Poet Vanessa Fay was unimpressed. ‘People who had performed for many years were confined to a gazebo with no PA system, trying to compete with the straight London-based artists on stage,’ she says. ‘It was a real shame, especially for those hoping to find diversity and politics – the whole origins of Mardi Gras.’

Andre’s attention-grabbing attendance sums up how far Manchester Pride has become commercialised and exclusionary, detached from the diversity, vibrancy and radicalism of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community.

Its critics say Manchester Pride is the most commercialised such event in the country, hosting its parade as part of a private, ticketed ‘Big Weekend’ event. Increasing numbers in the LGBT community are deeply critical of the ‘corporate friendly’ image they say it promotes at the expense of politics, community and its liberation roots.

Alan Bailey, NUS LGBT Officer, explains: ‘LGBTQ [the Q stands for queer] people don’t have liberation. Despite some legal victories, we must still fight for free love, free gender expression and a radical alternative to an exclusive society.

‘Prides started as protests but now many charge entry, some just to take part in the parades. They “pinkwash” the real issues we still face.’

Commercial takeover

Manchester has hosted LGBT festivals and marches for decades, including an annual event formerly known as Gayfest or Mardi Gras.

In 2003, Manchester Pride Ltd took charge of the event, introducing barriers to close off the village surrounding Canal Street – the heart of Manchester’s gay community – to non-ticket holders. The ticketing was ostensibly to raise money for charity, but Manchester Pride Ltd was not officially granted charity status until 2007, and overlaps between board members and Canal Street Business Association members, bar owners and promoters continue to raise eyebrows.

An investigation by ‘Gay Mafia Watch’ – an LGBT blog exposing commercial exploitation of gay events – found in 2007 that less than 1 per cent of the charity’s income went to LGBT community groups.

Soon after, Phil Burke, chair of the Village Business Association, resigned from the Pride board, stating that the event was ‘run by dictators’ and is ‘just about making money…What should be a community-driven event is now a purely commercial operation. Established operators are shunned and overlooked for non-entity, non-gay organisations that just have bigger purses.’

Parade entries now include brands such as Selfridges, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Premier Inn and WKD drinks, who pay £1,300 for the privilege.

Entry to the parade is for registered organisations and applications may be refused if they ‘do not support the values and ethos of Manchester Pride’. Two years ago, members of the NUS and Queer Youth Network parade entries were informed they were in breach of this regulation for holding placards that read ‘Pride is a protest’ and ‘Stonewall was a riot’. They were told to leave them behind or leave the parade.

And last year, local singer Ste McCabe was asked not to wear a t-shirt reading ‘too poor to be gay’ – the name of his album – because ‘it sent out the wrong message’. He declined to perform as a result.

Reclaiming the scene

But activists are fighting back. A coalition of Manchester groups has come together, under the banner ‘Reclaim the Scene’, to stand up to the sanitised corporate image of the ‘pink pound’ – which is, they feel, creating new prejudices and barriers and sidelining pre-existing LGBT issues.

In response to the perceived paucity of community presence at official events, an alternative pride festival, Get Bent, was held in Manchester in 2006 and 2007. The non-profit group put on free arts events and club nights, aiming to ‘provide an alternative to commercial gay spaces by creating a queer autonomous space that is sex-positive without being sex-centred, doesn’t depend on alcohol to have a good time, and is unafraid to put the politics back into pride’.

In 2008, the NUS and Queer Youth Network marched under the banner Pride is a Protest, inspired by activists in Birmingham who created an overtly political march when the city’s official Pride was cancelled. In Manchester, the first act of the group was to picket the birthday balloon launch of Pride with placards and banners reading ‘Queer fightback!’ and ‘Pride as a protest or pride as a corporate sham?’

The movement evolved into Reclaim the Scene, to reflect the broader aims of the group: to see the local ‘gay scene’ become more community focused, less commercialised and more accessible, all year round. Last year, Reclaim the Scene organised banner drops around the village, had a political entry in Manchester’s Pride parade and held a Community Pride Picnic outside the fenced-off official Manchester Pride area.

The picnic was completely free, with food donated from local allotments, political speakers, children’s entertainment and a diverse range of entertainment from poets to local bands. All donations raised were given to a LGBT safe house in Iraq. ‘Manchester Pride should be free, accessible and community based. We are showing that this is possible,’ says Reclaim the Scene member Emma Kerry.

The ethos of Reclaim the Scene is gaining popularity across the country, with a group of Londoners planning to set up their own group.

Sky Yarlett says: ‘I was inspired by the Reclaim the Scene movement in Manchester and, after talking to a few of my friends, I discovered that we hated the scene in London: the lack of variety, how gays and lesbians were divided, how sexism, racism and transphobia are rife. The [Pride London] focus isn’t on a community project and our scene should be uniting to fight this.’

The shift towards new kinds of queer politics is not limited to city-based campaigns. The trade union Unison passed a motion called ‘Pride is a Protest’, soon followed by the NUS LGBT campaign. Unison was also an official supporter of Reclaim the Scene Manchester. At Pride London this year, students from NUS LGBT marked the anniversary of the Gay Liberation Front march by re-enacting photos of their actions.

Taking note

Manchester Pride organisers are, it appears, taking note: they have now introduced some more diverse and widely publicised events in the lead up to the Big Weekend. Last year, a community float also allowed people not part of an official group to join the parade, and the NUS was allowed an overtly political entry – complete with radical banners.

David Henry of Queer Youth Network broadly welcomes the changes. ‘Some of the things Pride are doing outside the village are really great – positively on the edge of the mainstream and yet still endorsed by them. We applied for their community funding grant and got money for a portable PA, which will go on more radical marches, so I suppose they are also funding radical voices indirectly.’

‘The visibility of radical voices is still restricted, though,’ he adds. ‘Despite the Fringe title of some events this year, it’s all funded and run by Manchester Pride, who still tell some performers their music’s too radical.’

Manchester Pride is slowly changing its attitude, but the overall balance still seems to place commercial over community interests. This year, Reclaim the Scene will be there again: holding another community picnic, open to everyone and starting as the parade ends.

Also taking place will be Manchester Queeruption, an international movement of ‘DIY, non-commercial, non-hierarchal, safe and open space for workshops, political action, parties and sex…’ Planned to coincide with, but not in opposition to, Manchester Pride, Queeruption organisers say: ‘This event is not associated with Manchester Pride, but supports pride and queer spaces in Manchester and hopes to compliment the event by filling a big gap we’ve been missing for quite a few years now.’

For some gay and lesbian Indians the high court declaration will mean having the courage to come out. For Shaleen Rakesh, a 38-year-old veteran gay rights activist, it is the end of a legal campaign he mounted six years ago against an insidious law that left him powerless against homophobic violence and unable even to talk about rights.

‘Domestic partnership, adoption, all the things that straight people take for granted, activists couldn’t even talk about because Section 377 made it illegal to be gay in the first place,’ he says. Under the colonial law, men could be jailed for 10 years for having gay sex, an act which was classed as an ‘unnatural offence’ along with paedophilia and bestiality. ‘How could you talk about rights when the legal framework made you a criminal?’

Six years ago, on behalf of the Naz Foundation HIV/Aids charity, and with the help of a legal charity called the Lawyer\’s Collective, Rakesh began to put together a public-interest litigation against Section 377. ‘Besides just coming out and shouting from the rooftops, trying to change the law was the only thing we could do,’ says Rakesh, who now lives with his partner of seven years in Delhi.

The everyday harassment of gay men by police and thugs also strengthened Rakesh’s resolve to fight the law. Gay men were rarely prosecuted under Section 377, but they were often intimidated or exploited because of it.

Once, while he was coordinating the Naz Foundation’s ‘men who have sex with men’ programme, a whole group of men with whom Rakesh had been working were badly beaten up. ‘A bunch of gay boys who were walking home from the support meeting were attacked by some street boys,’ says Rakesh. ‘They had iron bars and hockey sticks. Many of the boys I knew got their heads smashed that night and were taken to hospital.’

‘We knew who did it. I wanted to make a police complaint but we couldn’t because of the law,’ says Rakesh. ‘The police had a history of raiding groups working with gay men and of rounding up and arresting outreach workers,’ he says. ‘So we were afraid.’ The men who were beaten up were also afraid to speak out. ‘They were not ready to own up to being gay publicly; they thought they would be criminalised,’ he says. ‘In the end we made no complaint.’

Activist journey

Rakesh’s journey to becoming a gay rights activist and legal victor began when, as an 11-year-old schoolboy in Delhi, he realised he was attracted to men. He describes growing up surrounded by a ‘conspiracy of silence’, in which nobody even spoke of the possibility of homosexuality. ‘I would have been happy to hear something I could latch onto or fight with, but there was just silence, nothing,’ he says.

‘There was this hypocrisy. It’s okay to do what you want to do in the bedroom but you don’t talk about it in the living room. I used to find that appalling.’

He got into gay activism in his twenties, finding that voicing what he felt about the state of affairs ‘began to heal the years of silence and oppression that I felt as a gay boy growing up’.

But before he could go public, he had to tell his mother. After keeping his sexuality secret from family and friends for a decade Rakesh came out to his mum, who delighted him by replying simply, ‘So what?’ Most gay Indians do not have the privilege of being born to such liberal parents.

After coming out to his family, he began working with gay organisations, starting with the Humsafar Trust in Mumbai and then the Naz Foundation in Delhi. ‘I became a very openly out gay rights activist,’ he says. ‘I used to write a magazine column, I did training workshops and seminars, I was very vocal in the media, I organised protests and I did a lot of work with the National Human Rights Council on the psychiatric mistreatment of homosexual clients by the medical fraternity.’

Rakesh did not expect legal victory to come so soon – the petition had been winding its way round the country’s judicial pipelines for years – but credits the judicial change of heart to two things: ‘the HIV/Aids argument’ and a groundswell of public activism.

Gay men are up to eight times more likely to contract HIV than the average Indian, and many groups lobbied for Section 377 to be overturned on the grounds that it pushes gay men underground, making them more vulnerable to HIV. NACO, the government’s HIV/Aids control body, came out against Section 377 in 2006, arguing that the law made HIV prevention more difficult. The health minister Anbumani Ramadoss and many AIDS organisations, including the Indian HIV/Aids Alliance, where Rakesh now works, have also called for the law to be abolished in order to protect public health.

Opening the floodgates

Social pressure from around the country, but particularly the big cities, has also grown hugely in the past few years. ‘The floodgates have opened,’ says Rakesh. Cities such as Delhi and Mumbai have held gay pride marches; young gay people and their families have been interviewed by journalists on primetime TV; Bollywood films now have gay characters. Bombay Dost, a gay magazine, has been relaunched and is no longer sold wrapped in brown paper. This cultural shift ‘probably gave the court some degree of comfort to believe that the population was ready for change,’ says Rakesh.

Now that homosexuality has been decriminalised by the high court the government will discuss formally repealing Section 377. But there is also plenty of opposition to a change in the law. Religious groups, leaders of the BJP (the Hindu nationalist party), and millions of ordinary Indians, especially those in rural areas, still find homosexuality unacceptable.

This social discrimination will be much slower to budge. ‘In small towns in India it’s still virtually impossible to come out to your family,’ he says. ‘Even in Delhi most young gay men find it hard to come out.’ Many men succumb to the social pressure around them and keep their sexuality secret. When Rakesh was in his late teens he asked a man he’d met at a cruising spot whether he would ever get married (to a woman). ‘I already am,’ he replied. ‘Isn’t everyone?’

Rakesh no longer sees himself as a political activist. But the legal change he helped to bring about has set a host of new challenges for the next generation of activists – to make social change follow legal change, and to campaign for all the rights that straight people take for granted.

‘I don’t think people are just going to change their opinions overnight because of the law,’ says Rakesh. ‘Stigma and years and years of socialisation don’t get changed overnight, but it’s a start.’

Global developments in gay rights

Venezuela

A law was proposed earlier this year that would legalise same-sex civil unions in Venezuela. It has passed through one round of discussion in the national assembly but it has faced strong opposition from Venezuela’s episcopal church, which has publicly condemned the proposal. The proposed law would also accord equal rights to transexual people.

Zimbabwe

Gay rights campaigners in Zimbabwe believe they have a 50-50 chance of getting gay, lesbian and bisexual people protected under the country’s new constitution, which is currently being drafted. At the moment sex between men is illegal. Keith Goddard, director of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe, says that the best chance of success is to argue for the law to be repealed in the name of HIV prevention.

Pakistan

The supreme court in Islamabad has ordered that transgender people should receive equal protection and support from the government. The interior ministry has also been directed to ensure police provide protection to trans people from criminal elements. Gay sex is still illegal.

Burundi

Gay rights took a step back in Burundi in April this year after the government criminalised homosexuality for the first time in the country’s history. Gay men who are prosecuted can be punished with up to two years in prison.

‘I felt afraid,’ says Pauline, ‘because I had heard stories, especially in school, that attraction between people of the same sex wasn’t normal, and it was considered evil and un-African.’

Homosexuality is illegal in 38 African countries. In Kenya, it is punishable by up to 14 years in jail. Although no one has ever been convicted, the existence of this law has kept most of Kenya’s lesbian, gay, bi and trans-sexual (LGBT) community in the closet. There are high incidences of suicide and drug abuse, and no legal recourse in the face of discrimination and hate crimes.

When Pauline came out, her mother took her to a therapist who gave her anti-depressants as a ‘cure’. Pauline’s sister accused her of bringing shame to the family. Her father accepted her choice, but died soon after. Only her younger brother, Edwin, has stood by her over the years, respecting both her sexuality and activism.

Seven years on, her sister is more reconciled with Pauline’s lesbianism, but her relationship with her mother is still fraught with pain. ‘Having my mom come from a very Christian background, and read, translate and interpret the bible the way everybody else is doing, gives her grounds to hate the lesbian in me. But I expect her to challenge her biased judgment, because in the end, it’s the same bible that’s about preaching love.’

Pauline blames religious leaders for systematically fueling homophobia in Kenya. Homosexuality is constantly described as a crime against Christianity and Islam, with many churches running sexual orientation conversions and banning homosexuals from services. American conservative pastors regularly tour Kenya and have daily television shows there, bolstering homophobic beliefs.

Hate crimes against the LGBT community are frequent, but most go unreported. Pauline had to move house when she was attacked by neighbours after taking part in Kenya’s first television talk show on homosexuality in August last year. At least two other members of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK) present at the show were also attacked.

This was not the first time for Pauline, nor does she expect it to be the last. She came out to four male college friends a few years back. One of them, she says, wanted a relationship with her. She invited them for drinks to celebrate her coming out, and later that night offered to drive them home. On the way to one of the men’s house, ‘one of them grabbed me from behind,’ Pauline explains, ‘and then they started ripping my clothes apart. That’s when they raped me, in my own car.’

Pauline did not tell anyone or report it. She tried to commit suicide. Soon after, she was raped again by an unknown group of boys on campus. Targeted rapes of lesbians are very common – and not only in Kenya. South Africa, for instance, despite being the only African country to give sexual minorities equal constitutional rights, has one of the highest incidences of so-called ‘corrective rapes’ of lesbians.

It’s nothing new, says Pauline: rape has always been used to intimidate assertive women in Kenya, like feminists and female politicians.

Surviving these attacks gave her strength to keep fighting for LGBT rights. She joined GALCK within a month of its creation two years ago. From the onset, the coalition prioritised HIV healthcare and treatment. Studies estimate that sex between men accounts for at least five to ten per cent of HIV cases in Kenya, but HIV counselling and treatment programmes have been systematically geared towards heterosexuals. Cases of LGBT people being denied healthcare are common.

One major breakthrough for Kenya’s gay coalition was to->www.mask.org.za] collaborate with Liverpool VCT, the only HIV counselling and treatment centre in Kenya to cater to LGBT people. With pride, Pauline marched at the 2006 World Aids Day, when Kenya’s gay coalition went public, and then at the 2007 World Social Forum where for the first time LGBT people from the East African community claimed public space to demand their rights.

‘Even if there is not any social recognition,’ says Pauline, ‘at least people now know we exist.’

Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya

Arusha Topazzini is a freelance reporter

‘This programme is an insult to the 100,000 Iranian people who have
been murdered since the Islamic fundamentalists seized power in 1979,’
he said.

Mr Tatchell was commenting on the decision by Channel Four Television
to broadcast the Iranian President delivering The Alternative Christmas Message today, Christmas Day. It will be transmitted after the Queen delivers her traditional Christmas Message to the nation.

Mr Tatchell is calling on Channel Four to:

‘Pull the plug on this criminal despot, who ranks with Robert Mugabe,
Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and the Burmese military junta as one of the
world’s most bloody despots.

Channel Four executives would not give Ahmadinejad this propaganda
coup if it was their partners or children who were being tortured in
Evin prison, Tehran.

This Christmas, thousands of Iranian families are grief-stricken.
Their loved ones have been jailed, tortured and executed. Instead of
inviting one of them deliver The Alternative Christmas Message,
Channel Four is giving airtime to the man responsible for their loved
ones’ suffering,’ he said.

According to Channel Four’s advance text of President Ahmadinejad’s
broadcast, his speech includes the following statement:

‘Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the standard bearer of justice, of love
for our fellow human beings, of the fight against tyranny,
discrimination and injustice …’

‘I pray for the New Year to be a year of happiness, prosperity, peace
and brotherhood for humanity.’

‘Ahmadinejad’s apparently reasonable words are pure propaganda. His
actions are devoid of love, justice, humanity and brotherhood. They
involve the brutal repression of his own people,’ commented Mr
Tatchell.

Trade union, student and women’s rights activists are imprisoned and
tortured. His government is pursuing a racist, ethnic cleansing policy
against Iran’s minority nationalities, such as the Arabs, Kurds and
Baluchs.

According to Human Rights Watch, in March this year an Iranian
parliament member, Hossein Ali Shahryari, confirmed that 700 people
were awaiting execution in Sistan and Baluchistan province, which is
only one of Iran’s many provinces. Many of those on death row are
Baluch political prisoners. This staggering number of death sentences
is evidence of the intense, savage repression that is taking place
under the leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In 2004, in the city of Neka, a 16 year old girl, [Atefah Rajabi
Sahaaleh,->http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5217424.stm] who had been raped and sexually abused by men for many
years, was convicted of ‘crimes against chastity.’ She was hanged by
the method of slow, painful strangulation, hoisted by a crane in a
public square.

‘Ahmadinejad’s regime exports terrorism. Many of the death squads in
Iraq are trained, armed and funded by Tehran. They murder political
and religious dissidents,’ said Mr Tatchell.

Peter Tatchell is the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East
www.greenoxford.com/peter and www.petertatchell.net