MARCH 1st, 2025 | SteveN Parker

Pride Is Not About Love, It's About Sex

It was never about who they can love.

That annual festival of rainbow capitalism, questionable fashion choices, and corporations desperately trying to prove their tolerance before swiftly pivoting back to their regularly scheduled indifference. We are told, ad nauseam, that Pride is about love. Love is love, they say, with all the sincerity of a Hallmark card written by an algorithm. But let’s have an honest conversation, shall we?

Pride is not about love. It’s about sex.

I know, this is the kind of statement that could get us cancelled, but the truth matters. Love, as a concept, is not exclusive to romantic relationships, nor is it the thing that differentiates straight people from queer people. Parents love their children. Siblings love each other. Best friends, who wouldn’t so much as hold hands for warmth, would jump in front of traffic for each other. Love exists in all corners of human connection, and yet none of these relationships require a Pride parade to validate them.

Only one thing truly separates these relationships from gay relationships: sexual attraction. The very reason queer people have been marginalized, persecuted, and criminalized isn’t because they experience love differently—it’s because they shag differently. You see, nobody has ever been arrested, excommunicated, or disowned for platonically loving their best mate too much. Nobody gets thrown off a rooftop in certain theocracies for excessive fondness toward their childhood chum. No, the issue has always been—and remains—about who we fancy.

Sex is the dividing line.

And yet, in a desperate attempt to sanitize queer identity for mainstream consumption, we have spent years polishing Pride into something more palatable, something that won’t upset the delicate sensibilities of suburban mothers and corporate HR departments. The message shifted from sex to love because love is safe. Love is a teddy bear and a warm cup of tea. Love is a grandmother beaming at a wedding. Love can be used in politics. Love is, above all, non-threatening. But sex? Oh, dear. Sex is scandalous. Sex makes people uncomfortable. Sex is the thing that had religious zealots foaming at the mouth and politicians drafting laws against obscenity. Sex is the reason people have been beaten, shunned, and worse.

Sex is the reason Pride exists in the first place.

Pride month—or season—is the one time of year where downtown streets become a catwalk for leather harnesses, fishnet bodysuits, and an alarming number of gimp masks. For an event that supposedly centres around love, one has to wonder why so many participants feel the need to celebrate by strutting through town in assless chaps and dog collars. Some march nude, proudly baring it all, as if public exhibitionism is an essential part of civil rights.

If you dare to question it, you’ll be labelled a bigot.

And then there’s the messaging. Among the rainbow flags and corporate-sponsored inclusivity banners, there is an unmistakable undercurrent of sexual deviance woven into the spectacle. Signs boasting slogans that suggest acts best left to the privacy of bedrooms, suggestive dances that would make a burlesque performer blush, and public displays that seem far removed from any meaningful conversation about rights or equality. It begs the question: is this really about acceptance, or just an excuse to flaunt kinks in broad daylight?

Let’s not forget that Pride was born out of rebellion, not out of a quaint desire to redefine greeting card platitudes. The Stonewall Riots weren’t a polite request for acceptance; they were a middle finger to a system that sought to erase and punish people for their desires. Pride was never meant to be a sanitized, G-rated affair to be enjoyed with a side of rainbow-colored cupcakes. It was about defiance, about people claiming the right to exist on their own terms—including, shock horror, their sexual ones.

The great cudgel of "love” has become the ultimate conversation-stopper, the unassailable virtue signalling that instantly casts any dissenters as villains. If you so much as raise an eyebrow at the more unseemly antics of Pride—the simulated sex acts on parade floats, the hypersexualized costumes in full view of children—you’re accused of trying to deny people the right to "love who they choose." But let’s be real: nobody is objecting to love. Love is not the issue here. What’s actually being debated, and what critics often take issue with, is unfiltered public displays of sexual attraction—not love.

The entire premise crumbles under scrutiny. Nobody bats an eye at two men holding hands or a lesbian couple kissing in a café. It’s not love that has ever been the sticking point; it’s the fact that Pride, in its most performative moments, is so overtly about sex and desire, yet hides behind the more socially acceptable banner of "love". The reality is that people object to explicit sexuality being thrust into public spaces. But, instead of addressing that critique, the retort is always some saccharine variation of "Why do you hate love?" It’s an absurd bait-and-switch that shuts down any real discussion before it can be had.

Let’s be clear—this does not mean Pride is just a rolling orgy, it means acknowledging that sex is foundational to queer identity in a way that it simply is not for straight people. Straight people never had to fight for the right to be open about who they sleep with because their desires were never criminalized. They could take their attractions for granted; but queer people could not. However, let us stop obfuscating reality with false pleasantries designed to make objectors look anti-love.

No one is anti-love, we just want to see less of the bedroom stuff on the streets for our children to see.

Let’s drop the charade. Pride is not about love. It never was. It’s about sex. It’s about who we are allowed to want, who we are allowed to kiss in public, who we are allowed to shag. And that’s precisely why it matters to so many. By vilifying those who object to this movement's less savoury ideals, we are only scaling back the progress we have made on gay rights and other issues.

Smarten up.