Fair play to them. When you think Pride is supposed to be about an oppressed group of people refusing to hide or be ashamed of themselves, asserting their right to be themselves in public, it does seem wrong for the Gay Village to be walled off, out of reach to all but the “Queer Elite”. “Too poor to be gay,” bemoaned one of the protestors’ banners. I guess this tells you something about the extent to which sexual liberation can be acheived under capitalism; no sooner has homosexuality ceased to be a taboo than it is commodified, a lifestyle choice that one can by into, and image that one has to fit.

One could say similar things about the changing place of women in society, from locked away at home to plastered onto every billboard. That said, I’d much rather be a woman or a homosexual today than fifty years ago.

Personally, beyond the profiteering what really offended me about Manchester Pride was that the enormous float in the lead was that of, wait for it, the police. I’m sure to a lot of people this was a sign of how far queer liberation has already come, to the point where even the forces of order have been won over. But I couldn’t help thinking of the statue, two streets over, of Alan Turing, a scientist whose work so inspired me at uni (first time around) that he’s beyond Einstein in my eyes, and a man who was hounded to death by the state in its attempts to “cure” him of his “condition” – a condition for which many of his contemporaries were thrown in prison.