True Colours – The Politics of Pride

Pride means different things to different people.

For some, it’s wearing your team jersey on match day. For others, it’s a sliced pan. For the LGBT community, it means everything.

Pride began in Ireland, as elsewhere, as a form of protest. In 1982 a young Dublin man was killed in Fairview Park by a gang who admitted they had “bashed” “about twenty steamers” (a dorogotary term for gay men) there. Despite this admission, they were given suspended sentences. Essentially, they were punished less for killing a gay man than they would have been for stealing teabags.

The effect this had on the Irish LGBT community was explosive. In their rage and sorrow, Irish gays, lesbians, and others took to the streets. The first ever Dublin Pride was held later that year, to raise awareness, and to take a stand against the inhumane treatment of the LGBT community in Ireland. Six years later, an Irish gay man, David Norris took Ireland to court over it’s discrimination against ‘the gays’ – and won. Though homosexuality was not decriminalised for another five years, the germ of reform had been sown.

Pride is a political protest, a human rights protest, a civil rights march and a gigantic party all rolled into one.

In recent years, many Irish political parties have aped those in Europe and the US, and began making appearances at Pride. Most political parties have a youth division which is accepting of LGBT people. However, there is intense dissatisfaction in the community with parties who show up for Pride, but neglect or ignore LGBT issues in govenment.

Parties such as Fine Gael and Labour carried rainbow flags this year, but FG party leader and Taoiseach Enda Kenny has still not voiced support for same-sex marriage, despite all the flag-waving. Minister Alan Shatter and T?naiste Eamon Gilmore have both voiced their support for same-sex marriage.

It has become a ‘safe’ PR stunt for parties. They raise a rainbow to win support, but take no action beyond that. They have realised that they will be lauded for saying they’re ‘pro-gay marriage’, but are getting away with never doing anything about it.

Sinn Féin flew the flag outside their Dublin City HQ on saturday. Passers-by snorted when they saw it. The idea of a deeply conservative Catholic party in balaclavas waving the rainbow was painfully ironic.

Opinion polls reflect the widespread support for full marriage rights for the LGBT community. Civil partnership is absolutely not the same thing. Nor is it good enough.

Ministers such as Brendan Howlin seem to think that the community will be satisfied with such a piecemeal offering. However, the gay rights movement has become the fastest civil rights movement in history. The likelihood is that gay marriage will be legalised, eventually, but the real question now is this: just how long will it take?

The gays aren’t looking for anything special, marriage is a legal contract. These law-abiding people are having to fight for rights which any murderer or rapist (providing they are heterosexual) is automatically granted. Therefore, does the Irish government think the gays somehow worse than murderers or rapists? Their ‘heinous crime’ is being mutually in love with another consenting adult. It’s not something to be taken lightly, as the recent shameful shenanigans in Russia demonstrate.

So why do we need Pride? We need it because it reminds the world that we are still here. And it reminds us of the same thing.

For all the best Hot Press photos of the Pride parade this year, click here.