I’m writing this on the train home from Manchester, four days after I arrived for Manchester Village Pride, and I’m still processing it in the best possible way.

This was the first event delivered by a new organisation fronted by the local businesses in and around the Gay Village, and I’ll say this straight away: they got so much right. In previous years, and most noticeably in 2025, the village felt really, really overcrowded, with a sense that ticket sales had been prioritised over the overall attendee experience. This year felt different. Yes, there were the usual pockets of large groups of people outside the likes REM, BarPop, Onbar and the junction by Church and the Leven Hotel, but there was also space to breathe, to take it all in, to actually be present rather than just survive the crowd. And for me, that space is everything, because what I value most at a Pride event that gets the balance right between performance, community and wider purpose is the room to reflect.

Which brings me to the harder conversation, because Pride events remain one of the most contentious talking points both within our community and outside of it, and I think that tension is worth sitting with rather than flattening.

Nearly sixty years on from Stonewall, we are in a moment that feels quite dark for our community, and I really don’t want to minimise that. The case for visibility, for protest, for making noise, is real and urgent… But, I’ve never fully accepted the idea that protest means only one thing. Visibility. Joy. Showing the world the breadth and brilliance of our community. These are all forms of protest – the demonstration that we aren’t letting those against us win.

The fact is, we live in a multifaceted, multicultural, and an increasingly multi-opinion society, and the question of how Pride reflects that complexity is one that needs to be asked, but the answer is, actually, a difficult one to come by. We should never accept bigotry, ignorance or prejudice, but acknowledging that nuance exists in many of the conversations around us isn’t the same as accepting those things.

One of the quieter points of tension during Manchester Village Pride was around HBO’s involvement as a sponsor and supporter, and I do understand the instinct behind the criticism, and I’m not dismissing the very real concerns many people have around the incoming Harry Potter series and JK Rowling’s position. However, I’d push back on the idea that one production completely defines an organisation of HBO’s scale – what about the queerness woven through House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, Looking, and, come on, Heated Rivalry? A company like that operates across multiple business units, each with their own management structures feeding into a wider group, and decisions made in one part of it don’t reflect the values or output of the whole, not unlike how many large corporate entities operate across different arms before you reach group level. Boycotts can be powerful, but they need to land in the right place to have impact, and I’m not really sure this one does.

This connects to something I feel more and more strongly about, which is that some of the push away from mainstream support for LGBTQ+ causes hasn’t only come from the likes of Trumpism and its various global counterparts. Some of it has actually come from within our own community. When the conversation turns to pinkwashing, it often focuses on what we see, a rainbow logo in June, a Pride float, a sponsored banner, without any consideration of what that organisation might be doing internally for its LGBTQ+ staff, or the charitable work it does under the radar and without fanfare – as many shout “they should just be doing it!” Many of them are!

And at a moment when Pride events are cancelling across the country, when small LGBTQ+ charities and community groups are downscaling or closing entirely due to lack of funding, we need to think very carefully about who we’re pushing away and why.

Because the question isn’t abstract. It’s this: is it better to take money from an imperfect organisation, money that in many cases comes directly from queer people and allies working within it, to fund a service that genuinely needs it, or to turn it away on principle and watch that service close? I know where I land on that, and I think the community needs to have that conversation more honestly than it currently does.

The anger I see directed at people who hold more pragmatic views on these questions frustrates me, not because I don’t respect the need for anger, I absolutely do, but because it’s so often pointed at the wrong targets. Imperfect allies are not the enemy. People who are trying to work within broken systems while also pushing against them are not the enemy. Saving that energy for the people and institutions actively working against us seems not just more effective, but more honest about where the real threat is coming from.

I really do believe that we are at a crossroads as a community… The world is difficult right now in ways that require us to stick together, to find common ground with those willing and wanting to work alongside us, and to resist the urge to demand ideological purity from people who are, broadly, on our side. That doesn’t mean abandoning principles, it just means being strategic about where we direct our energy, and honest about what we’re actually trying to achieve.

Manchester this weekend gave me hope. The village felt like a community reclaiming something, doing it with care and intention and a clear sense of what it’s actually for.

I came home tired, in the best possible way, and more convinced than ever that the conversation we need to be having is not about who’s pure enough to stand with us, but about how we build something worth standing for.