Pride: On The Fine Art Of Spectacularly Missing The Point

Picture the tiny group of courageous radicals who began marching more than 40 years ago. How would they have felt then if they were told that their few brave steps towards freedom would be joined by a stampede of the many? That in a few decades, rather than hundreds, hundreds of thousands would come with them, holding hands, flying flags, dancing, chanting – a kaleidoscopic throng of every race, gender, and political bent?

They might well be horrified by the presence of UKIP. But would anyone swap today’s reality, with its mass of pro-LGBT voices, however discordant, for the very few then?

More likely, those early activists would be overwhelmed, engulfed with the same feeling that floods through teenagers today when they march for the first time. The feeling that begins with the single transformative experience of seeing so many people just like you: pride.

Patrick Strudwick, BuzzFeed News.

A tambourine-banging conclusion by Strudwick to an article; UKIP has been kicked out of Pride, but is this fair? How do we judge if a political party is homophobic?

Only the politically banal gayist Smugtwit could fail to see that most people's fury at Ukip is not their failure to support equal marriage or any other gay rights iniative, but that they're more generally and obviously right-wing racist, anti-immigrant scum.

Breathtaking.