Last weekend was Birmingham Pride , I’m sure that many of you were there and had an incredible time. This year the parade was back on properly after its change last year, and Coalition had another ‘Pride is a Protest’ walking float which was a great success with loads of people marching from various different universities around the Midlands- UoB, Aston, Birmingham City, Derby, Coventry, Warwick and Newman (sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone). This year was my first Birmingham Pride, and I’ve never been to a Pride so big before, and I had a lot of fun. But I find it questionable whether fun should be the main aim of Pride. If you look in the a variety of gay magazines, Pride is much more often called such things as ‘pink party time’ than ‘pink politics time’. In an entire 13 page ‘Pride Guide’ there is not one mention of the politics behind the party, the main need for us to have Pride at all.

Our Fight For the Right to Party banner

As we have gained more rights as a community, our freedom has undoubtedly, by many, come to be taken for granted. Surely Pride is a perfect time for the community to come together, and as well as being glad for how far we have come, thinking about and shouting about when we don’t have and what so many others around the world also lack. I am not claiming that I am some kind of martyr for the cause, but simply someone who wants to see change, and, next year, will do her back to try and see it come to fruition.

The theme for this year was, it has to be said, a significant improvement on last year’s ‘Pink and Green’. ‘Equality through the Decades’ could have been historical, informative, political, and radical. It could have been so much more, but all it really was manifested itself as were a few loosely themed floats in the parade. After all, why does Pride need to have a theme, per-se? Surely gay rights are the theme of pride, and whether or not they have been achieved. When every LGBTQ person in the world has the same rights as every straight person, then we can have themes that celebrate this change.

The men hired by Seflridges last year to participate in London Pride

Pride has become a corporate sponsored, capitalist, money making opportunity. This cannot be doubted. A big party is, of course, a great deal of fun, but for a community (for that is what we are) who used to pride itself on its incredible voice, its power to change society, we have lost our drive. It would of course take immense amounts of effort, of time, to change pride even partially back to the way it was, but why do so many doubt the possibility? Thirty years ago, Harvey Milk stood up at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade and inspired a message of hope to the tens of thousands of people there. This year, Lady Gaga stood up and did exactly the same thing (Although it has to be said, her public speaking doesn’t really compare), to over 1.2 million listeners. If we really did had reached equality and could warrant a completely commercialised Pride, then this wouldn’t even have been necessary, and despite her popularity, so many people would not have turned out, they would have cared more about the alcohol than the atrocities.

Maybe Gaga is a little high to aim for Birmingham Pride, given that this year we bagged The Cheeky Girls, but why not, in the future, do what we do best? Fight back, protest, and have a bloody good time while we’re at it. Just give it a decade and I can but hope.