Blogging with Pride

Greetings from Riga. It’s Friday morning, the day before the march. The Amnesty International delegations are starting to arrive and preparations for today’s press conference continue.

I’m Donnacha DeLong, Senior Editor of amnesty.org. Last year, I worked on the Riga Pride demo from London. I helped post other people’s writings to the blog from home over the weekend. This year, though, I get to take part and blog about it myself.

I’m also going to be one of the stewards at the march and I’m very happy to be doing it.

Standing up against homophobia is very important to me and something I’ve done many times over the years. The thing is, though, I’m not gay.

Homophobic attacks are not restricted to LGBT people - how could they be, most homophobes have no idea who you or I love. Random homophobic abuse and attacks tend to target people who “look gay” or “act gay”.

Now, there’s no denying that, by the definition of most bigots, I “look gay” and “act gay”. I’ve had long hair and piercings since I was a teenager, I like dressing up and have been known to wear make-up - in my Goth days, that was a lot of make-up. So, I was a target for abuse of all kinds - I was a freak, a weirdo and - despite my sexual preferences - a “queer”.

My personal favourite incident was a few years ago in a pub in my hometown of Dublin when a group of us left together to taunts of “go on, we don’t want queers like you in here”. There was much hilarity in the group as we moved on to the next place. Out of the five of us - three men and two women - there were two heterosexual couples.

The point is, bigotry of any kind isn’t sensible, it isn’t intelligent and, when it comes to something that’s not immediately evident by looking at someone, often inaccurate. Of course, the bigot doesn’t care - homophobia isn’t really about who you sleep with, it’s about being different from the “norm”. Lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people don’t fit the narrow views of your average bigot - neither do pierced, long-haired, make-up wearing freaks like me.

Homophobia is not just an LGBT issue, it’s an issue for everyone who believes in the freedom of people to be who they are. We need to stand up and fight for that freedom. That’s why I’m in Riga.