As an early member and chair-person of Sussex Gay Liberation Front I am sad to see how Gay Pride celebrations have become more and more an excuse for making money.
The original idea for the march and outdoor picnic was a celebration of sexual diversity and tolerance and the term out of the closet was coined to symbolise the act of honest confrontation with bigotry.
I remember when the march consisted of a few hundred people and even fewer stalls on a plot behind St Peters church. We brought our own food and drink and enjoyed an inexpensive day. Now the powers that be have dropped the word Gay from this event and we are left with Pride.
Pride in what I wonder? How much we are forced to spend in a weekend? Having done that the organisers have sought to coral the (by now) thousands of revellers in a huge pen in the beautiful Preston park in order to charge us £20+ a head to pay for their captivity and ban all personal food and drink being brought in to make even more money.
Now the men in black have decided to penalise those people who prefer to celebrate Gay Pride in the gay village area surrounding St James street by making them pay £5 for a wrist band in order to get into the area and the pubs. This is yet another infringement on the freedom to congregate and celebrate.
If the idea was to reduce down the large numbers of visitors flocking to a relatively small space are on safety grounds they haven’t said so. I suspect that the real reason is for someone to make money and we should all ask who is getting this money if it is for charity then we should all have the right to pay it voluntarily or decline not be forced to “DONATE”. I will never pay it.
If we accept to pay for the this wrist band TAX this year next year they will find some other pretext for another shake down.
Doug Coupe, Brighton
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