Love and Pride

This Saturday is Euro Pride / Euro Shame in London. I haven't been to Pride in years, but this time I've decided to show my face.

I feel the need to celebrate gay culture while we still have some left, before it's sapped away by the integrationists and marrying types. It's enough to make you pine for Clause 28.

I'd be a liar if I didn't confess I got into the whole anti-gay movement for a while. Anti-gay was all about turning your back on popular gay culture in the belief that it made you a better queer. You could tut at muscle marys, sneer at butch dykes and positively blanch at the sight of a drag queen. Of course, what these self righteous dullards forget is that if it wasn't for the drag queens rioting at Stonewall, there wouldn't have been any gay liberation and they wouldn't have been awarded the right to be sanctimonious and opinionated.

It's this kind of attitude that informs Gay Shame. Not from the organisers, who put on a great show, but from the petulant punters and their snorts of contempt for "those types" at Pride and the cavernous divide between them. I'm a little weary of the smugness of it all.

Far be it from me to start waving my lighter in the air and calling for peace and harmony, but a little solidarity in the gay ranks would be nice. On a day like today, when the press are running preposterous stories about the causes of male homosexuality (they never bother with the dykes) is it any wonder some of us just want to grab the glitter, crank up the hi-energi and DANCE? It's the only way to stay sane.

So this year I'll be pumping my fist in the air at the rally, buying some rainbow flag tat and screaming in the Drag Idol tent. I'm even going to do the march if I get my arse out of bed in time. I draw the line at blowing a whistle.