Gay Pride vs. Gay Marriage
Tags: 
We’re approaching June fast and we all know what that means…it’s Pride season! The banners are up around town, the flags will be raised high and mighty and there’ll be an exceptional buzz as Pride 2012 gets nearer and nearer.
But as more and more political figure heads and celebrities come out in support of the LGBT community and gay marriage, should we focus less on gay pride and more on gay marriage?
Here in Dublin, after Pride, we have the March For Marriage each August, which in my opinion is more important. I’ve heard from quite a few people that Pride just isn’t their cup of Earl Gae and they think it hinders the community and the fight to be taken seriously. With this in mind, would we benefit more from just having a March For Marriage and focusing all our attention on that, promoting it and supporting it?
If, for one year, we could JUST have the March For Marriage and pull in the massive crowd that usually turns up for Pride, would we benefit more and get further along the path to full and equal marital rights?
At the risk of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw I’ll try not end anymore paragraphs with questions. It would be great if there was a “marriage week” where workshops, talks, debates and official interactions with politicians and LGBT families and couples took place, a chance for people to show their support and then ended with the march.
Am I being a bit simple here or do you agree? (Damn, eat your heart out Bradshaw).
Image: theblaze.com
![Trans* Education and Advocacy [TEA]](http://www.gaelick.com/wp-content/themes/gaelick/images/mpu/transMPU.jpg)
Loading ...
lol@how this is turning...
I don’t think we should conflate the two to be honest. For a lot of Gay people, marriage isn’t an issue and for others, the whole concept is an icky attempt at heteronormativity. Personally I’m a strong advocate of marriage equality but it’s just one aspect of being gay. Pride is all encompassing. And as for those who think that Pride hinders the community, I’d tend to disagree. Pride is about being open and honest about who you are. There is a wide variety of people in the gay community. And some of them are wild and flamboyant and overtly sexual. But should we turn our back on them because the straights find that distasteful? I don’t think so. There is nothing to stop there being a theme to the pride parade but marriage equality is not the only fight to be fought. Workplace discrimination, bullying, trans acceptance are all equally valid and shouldn’t be abandoned for the sake of putting all our eggs in the marriage equality basket.
I don’t really understand why we would hide away Pride in order to be taken ‘seriously’ as a force fighting for marriage equality. Surely by having to only act conservatively to be taken seriously as wanting to love our partners equally under the law simply highlights problems in our political system that only the conservative and serious is taken as credible? Additionally, why can’t we just incorporate the Marriage aspect into pride? Surely putting something new into an already established event makes more sense than removing the establish event in order to make a new one? Finally, is it not necessary for us to be proud of ourselves in order to taken as a serious force for marriage equality? I think any awareness raising we can do is required and taking pride away, which is a well known and recognised part of the LGBTQ community, wont achieve that anymore. I understand your idea of maybe because this route of Pride marches hasn’t yet worked, so maybe lets go another route, but I see the big advances we’ve made towards our cause, and the more we push through pride and other routes which we already have, the closer we’ll come.
I think there’s a risk of reducing all the issues of the LGBT community to just accessing marriage equality if that were to happen, and would ignore the fact that there are other issues affecting the community, bullying in school, exclusion from medical services, lack of recognition for trans people etc
Pride Week should be about inclusive celebration with a political element.
For me – absolutely not – there are a lot of people who strongly disagree with marriage based on queer and feminist critiques.
I am deeply worried and frustrated myself by this obsession with marriage equality as an issue to the exclusion of all others – what about workplace harassment, what about lgbt domestic violence, what about remiving section 37, what about gender recognition law based on human rights
Marriage is not a panacea and not a utopia. There are many within our lgbtqi communities who reject marriage because of it’s history as an opressive institution.
I strongly support marriage equality but seriously – marriage is one option for a family structure – we shouldn’t be seeking to enforce it on people as the only option and making outcasts of those who reject it
maybe read this Jen
http://queerkidssaynomarriage.wordpress.com/
“Gay marriage” is not an equality issue and to suggest otherwise is nonsense.
All citizens of this country are entitled to marry, provided, of course, they meet certain criteria.
One being that they are not related, another that they are of a certain age, are of opposite sex, are of sound mind and are not already married.
These criteria apply to ALL citizens, no exception or discrimination.
Likewise all citizens of this country are entitled to drive a car on the roads, provided they meet certain criteria.
They must be physically able to drive, able to see correctly and to have a driving licence.
Is it discrimination to deny a limbless, blind person a driver’s licence?
If as Maurice states, “pride is about being open and honest”, there is a serious lack of “pride” among the gay community when it comes to “gay marriage”.
I would be completely against eradicating gay pride in favour of a gay marriage march. As others have noted below, marriage equality is not a universally accepted goal of the LGBT movement. To do that would be to exclude a lot of LGBT people who believe that marriage is contrary to the original goals of the queer movement (which is kind of is).
No. Pride is about all of us, coming together, gathering strength from our united community. If there is a political element, there should be many political elements, because we are not one aligned political machine.
We shouldn’t be worried about PR at Pride. We should be free to gyrate, glitter covered and half naked on the top of tractors. We should be free to throw condoms, dental dams and lube packets at a crowd of sex positive people who may or may not decide to us them with complete strangers or their husbands or wives.
Pride is like a family day out. You can’t discuss politics too much because being related doesn’t guarantee similar politics. It’s about being together, sharing what we have in common and feeling, for one freaking day a year, like being really freaking gay in the middle of Dublin won’t get us beat up. Or shouted at. It’s about feeling powerful and safe and proud. Like brushing your fingertips over a future we can only dream of right now, and embracing a past that has got us this far.
I’m married. I was kicked out of gay rights movements for being pro-marriage in the past, for “asking for too much”. I believe in Marriage Equality. But I don’t want it at the expense of my community and culture.
tl;dr: We are family, y’all.
Erm, do single people not count? At all?
Please, let’s leave Pride as an event where single people are not confined to the side line like extras in someone else’s movie as we are in so much of mainstream society.
Thanks everyone for the feedback on the subject. It was really a pondery type piece and thanks for all the suggestions and how everyone feels about gay marriage and pride! Bare with my 20 year old, slightly naive self
thanks Ian for the link!