I’m really feeling the need to point out that the more overt and blatant sociocultural bandwagon jumping becomes, the less meaning the notion of cultural pride has. I took myself to pride London yesterday, and to be honest it aroused quite a lot of conflicting, if interesting, feelings in me. Truth be told I had only  got wind of it a day or so before, and yesterday morning decided that going to check it out would be an interesting way to spend my Saturday.

For the most part, there is no denying that what I saw yesterday was absolutely incredible: a huge celebration of inclusivity and tolerance, worthy of a twenty first century world city. There were bands and floats and drag queens; a vast array of communities and groups were represented; the music, costumes and colours were fantastic. The thing is, I couldn’t help sensing a darker, more cynical undertone to it. For one, many of the floats in the parade were sponsored by big corporations like Sky, so it was as if a huge advertisement was rolling past, or that a huge cultural event had been appropriated to make money. This left a very nasty taste in my mouth. On top of that, I got the distinct impression that many of the people there were there just to be seen to be there. That is, they had no real connection with the LGBTQ community, but it’s now so fashionable to be a member of a minority that a lot of people would have gone just for the politics of it. Now that it’s so cool to be gay or trans, more and more people seem to be suddenly discovering new identities they had never revealed before. Perhaps that could explain why there were so many people there yesterday.

But by far the most repugnant, abhorrent thing I came across yesterday was a group of religious bigots at the side of the parade route preaching about how homosexuality was ‘a sin’ and how everyone there would burn for eternity if they didn’t ‘repent’. I know I shouldn’t get so upset about such things and that I should just ignore it, but I found what those people were doing utterly, utterly disgusting. My cynical gripes aside, yesterday was a celebration of inclusion and diversity; it was a demonstration of how wonderful and vibrant the metropolis is. Those scumbags were blurting out how it was all wrong, forcing their homophobia and hatred onto everyone within earshot. Under any other circumstances no doubt they would have been arrested, but because they disguised it with their religious bullshit the police couldn’t do anything. Frankly, that’s what I find most disturbing, and what makes me most furious. In the midst of such a wonderful, happy day, those bigots were there spreading hate, claiming their god justifies their acrid intolerance.

As I trundled home on the extremely crowded Jubilee Line late yesterday afternoon, then, my mind was abuzz with mixed, even conflicting feelings. What I had just seen was, for the most part, absolutely wonderful; yet it had been tainted by far darker, bitter undercurrents. A celebration of inclusion and diversity had, at least in part, been intruding upon by people preaching the exact opposite, using their religious delusions to spread hatred and intolerance. Yet as sickening as anyone capable of rational thought will surely find that, the fact is if we truly value inclusivity and tolerance, we have no choice but to tolerate such bigotry.