Pride in Overdrive in 2023

If you know me, you know that I don’t care what people do, as long as they don’t hurt anybody else while doing it. If you want to smoke, or drink, or practice a certain religion, or if you’re gay or straight, or anything in between, none of it bothers me, as long as you’re not hurting anybody else. Live and let live. The Golden Rule. However you wish to refer to it. But, there is one thing that people universally don’t like, and I think we can all agree on this – Pushing your beliefs onto others is at best, annoying. Perhaps it’s not immoral, but none of us like opinions being shoved down our throat.

Pride has been a common topic of late in my neck of the woods. When I was a kid, pride used to be one of the seven deadly sins. Well, it still is. It’s considered the worst of the sins, so I find it strange that the LGBT community have appropriated this word to represent themselves. Surely it would have been better to pick a more neutral word, for example, “rainbow”. I mean, rainbows are already associated with their community. Why not have a “Rainbow Parade” instead of using a word that represents the worst of the seven deadly sins? It doesn’t make much sense to me.

As I said, I don’t care what people do, as long as it doesn’t interfere in my life. But recently, especially this year, people have been ramming their pride messages down our collective throats. Coles supermarkets have been going full steam ahead with their pride messaging. They’ve been taking out full-page ads claiming that “Everyone is Welcome at Our Table”. In the local Coles supermarket, they had a Pride display selling WorldPride Oreo biscuits. In the same shopping centre, a guy was handing out little paper Pride flags. My children’s school invited all the kids to wear rainbow socks to school. The Prime Minister of Australia went marching in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras becoming the first sitting PM to do so.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back, at least in my life, was when I was listening to the radio while driving my family to the park on the weekend. Recently, I only listen to one station, ABC Classic. Partly because I like classical music, but the main reason is that I’m sick of listening to other stations that are either full of ads or political messaging. However, ABC just can’t seem to help themselves. The announcer said, “And now we’re going to play you the world’s finest Pride music by some of the greatest queer composers of our generation. Enjoy three hours of the finest queer instrumentals”. I don’t know about you, but I just want to listen to music. I don’t need to know all the details about the sexuality of the composers. But this seems to be the only thing that the ABC wants to focus on nowadays – people’s sexuality. It’s amazing! I can’t even turn on the classical music station without being bombarded by social and political messaging!

The National Rugby League are one of the few holdouts. They’ve found that pride rounds are often “divisive”. In 2022, the Manly Rugby League Club tried to get their players to wear a rainbow pride jersey and it brought the club to its knees. A number of the players refused to wear the jersey and chose to boycott the game instead. So, the NRL have decided that it’s in their best interest to focus on the sport instead, and leave political issues off the field. They stated, “If we were going to do anything, we were going to do a Respect Round. It wasn’t going to be a Pride Round because then you alienate other people. We pride ourselves on being an inclusive game. To be an inclusive game you have to respect everyone’s views.” And I think that’s a pretty good way to look at it. If players want to go out and march in a pride parade in their free time, great, but leave the playing field for playing rugby. All players of any belief or lifestyle are welcome, as long as they can play football.

Okay, so what does all this mean? As I said, I’m not against anybody’s way of life as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else. The people who are pushing all of this pride messaging claim they are doing it to raise awareness of the LGBT community, but is there anybody anywhere that isn’t aware of the LGBT community? It feels like it’s everywhere. It’s at school. It’s at the supermarket. It’s at university. It’s on the radio. It’s in sport. It’s on every TV channel. There’s no escaping it! Do I just have to accept that we now have to talk about people’s sexual orientation at every opportunity?

MUSIC
Australian Ancestry (Traditional Mix)
Smokey's Lounge by TrackTribe
Double Helix by Ethan Meixsell
Allégro by Emmit Fenn