PRIDE gets political

By Orla Gallagher

This year’s LGBTQ Pride parade, with 12,000 people taking part, and with it’s first ever lesbian Grand Marshall (activist Ailbhe Smyth), was as colourful, diverse and celebratory as any there’s ever been in Ireland – but this time, it has taken place in a tangibly more politicized atmosphere.

The theme of  this  year’s  parade  was  “Pride  and  Prejudice”, (with  the  invitation  to  wear  half  a  wedding  suit  or  dress , representing  the  half-measures  given  by  the  Civil  Partnership Bill), but  it  was  at  the  end  rally  that  people  expressed  their   anger  at  the  bill ,  when  it  was  symbolically  ripped  up  by  members  of  LGBT Noise  to  cheers  and  applause.

The Civil Partnership Bill, is essentially a special set of   rules differentiating, and therefore designating as inferior, gay peoples’ right to commit to a relationship. Whether or not you believe in the institution of marriage, this kind of apartheid is clearly not fair. The bill does not give the right to marry; it offers no protection to the children of LGBTQ couples.

Bigots like Brenda Power of the Sunday Times seek to paint themselves as the protector of children. She attacks, in the most homophobic way, the fitness of gay people to bring up children. Heterosexual people are never scrutinised in this way. There are many studies which support the fact that there is no difference in the well being of children raised by gay and straight couples. Power worries that LGBTQ peoples’ children will not ‘fit in’; the problem for her is not society’s prejudices, but people who live in families different from those imagined by conservatives to be ‘normal’.

A  survey  carried   out  by  MarriagEquality found  that  the  majority, (61%)  of  people  feel  gay  people  should  be  allowed  to  marry (not  that  we  should  have  to ask  in  the  first  place!!), and indicates  that  this  is  the  time  for  everyone , straight  people  included to  get  out  and  protest  this  inequality. The next protest will be on August 9th, called by LGBTQ Noise.