Reflections on Gay Pride in Madrid

At the risk of sounding like a dreadlocked gap year twat, I have spent the last week travelling Spain, attending, whilst in Madrid, the 2009 Gay Pride parade and celebrations. As one might expect in a Western European country subject to a stifling degree of cultural, social and sexual repression until comparatively very recently, it was far grander than anything similar in England, with well over 2m people turning up for the parade alone and extensive, joyous news coverage.  Yet what struck me, along with the usual elaborate pageantry, music, dressing up (and dressing down, to the extent of wearing pretty much nothing at all save for a pairof pink hotpants) was the deeply political nature of the event, especially with regards the cross-agenda, cross-interest group alliances that seemed to be in place. This was, from my own perspective as somebody dedicated to the liberation of those traditionally considered to deviate from the confines of the matrix of acceptable sexual mores (and not just those who classify as ‘LGBT’, but those with other alternative, consensual sexual predilections), extremely encouraging. The party currently in power, the PSOE (social democrats, despite their name-’Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol’) had several parade floats extolling the virtues of LGBT rights and celebrating the fact that Spain was the first country to legislate in favour of gay marriage. Similarly, the UGT-one of the largest, most important and historic trade unions in Spain, took similar steps, in terms of sponsorship and the provision of vehicles and banners, to assure attendees that they fully supported gay rights and share the opinions of the gay community on many of the most important opinions pertaining to LGBT life. This was refreshing; there seemed to be a striking lack of neurotic, cynical political picking and choosing, the overwhelming desire to balance the ship, to avoid offending certain constituencies, that is characteristic of so much of our own (and of US) politics. Indeed, The UGT and the PSOE, in terms of their grassroots composition, are certainly not wholly socially progressive on certain issues, especially on ideas where the church has thrown its weight about, despite their generally leftist economic leanings.

But this did not seem to be important when it came to an issue on which a majority of members feel strongly; the strength of feeling meant that supporting this particular agenda loudly and publicly took precedence.  In combination with the atmosphere that was generated, simulataneously celebratory, defiant and political, this added up to a pretty powerful display.

However, I couldn’t help but feel that whilst there were so many positives to take away from the whole thing, it can nevertheless be counterproductive to so vociferously rail against the church and to link this inextricably with pretty much every single agenda that is being pushed at any given time, a feature of Iberian leftism in particular but other countries in general.  Celebrating pluralism, diversity, and the virtues of an active civil society, whilst also handing out huge banners reading, for example, ‘El Condón es vida-El Papa es Sida’ (Condoms are life, the Pope is AIDS-it sounds catchier in Spanish) not only seems slightly paradoxical in calling for the eradication or ‘modernisation’-whatever that means-of a rival source of moral and cultural authority, but also runs the risk of alienating those who would otherwise support the majority of the issues raised at gay pride either by seeking to inseparably link resentment and hatred with courageous defiance and a demand for acceptance simply because this is what makes sense if you consider the various arguments on offer. Surely it would be better to win full acceptance via argumentation and the use of the positive aspects of gay pride events such as this, rather than constant and vituperative anti-clericalism?