There was this couple who had a lovely house, with lovely surroundings. As they sat by their fire place, they looked around and said to each other. How nice it would be to make our lovely house a B&B. We will have lovely people coming here, sample our food and great company while they stay. They hatch a business plan together where it states, to hire a room with us you must be married. We shall not accept unmarried couples. It’s our house so we have the right to decide who shall reside in our home. We will even accept animals into our B&B. Because animals are gods creatures.

When you open up a business to the public is it right to say yes to animals but be able to treat people as animals. Decide that because of religion that has never stated to be discriminative, but love everyone equally. Look after everyone equally. To break the equality laws by discriminating who you will serve and not serve. I have read comments such as why didn’t the gay couple go to a gay B&B. Because when a Gay B&B advertise themselves as gay they actually state gay friendly. This would be because they wouldn’t want to loose business from anyone just because of sexual orientation. Heterosexual couples can go anywhere they like, as no door is forbidden. This country passed a law saying that civil partnerships is in effect a marriage (even if it’s not called that). The gay couple Martin Hall and Steven Preddy are a ‘married’ couple in the eyes of the law. I gather the website states you should be married and they are. The only people you can say no entry to, are the ones that are rude, disrespectful or drunk. I don’t believe our gay couple even got to that point.

I remember growing up where if you were a mixed race couple people would look down on you for it. Now it is nothing, even the norm as it should be. By refusing a gay married couple a room they have broken many rules of the land. The main one being to discriminate over sexuality. Can you image the uproar if they turned away a couple of colour other than white. Anyone who wasn’t of Christian faith, or should it be a particular religion they would accept. I’m surprised they were in business for so long.

Why didn’t they ask the gay couple to use the back door, sit at the back of  a bus. It’s the whole attitude we hear of and everyone who is LGBT would of heard someone actually say it to them. “We understand there are gay people but why do they have to throw it in our faces”. So if you have a straight couple sat in a bar holding hands, cuddling the odd kiss. Then apply that to a gay couple it is seen as throwing it in your face. It’s not throwing it in your face it’s being a normal loving couple. What your actually saying is your not open to other people lifestyle unless it’s like your own. Then in that case you need to get out more and talk to more people and you will see that actually no-one is like you. We are all different. We can learn from our different lifestyles and respect that where someone likes sprouts others it’s not something they would want on their plate. But your not going to throw them out and stamp on them on the floor. This is what you are doing each time you judge someone without getting to know them.

When Pride began it was really because Reading didn’t have one and there wasn’t much in the area at the time. When we started 7 years ago you could almost pick a weekend and not clash with any other Pride event in the festival calendar but now there is as many as 4 in any weekend up and down the country. Reading Pride are dedicated to making sure they don’t get so big that they loose the message as they do get offers that would totally commercialise the festival and this is a very dangerous ground as the commercialism will over take the message and it will no longer be a community festival but about the highest bided brand.

My vision as a chairperson has been to make the Pride event about the community. About giving the LGBT community a voice. Not many Pride events actually promote this very well. When I came out 9 years ago all I knew about was the gay bars. This is not the best place to have issues about your sexuality unless you are already confident about it in the first place. It can be a hostile as well a great place to meet new friends and partners. But I would always recommend that you should go with a friend, I didn’t have that, as I wasn’t 100% committed to the idea and unsure. (Even if my friends tell me they knew all along).

So this is why we have given our Pride Event a focus and to make sure the message gets out there that if you are questioning your sexuality then this is a great place to start. This year’s focus is about the family unit as there are loads of same sex families without a network. The families seem to get missed when we talk about being gay. Nearly all my friends have family, so it’s time to show that and reflect that with the festival too. It can’t be easy to be a sibling to a gay parent neither would it be easy for the parent to help your child when the bullying can start for your child. Reading Pride wants to start a network so that siblings and parents can talk about the problems they encounter and be a support network for each other. Reading Pride wants to bring out all individual needs of people and get them to meet up.

But Reading Pride isn’t all about that, it is also about but being yourself and if you find yourself wondering what all the fuss is about and why do we need a pride event like this, then ask yourself, how often do you see gay couples holding hands or showing affection in public probably not very often. We want to open the doors so we as a group can feel comfortable in public with our partners. Which is why we encourage everyone to come to our festival, as it’s the only one that won’t discriminate as long as you accept that not everyone is like you.

We are championing this year

Family Picnic groups

Stamping out Homophobia in football

Getting an LGBT Centre in Reading to house all the groups together so that we can be found and no longer hidden.

Plus the other missing links in the area, a 20-25 group as there is nothing in our community for people who go past 19 years old and younger than 50 years old.

We will be starting an on-line networking group that will be encompassing all groups, including gender, sexuality, age and life styles plus their interests.

This year we welcome

Diane Abbott MP as our appointed Patron

Reading Pride is proud to announce that it has appointed Diane Abbott MP as its first Patron. Diane Abbott who has been an MP since 1987 with a special interest in equality and diversity, having had a career within workers unions before that.

In a statement issued by Diane Abbott she states, “I am absolutely thrilled to have been offered the opportunity to become a Patron of Reading Pride.

So many towns and cities across the country see local pride events as an important part of their summer calendar – I hope that the next few years brings us greater equality – gay marriage, greater protection for trans people, blood service reform and gay families being seen as equal and important as heterosexual families. And I hope that by working with Reading Pride we can do our bit to make this a reality.”

Reading Pride is proud to appoint Diane Abbott as a Patron, especially one who has

been campaigning since the 80′s not only for equality amongst issues involving sexuality but equality for the entire community. We hope to work together to form a stronger community presence, both locally and nationally on issues which can change the lives of the many.

Understanding comes in many forms and one that I see time and again is the intolerance from the gay community and someone wanting to believe in a god. My opinion on this is that all religions are actually piece loving, it’s the extremists in any of the religions that need to be cast out and it can happen with any religion. If the religions actually started to stand up to the extremists in their fold, as the extremists are a minority within themselves, aren’t they? Then maybe they would start to get better publicity. I do understand it can be down to fear and intimidation that maybe the main reason behind why they don’t, so perhaps we can be a little more understanding when it is intimidation that is the issue. As we have all been a victim of intimidation in our lives. A recent article highlights the issue facing gay Muslims. We (as in Europeans) are lucky that we have a better tolerance of our sexuality. But if your from a Muslim background you have to consider your family too as they will be cast out from everything as tainted blood. So that’s their sister, brothers, parents and so on. This is the crutch of the issue with Muslims, being able to come out and a better understanding is required.