Why Pride Still Matters — as Protest, Not Just Party

I've just been reading a thoughtful post from my dear friend Dan Wood – a beautiful and quietly powerful reminder of why Pride is still necessary. Not as a corporate logo change or a party in the park (though there’s joy in both), but as something deeper: a moment of protest, visibility, and solidarity.

This coming weekend, I’ll be walking – not marching – at Oxford Pride. I make that distinction deliberately. I won’t be striding out in defiance, nor dancing in sequins on a float. I’ll be walking. Quietly. Purposefully. With others. In solidarity. Because for all the colour and celebration, Pride is still political.

It always has been.

As Dan wrote, “Pride wasn’t born of comfort.” It began as resistance – an urgent response to violence, exclusion, and the simple fact that some people must still fight for the dignity others take for granted. That truth resonates with me deeply.

I was a young teacher during the long, dark years of Section 28 – a time when being openly gay in a school environment wasn’t just discouraged, it was legally prohibited. I couldn’t talk honestly with my students. I couldn’t share my life. I certainly couldn’t model what it meant to be a happy, healthy gay adult. I watched young people struggle in silence because there were no words we were allowed to use.

Those memories aren’t historical curiosities. They are part of my lived experience – and a reminder that progress, while real, remains fragile.

And here in Oxfordshire – in Banbury, Bicester, Didcot, Rose Hill, Headington – there are still young people wrestling with identity, isolation, fear. I’ve met them. I’ve listened. In towns and communities that might seem progressive from a distance, there are still homes where being yourself is unsafe. Still playgrounds and classrooms where slurs go unchallenged. Still mental health services stretched too thin for those who need them most.

That’s why Pride matters.

That’s why I’ll walk.

Not to celebrate myself – I’m old enough now that I’ve made peace with who I am. But to show that I will not be silent when others are scapegoated. That I will walk beside those still finding their voice. That I believe we must keep asking the hard questions:

– Who still feels excluded – even where policies say otherwise?

– Where is dignity still dependent on conformity?

– And where are we confusing visibility with justice?

Pride, properly understood, isn’t about making everyone feel comfortable. It’s about refusing to let comfort become complacency.

I know many good people who raise the rainbow flag this month with sincerity. I’m grateful for that. But a flag without action is just decoration. If we mean what we say, we must be willing to stand with those who are still at risk – and sometimes that means stepping out of our comfort zones and into the messiness of advocacy.

Pride is still a protest. A peaceful, joyful, defiant insistence that every life matters, that love is never wrong, and that dignity is not something we earn by fitting in – it is something we are owed by virtue of being human.

So yes, I will walk. And I will remember those who cannot.

And I will keep walking, every day after Pride, towards a county – and a country – where no young person has to grow up thinking their existence is a problem to be solved.