belief that they are alone in their sexual orientation leads to feelings of isolation and lonliness. Forced by society to be invisible for decades, Pride proves that there are other queers out there, and it s the boy or girl next door, except with better dress sense.
Seriously, though, the courage of queer activists who initiated the celebrations in Dublin in the seventies, and those activists who re-introduced the festival in 1992 after a six-year hiatus, (several of whom are still involved to date) is considerable. While there is safety, and a degree of anononimity if desired, in numbers this wasn t always the case. Outside of Dublin similar activists have insured that cities like Galway and Belfast are hot on the heels of Dublin Pride s success. One Galway woman who marched in Galway in the late eighties spoke of her equal elation and terror at being part of a small group of pioneering queer revellers who marched for the first Galway Pride. Thanks to that woman and scores of people like her, we ve come a long way, baby.
An important consideration of Ireland s Pride festivals is the funds raised for charities by events. This year Dublin Pride will benefit the community centre at OutHouse and the HIV Respite Unit at Cherry Orchard Hospital amongst others, so not only are you guaranteed to have a great time, but you re doing your bit for charidee as obvious heterosexuals Smashie and Nicey might have said. Queertastic!