Belfast Pride

I popped down to the Belfast Pride festival at the weekend to see what was going on. My observations come from the viewpoint of a single, white, heterosexual male whose only experience of any kind of hate campaign is the standard abuse that one endures as a catholic school boy in a mixed community. To say I’m not an expert on what the LGBT community has to put up with would be spot on but you don’t need any qualifications to observe or have an opinion I suppose.

So here goes.

It’s great, in my view, that the Pride festival in Belfast can happen. Back in the 90’s I can’t image it would have received as much backing or been encouraged as it is now and why shouldn’t it be? Before making my way to Custom House Square where the parade would begin my attention was drawn to the “comedian” that had been hired to perform for the day. I say comedian because the gibberish he was coming off with made me laugh, a lot. It wasn’t intended to be funny, it was supposed to be serious, severe and a little threatening, maybe more than a little threatening actually. He even came with his own props, a book in his hand which I didn’t seem him open, although he had his finger carefully inserted at a particular page, no doubt a passage warning those who don’t fall in line that they’d be doomed. There were some backing dancers to, serious looking older folk in a man-woman, man-woman order looking very solemn and caring far too much. He proceeded to tell people they were acting because of fear but my favourite part was when he said that for those who got to know Jesus personally, they would be just fine. Luckily for me then that Jesus lives in the apartment upstairs and was down the other day to borrow some sugar.

There was still a bit of time before the parade itself started but people were already starting to gather, wearing their uniforms of colour, faces adorned with paint, garlands of fabric flowers around their necks and draped in a flag that must be in with a shout should they take redesigning the Northern Ireland flag more seriously.

The crowd were an eclectic mix of people from all walks of like and from all parts of the country. There were a lot of young people and some older people to, some flamboyant folk and some less so. Then there were the people dressed up as police offers, who were actual police officers.

There were some elements of the event that seemed a little strange to me and it was the feel of big company commercialism. I don’t mean the guy with the pram filled with merchandise, but some of the parade participants themselves. Not the individuals who were marching for their own individual cause but the big business. I witnessed a lot of banks, trade unions and supermarkets with their names and logos plastered over signs, banners, t-shirts, balloons and other such things. Now I feel it’s hard for me to explain exactly what I mean here because I’m aware the support of these industries is huge, companies supporting equality is massive. and it’s very important that all places of work ensure that equality is right across the board but to me as a looker-on it slightly diluted things.

That being said there were plenty of people who came of their own accord and were not part of the groups of “big businesses”.

I asked someone if they had a good time which almost feels like a question I should never have to ask. There was something very uncomfortable about posing the question. I wasn’t really sure how to phrase the question. It felt like I was asking “Did you have a good time feeling comfortable being yourself today?” The person didn’t seem to mind though and said the positivity and support they experienced was amazing.

There’s an element of Pride that makes me a little but sad to. I think it’s the thoughts that a community of people need to have day or a week or whatever to celebrate who they are, every day should be a celebration of who you are. I think it’s wonderful that Belfast is becoming more and more accepting but there’s still a long way to go.

Prejudices will exist for a long time yet and realistically the chances of it disappearing completely is unlikely in my opinion. There will always be people who harass or ridicule you for a wide variety of things, whether it be your sexual orientation, how you look or your religious background to name a few. What we need to do is help everyone feel that they are equally represented and Pride is a good way to move towards achieving this. I read online that someone said Belfast Pride was better than the Dublin event. There were plenty of supporters and I like to think that they weren’t only people from the LGBT community.

I’m a supporter of all equality rights under the banner of people.