This got me wondering…
Fantastic start to #Pride2018. Have a great time today. Stay hydrated, slap on that suncream, keep all your personal belongings with you and embrace the celebration of inclusivity and diversity. @PrideBrighton pic.twitter.com/iwBVlpquGz
— Sussex Police (@sussex_police) August 4, 2018
…whether taking part in pride marches wearing rainbow stripes on your face was compulsory for police serving in British forces. Or is it one of those things which are common in modern organisations whereby it’s wholly voluntary but if you choose not to take part you can kiss your career goodbye?
My guess is some police officers are happy to take part whereas others are very much against it, perhaps with the latter group being made up of old-school police approaching retirement. I wonder if the police officers union has been approached by anyone who objected to taking part but feared their career may suffer, and if so what their response was?
My guess it’s a matter of time before ordinary employees in corporate jobs are herded into the streets to wave rainbow flags during Pride month. We may even be there now:
At the annual Pride Parade in London this year, corporations like Barclays, Citibank and Starbucks led the parade at the front of the party while historical groups who have stood with the LGBT community in the UK for decades were pushed to the back.
My guess is people are going to start getting awfully sick of this, and a lot of them will be gay men and women.
High time we had straight pride parades.
I bet that any Muslim policemen or -women declining to participate won’t see their careers suffer…
As a Christian I view the whole Pride (TM) displays & parades as being the ceremonies of a rival religion, one that is not compatible with my own deeply held beliefs. It is in that sense (for me at least) the equivalent of Hinduism or Islam; something that I am ok with people celebrating for the sake of tolerance but equally something I would feel very strongly about being compelled to celebrate myself.
I would feel strongly if my young daughters were introduced to the concept at school though.
For a supposedly oppressed minority, gays really do have an awful lot of money and effort poured into celebrating their existence.
My guess is people are going to start getting awfully sick of this, and a lot of them will be gay men and women.
It strikes this gay man as both alienating and pathetic.
My guess it’s a matter of time before ordinary employees in corporate jobs are herded into the streets to wave rainbow flags during Pride month.
We’ve taken one step in that direction in Israel. A bunch of companies gave their employees a day off on the day of a a gay pride march to express solidarity. I expect a few years down the line we’ll be hearing of internal HR memos complaining that these days are not being used properly.
Of course the path to this was already beaten out by the annual celebration of lawbreaking that is the Notting Hill Carnival Weekend.
“My guess it’s a matter of time before ordinary employees in corporate jobs are herded into the streets to wave rainbow flags during Pride month. We may even be there ”
American tech companies already do it. I think Apple have “diversity” marches at their Irish base in Cork.
I was utterly horrified at the 14 year old Drag Artist at Brighton, this is child abuse in any other context.
Seeing the ghastly mess they left behind with litter everywhere, ‘Pride’ seems an odd choice of name.
wholly voluntary but if you choose not to take part you can kiss your career goodbye
I think a lot of public sector bullshit falls under the above category.
None of my gay friends (caution: selection bias) have any truck with Pride.
Slightly off topic, I saw what seemed to be a Goth Pride march on Saturday…
My earlier lengthy comment got swallowed up by the site, so here’s a short version:
Pride has become a “safe” topic for corporations to support. The megacorp I currently work for sends out regular emails about Pride, women in business, disability, mental health (not suggesting any connection…), recycling, and so on. They shy away from anything remotely controversial: a mere “happy holidays” instead of Christmas, and no mention of Holocaust Rememberence Day or Ramadan or Eid.
I don’t know who decides what subjects are safe, but I imagine it’s whichever groups shout loudest. If you want to close down a subject for discussion, just set up a group to shout about it loudly enough, and watch as all the corporations go mute. (This is allegedly the Soros playbook.) Nobody is shouting against Pride these days – even the Church is on board – so it gets a pass.
Jonathan levy. A friend of mine travelled out to take part in the Israeli gay pride event, he has been using the pics to wind up all the lefties he is surrounded by who of course just can’t stand the rather multi coloured gay festival as opposed to what happens in the lands next door….I approve.
I’ve heard of soldiers being made to do this. And isn’t there a ban on soldiers doing political campaigns in uniform? And shouldn’t that apply to the police as well?
My parents and my teachers told me that I should only have pride when I had done something that was difficult and involved effort. So all credit to these marchers. I’ve seen a couple of videos, and I couldn’t do what they do.
@ Sam
And could I ask what those marchers have done ? Pushing perversity down the throat of society is not very difficult.
Who goes on these marches and what are they supposed to be celebrating or achieving…?
I simply can’y get my head around it.
I have gay friends and apart from the fact that their partners are the same sex you would have no way of knowing. They don’t feel the need to tell me all the time, wave flags or wear badges indicating what they get up to in the bedroom.
I suspect they are as confused about ‘Pride’ as I am…
It is the strangest thing that both the gay and Muslim communities are two of the the biggest protected classes these days, yet you could never put them in the same room together.
They don’t feel the need to tell me all the time, wave flags or wear badges indicating what they get up to in the bedroom.
Whenever I see Pride parades, I always get the feeling the people they’re most trying to convince are themselves.
My company has leapt on the Pride bandwagon.
It followed the transformation of our HR department from being a section performing mundane but essential tasks headed by an unambitious but sensible middle manager and clock-watching but efficient administrative staff, to one run by women with professional HR qualifications.
This year, the event was marked by publication of our first Diversity Policy.
If I produced a report for management which was similarly full of unsupported assertions, rickety statistical analysis and self-serving but unrepresentative anecdotes, I would receive a kicking on the top floor.
In this case, however, the top floor inhabitants uncritically recommended it to us all, while ostentatiously wearing their Pride wristbands and swipecard lanyards.
I had always assumed that I would work in this company until I was forced to retire. However, overseeing Millennial graduate entrants has become wearing and as our HR department begins to implement “diversity”, I suspect a career change or early retirement might become attractive
@ Juri
“And could I ask what those marchers have done ? Pushing perversity down the throat of society is not very difficult.”
Sorry, it’s the perversity itself I’m referring to. Especially the bit abut pushing stuff down throats. Try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to do what those chaps get up to!
Test
And isn’t there a ban on soldiers doing political campaigns in uniform?
Yes. They’ve got around this by defining Pride as non-political.
Mind you, “they” have got around to declaring support for Scottish Independence (as defined by running for deputy leadership in the SNP, as opposed to merely merely having a copy of Braveheart in the house and compulsively watching it every night) as a “protected philosophical belief”.
@ Tim yes, it is becoming ridiculous. As per Mr Thompson above, I’m gay too (and a non-lefty – whodathunkit?! There are a few of us…), and have only been to a single ‘Pride’ march (the first one held where I live, in Norwich). The one thing I truly remember about that was a chap wearing a t-shirt stating “I love boys”. Well, I know what he means (he means blokes, probably). You know what he means (probably). But if it’s a march supposed to show gay people are ‘normal’ to people who are not familiar with gays, I strongly suspect that the t-shirt might have rather supported a confusion in some people’s minds between gay guys and paedophilia. Oh, I tell a lie – the other thing I remember is a chap in a full pvc bondage outfit – mask-an-all with a leash being held by someone dressed (relatively) normally. Sheesh. Neither are to do with being gay.
Since then, I have never been back and never want to go to another one. It really does seem counter-productive. “We’re the same as you and will have a march to make sure you know it”. There used to be a real problem with attitudes to gay people (as opposed to gay ‘lifestyle’ – whatever-the-fuck that is supposed to be). But they really do seem to have been solved. Some of the shittiest people I’ve come across are other gays (if you pardon the expression). The corporate thing really makes me annoyed, just jumping on a band-wagon. I see it as similar to green-washing that started about 15 years or so ago. Twats.
Another thing – what is the true motive of organisers of these events? They almost always seem to be lefties. Yet more identarian bullshit being pushed by Cultural Marxists I suspect, is the real motive. I refuse to be a pawn in their game.
‘… celebration of inclusivity and diversity.’
It being an event for a narrowly defined group with specific tastes and characteristics excluding about 95% of society.
Got it.
By an amazing coincidence, I bumped into a work colleague at a meeting. She’d booked a weekend in Brighton as a treat for her mother’s birthday, not realising it was Pride week.
She & her mother love Brighton, but will never go again. The noise, the litter, the people clearly out of their gourd on drugs, and above all, the smell.
Yes, smell. All inhibitions were dropped. It was designed to shock, and public urination and defecation were the order of the day.
Defecation?!
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/68344264/lgbt-you-mean-liquor-guns-bacon-and-tits.jpg
A relative of mine works for a big multi-national tech company, and among the items he brought home from work one day was a pre-printed list sheet headed ‘things to do today’ and badged up with the company logo. In other words, it had spaces for the busy worker to enter all the jobs that one needed to do. Helpful stationery, you might say.
However, at number one was pre-printed “Include LGBTQ in all my work.”
My relative makes a point of crossing that out at once.
Watcher,
I’m not sure how long one can keep it up, ahem so to say, but that sort of thing offers rich comedy potential. Tell your relative to invent a character such as “Everard” or “Spike” ( ie a girl) and include xe in management reports.
On Twatter there was a character called Godfrey Elfwick (now banned of course) who produced this kind of satire, but a quick flick through the Grauniad or Vice or a morning listening to R4 should provide any necessary material.