Philip Hensher: Gay Pride may be just a party, but it's still political

'The people it matters to live in isolated places where they might not feel comfortable living openly'

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London's pride as Mardi Gras showcases its drive to become gay capital of the world

Leading article: A lot done, a lot still to do when it comes to gay rights

Gay pride isn't called Gay Pride any more but Mardi Gras. At some point, the organisers of the annual beanfeast took the decision that it would be best to project it not as a demonstration, not a demand for some lavish portion of the human rights everyone else enjoys, but just as a party. There are fewer demands being made from the podium about employment rights; there is less talk about Aids these days; there is less sense that to march down the street in this cause is a statement of one's personal identity, and more that it is an excuse for a bit of a piss-up.

So it's called Mardi Gras, although nobody seems to have thought how little most gays would like their annual festival to be associated with a date in the Roman Catholic calendar. Nor, sadly, can it be said that the general over-indulgence on the occasion is likely to be followed by 40 days of abstinence. Still, if the intention was to emphasise that this is the biggest party in town, it seems to have worked: one of the notable things about the last years is that fewer and fewer of one's friends can be bothered to go on the march but prefer to head off in the afternoon to the party in the park before hitting the clubs in a big way.

The general intention to get pissed in public, messed up, and give your telephone number to as many 24-year-old Brazilians as you possibly can is, I suppose, in its own way a political gesture; one of the great pleasures of Pride has always been that it is most meaningful when it is being most frivolous. There is nothing more important than unembarrassed visibility. Perhaps the best thing it does for a gay man who has grown up isolated and apologetic about his sexuality and the fact of his existence is that he will find himself in a crowd wolf-whistling any passing builders and ganging up on some pretty copper to demand that he get his tits out for the lads. All that bad behaviour and harassment, all that concentrated ridicule of the sad twilit world of the heterosexual, does something to the shy heart, and afterwards, it is hard to go on maintaining to one's work colleagues and one's family that "the right girl just hasn't come along yet".

The point of Pride, I suppose, is mainly for people who don't have that routine access to a large gay community rather than for a London party animal like me. The clubs are much more crowded; Soho is busier; but if you live in London, you don't need to wait once a year to experience these things. The degree of public visibility attained by Pride 20, even 10 years ago is roughly the same now apparent anywhere in central London any night of the year.

The people it matters to most probably live in more isolated places; they might not know more than two or three gay people that they see regularly; they might not even feel comfortable about living their lives openly, and have drawn from that the conclusion that their lives are not really acceptable. What Pride can do is demonstrate that this is not the case, and never has been; and if they return to Diss, or wherever, and start to wonder whether they really want to carry on apologising for the fact of their existence for the rest of their lives, then something has been achieved.

So yes, Pride can hardly help being political to some degree. I feel that the widespread hatred of homosexuals, the degree of bigotry still enshrined in the law, mean that it's a little bit early to turn it into nothing more than a party. The pretence that the battles have been won is too widespread; evident not just in the change of the name to the meaningless Mardi Gras, but in the adoption of the meaningless and obscure symbol of the rainbow flag in place of the grave and significant label of the pink triangle.

It's really far too early for all of this, and the battles have not all been won. Cardinal Winning, who was being rather fantastically commended in this week's Spectator as a proponent of tolerance rather than, for instance, a horse's arse, was not the only hate-filled bigot who found a ready market for his poisonous outpourings. These people will always exist, but newspapers who would not print an article by a supporter of the British National Party still see nothing wrong in reporting their views.

Personally, I see no distinction whatsoever between a Baroness Young, insisting on the inferiority of homosexuals, and the National Front's view of the world as made up of higher and lower races. And both of them, whatever their intentions, found a ready audience in the man who bombed Brixton, Brick Lane and the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho.

All the same, important as it is to march, and much as one recognises that, over the past 30 years, Pride and a large number of very brave activists have changed the mental atmosphere entirely, sometimes one feels a little doubt as to whether this, really, is what we fought for. I have to confess to a slight feeling of snobbish distaste when I look at someone like Josh, the homosexual on Big Brother; there, clearly, is someone who feels no embarrassment whatever about his sexual tastes.

Of course it's unworthy to look at someone whose mental horizons are bounded by money, shopping and shagging and complain that this was not what we were fighting for. Because in a way it always was. Freedom, after all, is not just for the enlightened; it is for everyone, whether they know whether to care about it or not.

hensherp@dircon.co.uk