Why I’m sick of Pride
by Brendan O’Neill, Spectator:
Anyone else sick of the Pride flag? It’s everywhere. It flutters from virtually every building in central London. Town halls across the country are emblazoned with it. Every bank, corporation, supermarket and celebrity Twitter account has had a rainbow makeover. There are Pride-themed sandwiches, beer bottles, cakes. Jon Snow has even worn Pride-coloured socks. You could be forgiven for thinking we’ve been conquered by a foreign army that has proceeded to stick its flag in every nook, cranny and orifice of the nation.
[…] But the melting of that great liberatory moment into today’s bland and virtually mandatory forced Pride shenanigans is depressing. It tells a broader story about the demise of radical politics. The riotous counterculturalists of the Sixties and Seventies demanded freedom. They didn’t give a damn what the ‘moral majority’ thought of them — they just wanted the moral majority to leave them alone.
Fast forward to 2019, and that historic human instinct to be left alone in liberty has been replaced by a needy and therapeutic politics of recognition. Now gay-rights activists don’t demand autonomy — they want validation. Everyone has to wave their flag and celebrate their lifestyle and embrace the strange new idea that trans women are literally women, and if you don’t it’s off to the metaphorical gulag with you.
[…] Gay people should be as free and equal as straight people. And today they are. That’s wonderful. But the fact you are gay is the least interesting thing about you. Tell me something else.
Read here (£)
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