Current divisions in global Pride politics

For onlookers – and for some participants – Pride events may look like joyful demonstrations of collective power and solidarity; a unique opportunity for local LGBTQAI+ communities to showcase their unity against opponents. Colourful floats, rainbow flags, chanting and dancing symbolise unity against the adversities inflicted by homophobic and transphobic actors.

However, Pride politics has always been conflictual and, in some cases, belligerent.

My recent book The Politics of Pride Events: Global and Local Challenges discusses the fractures that cross-cut the organisation of Pride events around the world.

Challenges include the controversial presence of corporate sponsors who brought neoliberal capitalism to the heart of Pride. They include the historical exclusion of trans, disabled, and racialised people. There is also tension between activists espousing homonationalist LGBTQIA+ politics and those seeking to de-colonise and de-militarise LGBTQAI+ activism. The former often embrace military and police presence at Pride, and support military occupation and intervention in Palestine.

Many in LGBTQAI+ communities are guilty of harbouring an artificial nostalgia for an imaged harmonious Pride past, when everyone marched united. Some even suggest that Pride events should be 'neutral' – a shapeless container firmly in the lane of single-issue politics. 

Does Pride risk fragmenting LGBTQAI+ communities? 

These tensions and conflicts intersect with specific social, political, and legal contexts. For example, in the USA, Donald Trump’s ascendancy to a second presidential mandate has heightened local LGBTQIA+ communities' insecurity. In January 2025, Trump issued a Presidential Act targeting gender diversity which instantly eroded existing hard-fought rights.

In January 2025, Donald Trump issued a Presidential Act targeting gender diversity which instantly eroded existing hard-fought rights

The global rise of far-right and anti-gender movements is leaving many LGBTQIA+ activists, including some interviewed for my book, worried that internal divisions are weakening the community’s ability to respond to existential threats. Many tout the recent proliferation of Alternative Pride Events as evidence of such division. Alternative events such as Trans Pride and Black Pride provide visibility and spaces of mobilisation for often-marginalised segments of the LGBTQIA+ community. Others coalesce around anti-capitalist, anti-racist and de-colonial political platforms. 

The exclusionary legacy of Pride events

Pride has never been fully inclusive. The USA, for example, is often heralded as having 'invented' Pride events after the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Yet tropes of unity and political neutrality are far from historically accurate. In 1973, trans Latinx activist Sylvia Rivera delivered a scathing speech during the Christopher Street Day Liberation Rally, denouncing the deliberate exclusion of trans people by white, male, middle-class organisers.

A political agenda favouring the interests of 'respectable' segments of the LGBTQAI+ community still often informs contemporary Pride politics

Similar tensions also existed with Black and disabled communities, and with cisgender lesbian and bisexual women. Today, creating a political agenda that embodies the interests of the most 'respectable' segments of the LGBTQAI+ community still often informs contemporary Pride politics. The result is often the formation of breakaway groups who organise alternative events.

Pride against dictatorships and genocide

Pride events have a long-standing history of embracing and promoting politically progressive platforms, and of denouncing dictatorship and genocide. As I discuss in my book, in the 1970s and 1980s, deep connections existed between underground LGBTQIA+ activism and the opposition to dictatorships in many Latin American countries, including Colombia, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. Similar (often difficult) alliances with progressive parties even existed in democratic contexts such as France and Italy. 

In South Africa, Black activist Simon Tseko Nkoli created the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of Witswatersrand) to challenge the apartheid regime. Back in 1990, GLOW activists marched on the very first Johannesburg Pride. Black liberation and LGBTQIA+ joined forces to challenge one of history's most shameful, oppressive, and racist regimes.

On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a wave of attacks on Jewish and some non-Jewish civilians. Since then, Israel has annihilated most of the Gaza Strip, forcing more than a million Palestinians to flee their homes. The ongoing genocide in Palestine has created tension and fractures in LGBTQAI+ movements. Pride organisers thus found themselves with no choice but to take sides.

In protest at Israel's actions in Gaza, Pride events have generated splinter groups organising events that explicitly espouse an anti-genocide platform

Conflicts around pro-Palestinian support at Pride Events are not new. Indeed, as long ago as 2014, controversy raged around the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid at World Pride. The rift, however, has since widened in several countries, including Italy, Germany, and the UK. In some cases, Pride events have generated splinter groups organising events that explicitly espouse an anti-genocide platform. Examples include Internationalist Queer Pride in Berlin, and Arrevutamm Pride in Naples. 

The future of Pride events: a question of strategy

The question for LGBTQAI+ movements and Pride organisers is one of strategy. Should Pride events be based on a timid single-issue strategy that narrowly centres LGBTQAI+ rights such as same-gender marriage, decriminalisation of homosexuality, or recognition of the rights of trans people? Or should they embrace multi-issue political agendas grounded in intersectional, decolonial, and progressive politics that recognises global oppression and systemic injustice?

Pride organisers face big challenges. These people represent beacons of hope for LGBTQAI+ local communities frightened by the rise of far-right and anti-gender movements that are eroding their rights and security. Pride organisers' response depends on their ability to find a balance between participants who mostly want to party, and those who feel urgency to use Pride events to achieve justice and equality through protest.

No.48 in a Loop series on 🌈 Gendering Democracy

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