Pride: Owen Jones' Verdict

The LGBT movement was once about protest and struggle, winning many of the rights people have today. But, says Owen Jones, it's become a convenient way for dodgy corporations to 'pinkwash' their reputations – and there's a complacency that all the battles have been won. Is it time to put the politics back into LGBT?

#makesyouthink

PS No irony that the Guardian are telling big business about the benefits of backing gay rights. Sponsored content etc... Maybe Owen could give a Guardian Masterclass?

Guardian star writers are forced to do these videos. Some look uncomfortable. Not our Owen, who'd probably happily take a walk-on part in a Cheeky Girls comeback video.

Turkish Pride: Every Cloud...

Police in Turkey have been left red-faced after their attempts to block a Pride parade helped to celebrate the occasion.

The officers were using water cannon to clear the peaceful parade in Istanbul when the water droplets caught the sunlight and branched across the sky in a rainbow.

Pride across the world uses a rainbow as its representative colours, on flags and more, giving a clear association with the LGBT community...

The Mirror's rather, err, different take on Istanbul Pride yesterday where police attacked marchers with water cannon, rubber bullets and tear gas.

Most of the Western media were baffled as to why they were attacked - usually settling for 'Dunno, something about Ramadan?'

But a reporter for AFP News said; 'Police took action against the crowd when demonstrators began shouting slogans accusing the social conservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of "fascism".'

PS Barclays - sponsor of Pride In London. Investor in Raytheon and General Dynamics, makers of arms and 'civil defense' stuff. Big in Turkey...

Update: Please see Paul Canning's blogpost on this; New LGBT Muslim Heroes.

Pride: Masked Balls

Textbook stuff from The Observer's photogallery on the straight media's visual cliches when 'representing' pride events.

The above is ideal for the online front page - or the print edition; because most importantly the participant (or 'reveller'!) should ideally be disguised. Though assuming someone on the parade might not be out is a just little bit out-dated, and rather goes against the whole point of gay pride.

A man in drag is usually the go-to gay for this - and they're so funny and colourful and fabulous, aren't they? Well, I guess they are to some straight people, though to most gay men they just make you think of being stuck in a really naff bar on a Tuesday night.

Anyway, this glittery bloke wearing a SODDING RAINBOW MASK is a double-whammy!

There's lots of drag, concealed faces and rainbows in the Telegraph's gallery, though I tip my pink cowboy hat to the picture editor who slipped this one in.

PS Oops! Most British newspapers used the same set of photos as both the above did from Getty Images - here's Mail Online. And The Independent. The Mirror. The Sun. Oh, and BBC News and Channel 4 News.

They all loved this one - make of this what thou will.

There are a few other things in the Sunday papers about Pride and gaymarriage etc, but I'm all fagged out to be honest. x

Pride In London: Infiltrated by ISIS!!!

@lucypawle the ISIS flag at the Pride parade looked like gibberish because the "text" was actually outlines of sex toys. Obviously satire.

— Jim (@jimdotsg) June 27, 2015

Journalism!

PS Watch her original CNN report on the sinister Islamist dildo flag here - hilarious!

Update: Soon got bored flaccid with this story. The endless tittering on Twitter etc just reminded me what a joyless, sexless infantile culture we inhabit.

And as for certain journalists and media outlets larfing at another journalist fucking up...

Update2: Richard Littlejohn uses this as a springboard to go into a baffling rant about the 'ayatollahs of homosexuality'.

Pride In London: The Day In One Photo

At the start of the march parade a man is wrestled to the ground by police - assisted by Pride stewards - and arrested for shouting at the contingent from Barclays about their company's tax avoidance.

Other stewards and security tried to stop people and media from taking photos.

Barclays were a main sponsor of Pride In London and led the parade today - the spot had been offered to Lesbians And Gays Support The Miners, but they were later pushed further to the back.

* Photo by Jules Mattsson. x

Edit: The Sunday Mirror has mobile phone footage of the end of his 'altercation' with the police [Edit: Oops! Jules Mattsson took it]. He gets a little more, shall we say, 'rowdy' than I thought. Hmm...

Here's a nice picture of a jolly copper showing how much he loves the gays in case there's any confusion...

Spectator: And On That Bombshell!

Blah blah blah Pride Ukip Miners gay marriage Stonewall Green Party Israel Tatchell Muslims wibble...

The Spectator.

PS For reasons of balance here's an article from the Morning Star Resisting the rise of pink capitalism.

Pride: So It's Come To This

If you see my @LondonLGBTPride bus please photograph it and send it to me #soProud pic.twitter.com/Z0wUbC2QB4

— Sinitta 19 (@sinittaofficial) June 24, 2015

Michael Salter is now making the bizarre claim that one million people will witness Pride In London (and the London Eye and Wembley Arch will be lit up in the colours of the rainbow!)

Can someone please stop this insanity!

Pride In London: Never Mind The Racism

The gay community - who speak with one voice, obvs, apart from the noble truthsayer moi - have become their own worst enemy. Imagine if they did that to lesbian muslims! Shucks guys, why can't we all get along... etc etc.

Textbook pious wet liberal cant from Independent Voices.

PS Miss Butterskips is the author of Why Tony Blair is a gay icon. He currently writes for OK! magazine.

Pride In London: Is This Man A Prat?

IT'S HYPOCRACY!!!

Pride in London Chair Michael Salter has explained why the board decided to turn down UKIP’s request to march.

Speaking to London Live, Mr Salter said the decision had been “difficult” because “Pride is an inclusive event, and all of us on the board also believe in free speech.”

Pride in London said earlier this month that they would not be allowing UKIP to march, saying “This decision has been made after careful consultation in order to protect participants and ensure the event passes off safely and in the right spirit, it has not been made on a political basis.”

Mr Salter went on: “We have a paramount duty to the protection and welfare of our volunteers.

“Pride cannot take place unless we have 6 to 700 volunteers who are happy to turn up, who feel capable in the roles that they’ve been trained to do. If the stewards are a little bit nervous about the reaction to any group in the parade and they start not turning up then it actually puts into jeopardy the bigger picture of Pride itself.”

“Personally I found it very difficult at times in this process to see the level of outrage, anger and hypocrisy in part from members of the LGBT community.

"But when you’ve got people who are threatening to do sit in and disrupt the parade, to turn up with all sorts of unmentionable revolting things to chuck at another group, people ho are threatening intimidation and violence – I don’t look at this and think, “well what’s going to happen to the UKIP group”...

Pink News.

LOL!

Michael Salter is a senior adviser to David Cameron,

Fagburn believes all Tories should be banned from Pride.

Letter Of The Day: More Pride Shame

The way we walked: London Pride 1985

Like many other trade unionists and activists for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people we had been really looking forward to marching at the front of London Pride this year alongside members of the original Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) in a recreation of the spirit of solidarity so brilliantly depicted in the film Pride in this, the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike.

We were shocked to see that the Pride in London (PiL) committee has now decided not to allow supporters of LGSM from the unions to march at the front with them, preferring instead to give pride of place to corporate sponsors such as Barclays, Citibank and Starbucks.

This domination of the corporations at Pride must be questioned, and the success of the film Pride should have provided the perfect springboard for that. The fact that the chair of PiL is political head of broadcasting at 10 Downing Street shows how far we have moved from the origins of Pride protests in the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969. It would seem that PiL is echoing the government in its determination to sideline unions and silence protest.

We are determined to challenge the portrayal of Pride as a showcase for multinational companies. Among the companies currently sponsoring Pride are those who must be held responsible for the financial crisis, don’t pay their taxes and don’t allow unions to organise.

LGSM will now be heading a union bloc in the middle of the parade, and we hope people will turn up in large numbers to join in with their posters, placards and loud voices. Thirty years ago we had to take on the union-busters and supporters of clause 28 under Margaret Thatcher. Today David Cameron has made clear his intention to shackle the unions and ramp up austerity measures that will hit LGBT people hard. It’s time to reclaim the true spirit of Pride.

Letter to The Guardian signed by LGSM and a number of trade unionists.

Please don't tell me you're surprised by any of this.

There's as much chance of stopping London Pride being a shameless slave-whore to big business as there is of me becoming the next Labour leader.

Pride's original offer to LGSM to lead the parade seemed more about the movie than the movement, anyway.

Farage On Friday: Unacceptable Bigotry

There seems be a new modern phenomenon in British politics that no matter how nasty, there is no level of prejudice that is unacceptable as long as it is directed against UKIP.

Indeed, the party has been banned, outlawed in fact from attending the London Gay Pride Parade, which I was under the impression was about standing for tolerance rather than censorship and hate.

When a Baptist Minister who was a mere local UKIP town councillor in Henley said last January that floods were caused by gay marriage, it was a national story.

This man’s personal views ran on the BBC and pretty much everywhere else too as some sort of representation of UKIP as a whole.

This follows 20 years where he had been a member of the Conservative Party and had been saying the same things.

As a Conservative however, his comments never even touched the radar screen.

This gentleman’s individual views were used by the media purely as another justification to scapegoat UKIP as being somehow extreme.

Well, I’ve got some bad news for the metropolitan elite.

I’m very sorry not to confirm their prejudices, but UKIP has many gay members.

Clever wordplay! LGBTQ* In Ukip on Facebook!

We’ve just confirmed our new Deputy Mayor of Ramsgate who is transgender.

Our Scottish MEP David Coburn is openly gay.

The party also has an established LGBT group headed by Flo Lewis, who I shared a drink or two with after she spoke at UKIP’s South East Conference in Eastbourne just last weekend.

And yet, we have the case of Kellie Maloney who in the past stood as our London Mayoral candidate in 2004 and as a parliamentary candidate in 2010.

I was happy to meet with Kellie last year and indeed I invited her to come and speak at our Spring Conference in Margate.

Strangely, during the course of the General Election campaign, Kellie went on to give an interview to Sky News in which she said UKIP was a wasted vote.

Suddenly she was of the view that people should vote Conservative and not for the party whose conference she had just attended and spoken at.

I wondered why. Then I found out that Kellie came under a huge amount of pressure and indeed abuse from some in the LGBT community for her links with UKIP.

This seems to explain her subsequent actions.

This illustrates once again the wider attempt by segments of the media and the political class to incite hatred against UKIP.

I would go as far to say that the deliberate attempt to whip up animosity towards some of our members and candidates is one of the most disgusting elements of British politics today.

There remains bigotry and sometimes even racism against people in Britain today that is simply unacceptable.

Sadly, some of this is being suffered by ordinary decent folk simply for supporting UKIP.

The latest installment of Nigel's unmissable Daily Express column.

Can you see what he did there?

Check the reader comments below it to forever dispel the myth that Ukip is a right-wing nutter magnet.

The more Nige tries to qualify UKIP is not homophobic and racist the more ammunition he gives the leftie soap dodgers and gay mafia just ignore the unpatriotic bigoted Anglophobic traitors. etc etc.

PS Oooh look, and here's what Katie Hopkins thinks about this exciting debate! Oh, do wank off.

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.

Tweets Of The Day: Barclays - Investors In Pride And Death

Barclays confirmed as headline sponsor for Pride in London festival | Gay Star News http://t.co/dhNofACamZ
— Barclays Spectrum (@barclayspectrum) April 23, 2015

#stopbarclays activists are at the @Barclays agm today, protesting the banks arms trade links pic.twitter.com/WDjZCGS1DF
— CAAT (@CAATuk) April 23, 2015

See also: How Wall Street came out on gay marriage, Mail Online via Reuters, and After Indiana debacle, states are showing off their LGBT-friendliness, AdWeek.

Update: Harvey Milk quit working on Wall Street for gay activism, Lance seems to be doing the reverse...

.@DLanceBlack will join us at #MIGlobal to explore the key role of American business in the #LGBT rights movement. http://t.co/ZOKXEpBhTQ
— Milken Institute (@MilkenInstitute) April 24, 2015

Dustin's even endorsing this junk, the British LGBT Awards!

Pride In London: Now Filed Under 'Health & Families'

The Independent.

Now also claiming 500,000 people attended, despite organisers saying it was 30,000.

This is a text book 'Pride ain't wot it used to be' wooly liberal article that has appeared every year for the last 30.

PS Risible cliche-ridden patronising editorial from Saturday's Independent, Pride, While Prejudice Stalks [sic].

Zzzzz...

Pride In London: Different Times, Different Times...

New York Daily News, July 6 1969.

Once a riot, now just a PA opportunity for Sinitta's new single.
Yes, you heard right. SINITTA!

Still, exciting times...

Pride In London: 30,000 Or 500,000? It's So Easy To Confuse Them

BBC News.

Remember when BBC News said up to a million people attended in 2010?

Yeah, that happened.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail gets a bit confused between the difference between 300,000 people and 20,000...

Will try to check On Monday, but the capacity for Trafalgar Square is usually given as 10,000.

Oh, hang on, this update just in, let's hear it for half-a-million...

The ever reliable Gay Star News.

Why not just say a billion and be done with it, you tragic gaytards?

It's quite simple, you just don't tell lies for a living.

And/or suck corporate cock.

#FreedomTo: Be A Hired Killer

Hasn't she put on weight etc etc.
Gay soldier dudes RAY!!!

#Freedomto: Words Fail Me

For this @LondonLGBTPride we’re celebrating #FreedomTo — here’s my effort… pic.twitter.com/qwBL8zBOHd
— Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) June 24, 2014

#FreedomTo: Be a Twat

Pride In London: Yay!

So, basically, no one turns up.