Since you were asking, one of my favourite moments in The Simpsons is when the Springfield Gay Pride Parade passes by the Simpsons’ house. A gaggle of gay men start up the chant: “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!” Little Lisa Simpson can’t stop herself from raining on their parade: “You do this every year – we are used to it!”

As Homer Simpson is so fond of saying, “It’s funny, ‘cos it’s true.” But why on Uranus to Jupiter do we do this thing year in year, year out? Walking the streets of Brighton, doing a bit of waving, going to Preston Park for a few hours then going out drinking or dancing. Meh!

Me? I thought you’d never ask. I do it because I love it.

I’ve always thought of Pride as being like the queer Christmas. It’s our big day off – and then a few days after. Sure, many people aren’t interested in its actual roots, but they know it’s a chance to get back together with our ‘family’, see a lot of people you haven’t seen for some time, maybe get a little schlosshed and remember how you love some of them so very, very much. And then how there are more than a few of them that you really can’t stick.

Once upon a time, for my sins, I used to write for a magazine called Gay Times. As I was a local boy I was always asked if I could write the review of Brighton Pride. Of course, I was always more than happy to puff it up – I have a loyalty to this town that sometimes disturbs even myself – but it became a bit tiresome when I had to review it for the ninth year running. I felt I was just repeating myself, because I always wrote what I really felt; I love Brighton Pride because it reminds me why I love Brighton. Unlike in other places, it doesn’t feel like the gays have been allowed to take over just for one day. When I watch the way the whole town grinds to a halt to watch the parade, I think, “This is our town. We belong here – all year round.”
I don’t think I’m alone in that now. People seem to feel a genuine attachment to and enthusiasm for Brighton Pride – far more so than I’ve ever detected about, say, the one they have in that fancy London.

My reviews’ basic script didn’t change much over the years. It was a lovely sunny day, there was a fantastic atmosphere, and blimey, weren’t there a lot of people… blah, blah and blah. It got so bad that in 2002 when it pissed down with rain, I almost cheered – at least I’d have something different to write about now.

“Attending a Pride march was a way of coming out in the most public way possible, both individually and collectively. This was a politically radical act in itself”

But I also used to resent being asked to review Brighton Pride, because I was usually planning on not being able to remember too much about it. I wanted to spend it getting so royally twatted I’d end up publicly humiliating myself by whooping like a demented chimpanzee for most or part of the Sunday, possibly on Churchill Square, before crawling home on Monday morning bleeding from every orifice. Happy times.

I exaggerate only slightly and I admit this isn’t something I should be especially proud of – although I’m certainly not ashamed – but I believe this is an important and treasurable part of what Brighton Pride is. If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes and mumbling about how Pride used to mean so much more than this and seething over how Harvey Milk died in vain, then I’m with you.

Well, apart from the Harvey Milk bit. I think Harvey would have rolled another doobie, smiled, and sighed “Love to you love baby”, and then he’d have grinned that he’d lived to see such a day. And he would have been moved to have seen the progress this shows that we’ve made.

But Supervisor Milk would have also thought there was something clearly missing. Like a bigger point, perhaps? Or any at all? Back in Harvey’s day in the 1970s, Gay Pride served a simple but important purpose. Back then the biggest issue was visibility, or rather our invisibility. Attending a Pride march was a way of coming out in the most public way possible, both individually and collectively. This was a politically radical act in itself – showing we were no longer prepared to be policed by shame. The inverts inverted this; now we were proud. And if being ‘proud’ now sounds slightly naff, boring and inconsequential, then it’s a testament to that revolution.

Almost 40 years on, lesbians and gay men have reached a historic stage I call ‘more out than in’. Meaning we’ve passed that moment where more of us are out of the closet than in it. People know we’re out and proud, don’t they? Then why are we still here walking up and down for a bit then going to a park?
Ironically for something that is supposed to bring us all together, Pride never fails to be spectacularly divisive. Perhaps the only unifying thing about it is that pretty much the exact same complaints can now be heard about events held all over the world. Should it be a party or a protest? Yawn! The Gay Liberation Front saw no contradiction in combining politics and pleasure. But thinking that Pride should only be about either one of those seems as daft as a duck trying to eat blancmange.

I think Pride should be more political with a big P, far more so than it is now. By which I mean more than a recruitment opportunity or PR exercise for political parties, the police or the army. Beyond that, its roots are in rebellion and in thinking about how people can rise up and maybe run their own lives. I would write “go figure”, but that would contradict those two previous statements.

Pride cannot help but be political. Even embracing pleasure for its own sake can be a progressive act (if you disagree then may I suggest you stop having gay sex? It’s non procreative and you shouldn’t enjoy it, you dirty sinner. Thank you). Surely Pride means not feeling guilty about how we take our pleasures – and not judging others whose pleasures are different to our own.

Perhaps this is now Pride’s main purpose, even if it’s lost its point. The gay world has become so atomised, with each of us all too often off in our own little worlds, Pride is the only time we get to see what we actually look like.
Pride is now the one day when all we queer tribes all come out – not to the straight world, but to each other.