The Pride movement has nothing to be proud of

This year’s Pride Month has rarely seemed so pointless. After all, only the truly shameless in the LGBT activist set could feel any pride in 2024 – a year in which the rainbow-flag fliers’ betrayal of gay youngsters in the name of gender ideology was laid bare.

The publication of the Cass Review in April exposed the scandal of the NHS’s treatment of ‘gender confused’ kids. It showed how the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS) subjected troubled, often gay youngsters to life-altering hormones, drugs and treatments. Yet when these same-sex-attracted young people needed a gay movement, it failed them. Stonewall, its principal representative, actively cheered on those encouraging gay youngsters to believe they were born in the wrong body. Former Stonewall CEO Ruth Hunt even warned parents that half their gender-distressed children would commit suicide without puberty blockers. At the same time, leading sections of the gay movement turned on anyone questioning the trans agenda.

You won’t see any reflection on this betrayal of gays and lesbians during Pride Month. There will be no recognition that by embracing gender ideology, the gay-rights movement of today has undermined the gay rights of tomorrow. Instead, an unholy alliance of corporates, trade unions and parading gendercrats will spend weeks celebrating their supposed virtue, while remaining oblivious to the absurdity and growing unpopularity of the movement they represent.

Don’t let the ubiquitous Pride flag fool you over the coming weeks into thinking this is a successful movement. How strong can a ‘gay rights’ movement be if it has allowed its next generation to be chemically castrated? How strong can a movement be that has allowed lesbians like Kathleen Stock or Julie Bindel to be deplatformed, harassed and sacked for standing up to gender ideology?

The new ‘Progress Pride’ flag tells the story of the movement’s corruption. A new trans chevron makes an ugly incursion from the left, with an ‘intersex-inclusive’ purple circle placed on top of it (despite some intersex activists asking not to be included). This is more of a logo now and less of a flag. It symbolises the hostile takeover of the gay-rights movement by gender-identity ideology.

Pride was once our answer to shame. The riposte to being kicked out of your home for coming out. The retort to everyday incidents of homophobia, which are now thankfully a thing of the past in the UK and the West.

Today’s Pride is different. It is not a response to a sense of shame. It is a false pride born of shamelessness. A pride fuelled by the self-righteous embrace of the cause of trans rights. Think of Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley calling lesbians ‘sexual racists’ in 2021 for not wanting to have sex with biological males. Think of those happily suppressing moderate gay voices for warning that ‘conversion-therapy bans’ simply criminalise ordinary therapy for gender-confused youth. Or how Stonewall did everything in its power to hound gender-critical barrister Allison Bailey out of a job.

If one must take pride in anything during Pride Month, I prefer to find it in the spirited and steadfast work of women and gay people in the UK who, against all the odds, have taken on gender ideology and its champions within the gay movement. Organisations like LGB Alliance and the Gay Men’s Network, which I direct, have done sterling work in defending gay rights from the predations of gender ideology. It has been tough. We have had to battle against an elite consensus. It wasn’t that long ago that both Theresa May and, later, Sir Keir Starmer were promising Pink News that gender self-identification would become law. Now, in part thanks to the efforts of gay-rights activists and gender-critical feminists, the sitting and shadow secretaries of state for health and social care are committed to implementing the findings of the Cass Review.

Pride, the holy month of the rainbow, is now a thoroughly rudderless affair. Its foolish embrace of the specious cause of trans rights has cost it dear. This increasingly silly party now takes place against the backdrop of a generation-defining medical scandal that Pride and its backers endorsed. Even Stonewall seems cowed. It certainly seems less keen to pronounce that transing a two-year-old is a good idea than it was just a few years ago.

Pride should parade its way into irrelevance. The gay-rights activism of the future will need to look very different.

Dennis Kavanagh is a director of Gay Men’s Network.