How Proud Are We Really?

I love Pride events, they're a wicked excuse to get pissed and they're always massively fun. I firmly believe there is a direct correlation between your anal capacity and your ability to throw a party thus Pride events are generally the highlight of my year.
Even Oxford has had a go at it for the past few years although it pissed it down in '03 and '04 and one year the neighbours made us turn the music down. Still, I hope they keep trying.

Anyway, this is a serious post... What...? Stop, come back... I promise it'll hurt less than bum sex...

PRIDE

A mate of mine refuses to go to any Pride ever, he thinks the march is a waste of time because we have nothing left to fight for and he doesn't see what we have to be so proud of. Ok he has a point, just because we sleep with members of the same sex, what, do we want a fucking medal?
Another friend says why bother shouting for something we already have - Equality.

In the UK at least we pretty much have everything we want on a material level if nothing else.
We can adopt kids, join the army, Section 28 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28 ) has been repealed, the gay age of consent is now equal to the heterosexual one, we can even “marry” thus giving us the right to messy divorces and bitter custody battles over the cats just like real people.

No, we don’t have to fight anymore in that sense.

But all over the world gays and lesbians are persecuted, beaten, even jailed and executed purely on the grounds of their sexuality. What about them? Why are we sitting back smugly while this still happens in the world?

And we might even have everything we ever wanted on paper but even in the UK and Australia homosexuality is still a taboo subject. There are still people out there who batter us, spit at us and shout abuse at us in the street and only when this persecution has been eradicated, when the bigots have been shown that their behaviour will no longer be tolerated by the community, only then will Pride cease to be a War Cry and become purely a voice of Thanks.

Thank You to the people who did have to fight. The men and women throughout the years who risked their freedom and even their lives so we could have the right to equality. The men and women who wouldn’t roll over and let the right-wingers and the homophobes walk all over us.

Pride, to me, isn’t just a party, a celebration of our diversity and strength. To me, Pride is a way of saying “Thank You!” to these people. Thank you to those who stood up for us as a community, who burnt that closet, stood tall and proud and shouted for our rights as human beings.
Pride is a Thank You as well as letting the world know that we're not done yet. There are still issues to be addressed and challenges to be faced, maybe not on our own doorstep but the problems of our communities around the world are our problems too.

We ARE here, we ARE queer and we are no longer second class citizens. We have rights and we are equal, people have fought long and hard to get us where we are today and if that’s not something to be proud of I don’t know what is.

written by  Koala Bear on March 1, 2008 from Sydney, Australia
from the travel blog: Sod Off Great Big Mission Round Oz
tagged Sydney and Bollocks
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