It’s 2016 — and yes, we still need Pride!

Pride is a celebration of solidarity and love for one another — asking if we “still need it” is giving in to the hate of LGBTQ people.

Once again summer across the world saw the holding of LGBTQ Pride parades and celebrations. From New York to Sydney and London to Tokyo, LGBTQ* people and our straight allies came together to parade in support of the advancement of LGBTQ rights and acceptance within society.

Despite these scenes, an increasing number of LGBTQ people themselves as well as other straight people are beginning to question the need for ‘Gay Pride’ celebrations. They claim that it is perfectly acceptable to be gay now, with some even claiming that “a man wearing a jock strap down the street does nothing to advance LGBTQ rights”.

There is however a genuine reason that Pride is still a thing, and a reason that it keeps on going.

Gay Pride was not born of a need to celebrate being gay, but the right to exist without persecution. So instead of asking why there’s no ‘straight pride’, be thankful you don’t need one!

The first thing to point out is that pride was of course formed not to celebrate an individual’s sexuality. Rather, it was formed out of a need to fight for equality — to end discrimination against people whose sexuality is not straight. Recently it has developed into a movement against transphobia as well, fighting the notion that trans people are less worthy in society than cis-gendered people. Overall, it was designed to be and still is a protest at the discrimination LGBTQ people face.

Of course, some (particularly in the west) argue that that this discrimination isn’t prevalent in society anymore, pointing to advancements in in the law such as the legalisation of gay/ equal marriage in England, Wales and Scotland, in multipe European states including the traditionally socially conservative Republic of Ireland, and in all 50 states of the USA. To the people that make this argument, I ask this: try walking down the street and hold someone of the same gender’s hand.

You’ll be lucky not to get “funny looks” and walking down a street like that in Britain. In the United States, there are states where laws against “sodomy” exist, preventing acts of gay sex, while court rulings stating that corporations can deny LGBTQ people custom and even refuse to employ or fire someone for being gay mean that even in the supposedly tolerant western world, LGBTQ people certainly are not entirely equal, even in 2016.

Beyond this, pride is a show of solidarity and love. Its solidarity with LGBTQ people living in the seventy-seven countries where not being straight is a felony, in the sixteen countries where there are unequal ages of consent, and the many societies around the which simply do not ackolwdge that LGBTQ people actually exist.

Demeaning the pride celebrations to anything less than this — as a “group of men walking around in a jock strap” — is simply buying into the hate that so many people hold against the LGBTQ community. You may not yourself be homophobic or transphobic but questioning whether pride is needed because you are either too ignorant to understand the meaning, or have an issue with the party side of Pride not being to your taste is wrong: defining the struggle for the expansion of rights by your tastes at a party is wrong.