Every year, throughout June, Pride Month is celebrated.
For 30 days straight - pun intended - members of the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies celebrate everything from their identities, friendships, relationships and accomplishments. Unapologetically might I add.
These celebrations mark the anniversary of the Stonewall riots - a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the community in response to a police raid that began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. The weekend of rioting, which saw queer communities stand their ground and fight back against the regular police raids on the city’s gay bars and clubs for the first time, is now recognised as being the catalyst for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people.
READ MORE: Ways you can be an ally this LGBT+ History month
Without the actions of pioneering activists Marsha P Johnson, a black drag queen, and Slyvia Rivera, a transgender woman, LGBTQIA+ liberation may have progressed at a snail's pace. Nonetheless, with every joke uttered that the likes of "gay icons" Judy Garland or Charli XCX "threw the first brick at Stonewall," there is twice the amount of serious issues we can't shy away from. And this year alone there are more than enough reasons as to why we need Pride month.
We need Pride Month to show solidarity with our international LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters including those stuck in Ukraine, fearing for their lives because their birth certificate doesn’t match their gender identity. As well as to show we haven’t forgotten about those who are expected to be grateful they're being offered refuge in Rwanda, a country, in which even the Home Office admitted, could see the community facing ill-treatment.
Closer to home, we need Pride Month to emphasise there is no LGBT without the ‘T’. It was announced on Trans Day of Visibility, the trans community were being left out of the ban on conversion therapy, a practice that left a gay man, from Halewood, “still unpicking the psychological damage” over 20 years later.
On a day, which was supposed to be dedicated to spotlighting the community and bringing attention to the fact trans people exist and aren't going anywhere, they were anything but seen.
We need Pride Month because it was only last year that reports of homophobic and transphobic hate crimes within Liverpool seemed never-ending. According to data from Merseyside Police, hate crimes against LGBT+ people rose by over 25% in 2021 compared to figures in 2019 with one incident seeing a 24-year-old gay man left bruised and bloodied and fearing he “would die.”
Regardless of all progress that has been made in the UK, there is a lot more that needs to be done. Sooner rather than later. Just because the country’s LGBTQIA+ rights are "good" or "better" in comparison, does not mean they are equal by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, the Royal Mint revealed a commemorative 50p celebrating the 50th anniversary of Pride UK, but what about making it easier for same-sex couples to adopt or go through IVF?
That’s why we need Pride month. We need it not only to support our communities but to educate and inform wider society about the repercussions homophobia, biphobia and transphobia has on all of us. Institutionalised or subconscious homophobia, is still, homophobia.
What may seem to others as nothing more than a stream of rainbow-themed bunting and an endless cycle of The Saturday’s greatest hits, Pride Month is much more to the LGBTQIA+ community.
It’s a celebration of Jake Daniels having the bravery to come out as the first gay professional footballer in 32 years. It’s a celebration of trans actress Yasmin Finney being cast in Doctor Who. It’s a celebration of Britain opening its first queer museum. Heck, it's even a celebration of Britney Spears’ conservatorship coming to an end.
