What, again?

Today I learned it’s Pride Month. Kathleen Stock is not entirely enthusiastic.

I know what you’re thinking: haven’t we already had it? Perhaps you’re thinking of LGBT+ History month in February. Or maybe you’re remembering the Tolkienesque-sounding IDAHOBIT — otherwise known as International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia — a fortnight ago. Later in the year there will be Ace (asexual) Week and Transgender Awareness Week; and don’t forget the Pride and Trans Pride parades scattered throughout the summer. The Catholic church has fewer holy days of obligation than the modern LGBTQI+ movement, and is arguably a lot less guilt-tripping.

On the other hand the Catholic church uses its enormous power to force women to have babies against their will. Credit where it’s due: the alphabet community doesn’t do that.

Just as early Christians made conversion easier by mimicking pagan rituals, so the rainbow gang has relaxed its entry criteria to ensure that straight people feel part of things too…

What is true, though, is that some people feel unwelcome at Pride parades. Paradoxically, many are lesbians and gay men, ideologically excluded because of their antiquated beliefs about the importance of biological sex to the definition of sexual orientation. For them, a male person can never be counted as a lesbian, no matter how high the heels or pink the lipstick, and even the most hirsute or muscular of female people could not accurately be called a gay man. They believe that stating they are attracted to people of the same sex, not the same gender identity, matters — particularly on behalf of confused young people coming to terms with their atypical orientation.

Yet the organiser, Pride in London, has made it obvious there’s no place for such heinous views at its events. The code of conduct even goes rogue from official Equality Act wording: “gender” and “gender identity” are listed as protected characteristics that may not, it is stressed, be “targeted” by “signage”. In plain terms: lesbians may not march with placards saying things like “lesbian = female homosexual”. The last time a group tried this in 2018, Pride in London denounced them as “shocking and disgusting”, demonstrating “a level of bigotry, ignorance and hate that is unacceptable”.

Because…a lesbian is not a female homosexual?

H/t J.A.

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