Pride

Wednesday

Charles Moore

‘No. 10 North’ won’t work

From our UK edition

It would be dangerously premature to say that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia, but Russia is undoubtedly doing worse. Ukrainian ingenuity and courage are outsmarting Russian mass. Ukraine has the advantage in technology, especially drone technology, and morale. The Black Sea fleet is held in port and Russian-occupied Crimea is now insecure. This is becoming apparent even on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg. So what, I wonder, will western apologists for Vladimir Putin, led by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, say if his situation worsens further? Will they still back him as the upholder of Christian values against the decadent West and champion of Russia’s historic territorial rights and its need for security?

Friday

Cockburn

HelloFresh’s stomach-churning Pride ad

HelloFresh is a popular food-delivery service that has simplified home cooking with its pre-prepared ingredients. Yet this month, Pride Month, the company ignited a mixture of reactions by posting the following statement on its Instagram:  We know eating isn’t always a top priority this month. We respect that. But for those of you who are... prepping... we have an extensive lineup of high-fiber recipes available. Happy Pride. Since posting the gratuitously sexual advertisement on June 5, the company has elicited over 4,500 comments. Some have doubled down on their support, writing comments such as, “I wHOLE thank you for your support and service,” “This is iconic” and  “This is the most supportive pride post from a brand I can think of.

hellofresh
mark meadows
Cockburn

Has Mark Meadows shopped Trump to the Justice Department?

The speculation in Trumpworld surrounding Mark Meadows, and whether the former congressman and White House chief of staff handed Special Counsel Jack Smith the tools he needed to indict the former president, continues to rise.  It’s already known that Meadows’s staff was the source of an audio recording where the former president made comments about the classified documents he took from the White House — they recorded an interview in July 2021 at Bedminster for Meadows’s memoir about his time in the White House, The Chief’s Chief, which you can purchase at Amazon in hardcover for a very modest $8.07. Trump discussed a document, one that he said he ought to have declassified before leaving the White House, about potentially attacking Iran.

Thursday

Philip Patrick

Will FIFA cancel its LGBTQ Pride match for Iran and Egypt?

FIFA looks set to face its first major scandal of the 2026 World Cup – if you don’t count the exorbitant cost of the tickets, that is. The Egyptian FA has made a formal request for the cancellation of an LGBTQ+ celebration planned to take place at their Group G game against Iran on June 26 in Seattle. The game roughly coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The Seattle Pride match committee are planning to combine celebrations of the anniversary with the game.  A Pride match or Pride night is a tradition in American sports going back to around the year 2000 and is now embraced by most professional leagues. These events usually involve a particular game being dedicated to certain communities.

Tuesday

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Queers for Palestine burst Pride

The annual Ottawa Pride rally was cancelled on Sunday after the group, Queers for Palestine, blocked the parade, owing to the refusal of the organizers, Capital Pride, to agree to the demands of “pro-Palestine” activists. Among the demands was for Capital Pride to back a complete boycott of Israel, and for Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe to apologize for not attending last year’s parade, which was described by Jewish groups as more a ‘protest against Israel’ than a rally for LGBT rights.

Queers for Palestine

Thursday

Douglas Murray

My tips to avoid arrest by the Met

From our UK edition

An interesting event occurred in London at the weekend. A young man who goes by the name of Montgomery Toms attended a Pride parade. But he did not attend in order to dress in bondage gear while shouting ‘Love is love’ and ‘Free Palestine’. Instead he went with a sandwich board which had a trans flag on it, followed by an equals sign and then the words ‘mental illness’. This is a tactic pioneered by an American man known as ‘Billboard Chris’, because his name is Chris and he wears a billboard. Chris’s schtick is to walk around with a sign saying things like ‘Children cannot consent to puberty blockers’.

Sunday

Ella Whelan

It’s hard to take Pride

For the entirety of June each year, companies and institutions go rainbow for Pride. But this year, social media seems a little less awash with multicoloured flags – and fewer and fewer companies have bothered with their annual logo change. Could it be that we have all, finally, tired of this mandatory rainbow charade? Donald Trump has certainly made his feelings known. World Pride was held in Washington DC this year. An awkward stage for the annual global celebration considering that when asked what his position was on Pride, Trump’s spokesperson said that the president was "fostering a sense of national pride that should be celebrated daily". Eek.

Pride

Thursday

Toby Young

Pride continues to crumble

From our UK edition

In the canteen of the House of Lords last week, a friendly server asked me if I’d like some ‘Pride pudding’. This turned out to be a rainbow-coloured crumble created in honour of Pride month. ‘Er, no thanks,’ I said, and then noticed a large ‘Progress Pride’ flag behind the counter. Oh dear, I thought. That’ll set the cat among the pigeons. Sure enough, a couple of hours later the GC Cons Peers’ WhatsApp group erupted. This is made up of those dinosaurs who style themselves ‘gender critical’ – i.e. they believe sex is biological, binary and immutable. For the uninitiated, the Progress Pride flag features a large, multicoloured chevron superimposed on the standard rainbow layout.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Pride has taken a nasty turn

From our UK edition

Lionel is right Sir: Gareth Roberts’s piece (‘End of the rainbow’, 31 May) gave me pause to reflect. It’s not that Pride has become irrelevant; after all, same-gender relationships are still criminalised in 64 countries – and in eight of those the death penalty is applicable. Rather, since the pandemic, it seems to have taken a rather nasty and unpleasant turn, with those dissenting from whatever ludicrous party line happens to be in vogue routinely heckled and vilified. Placards emblazoned with slogans such as ‘If you see a Terf [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] then smash them in the face’ are often to be spotted on Pride marches.

Thursday

Gareth Roberts

End of the rainbow: Pride’s fall can’t come soon enough

From our UK edition

Is Pride flopping? This parti-coloured celebration of all things LGBTQIA+ started half a century ago as an afternoon’s little march for lesbians and gay men. Then it became a day, then a week, then a month, and now it spreads throughout the summer, accompanied by all manner of feast days and ‘visibility’ events. Its expansion coincided with the addition of all the letters after the first three. This is when it became a jamboree not only of boring homosexuality – very old hat – but just about anything else that its purveyors consider unconventional, ranging from wearing wigs to not fancying any kind of sex at all. Every peccadillo was deemed worthy of a flag and a float. But the wheels finally seem to be coming off the Pride clown car. What was mushrooming is now shrivelling.

Lionel Shriver

The war on normality

From our UK edition

Exciting news. To ‘showcase the vibrant diversity of both marine life and the LGBTQ+ community’, the visionary Bristol Aquarium has just announced a one-off tour of non-binary fish. On 28 June, its Sunset Seas exhibit will ‘celebrate love, life and the beauty of being yourself’ by illuminating with brightly coloured lights a collection of creatures that ‘defy the binary, change sex and mirror the spectrum of identities found in the human world’. Adults-only tickets are a mere £18.50, so rush to reserve your place now. We’re presumably to conclude from this racy reveal that because some fish can change sex and hermaphroditic undersea organisms are commonplace, for humans sex is a phantasmagorical multiple choice and we can change sex, too.

Tuesday

Olivia Cole

Seeking forgiveness for gluttony, sloth and other deadly sins

From our UK edition

Professor Guy Leschziner writes that he was raised in a secular household that was ‘entirely irreligious’ yet with ‘a strong sense of morality, of right and wrong’. As an eminent neurologist and a rational atheist, it’s striking that his study of the extremes of human behaviour should reach for such Biblical terms. Is there an element of ghoulishness here? Seven Deadly Sins has a structure of which David Fincher, director of the gruesome film Seven, might approve.  To zero in on the sins is undoubtedly a darkly entertaining approach, if not for the squeamish. Having been a consultant at Guy’s hospital for more than 25 years, Leschziner has seen ‘the full spectrum of human morality’: inexplicable altruism, generosity, kindness, love.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

David Tennant’s pride and prejudice

From our UK edition

As all non-bigoted readers will know, this is the holy and most ancient month of Pride. The time of year when – like our ancestors of yore – we bedeck our banks, supermarkets and public buildings with the latest variant of the rainbow flag. For a while now, the flag has kept coming with added details, such as circles, triangles, squares and other ways to provoke epilepsy, all because some people felt the old ‘inclusive’ flag was not inclusive enough. Each year something happens that confirms the entire thing has got wildly out of hand So it had these extra bits added to celebrate everyone from gay men to asexuals and anything in between.

Wednesday

Ella Johnson

On the ground with drag queens on Capitol Hill

A group of around thirty people gathered on the lawn of the United States Capitol Building to hear speeches from three drag queens on Tuesday. MoveOn Political Action organized the event to champion the Equality Act and the Transgender Bill of Rights. The lobbying day came at the heels of the new polling that a "healthy majority of Americans across the political spectrum support federal legislation protecting LGBTQ+ individuals." Jiggly Caliente spoke first, addressing her gratitude for being on RuPaul’s Drag Race and for the blessing of being able to be your true self. “I have always known that I was living in a shell that didn’t align with my soul,” she said. Jiggly, or Bianca, accused politicians of blocking local and up-and-coming drag queens from making money.

drag queens moveon

Thursday

Cockburn

Is Mayor Francis Suarez too ‘woke’ for the GOP?

Miami mayor Francis Suarez is running for president, and his opponents already have plenty of attack ad images. The Cuban-American Republican with leading man style might have checked the boxes for an early 2010s GOP. Now it’s 2023 — and it seems no one told Suave Suarez that posing with a Pride flag-emblazoned mayoral sash is way out of style. Suarez’s Twitter feed is littered with rainbow flag paraphernalia. In June 2021, Suarez posted a video pledging Miami’s support of Pride Month. https://twitter.com/FrancisSuarez/status/1403449097453985798 The year prior, Suarez signed an “LGBTQ ordinance” to recognize “the decades of contributions by the LGBTQ Miami residents to the economy and diversity of the city!

francis suarez pride

Wednesday

Cockburn

Trans White House flasher’s rack confuses conservative radio hosts

It only took one hot trans woman flashing her breasts in front of the White House to topple the GOP’s anti-trans agenda.  After President Biden banned transgender activist Rose Montoya from future White House events for going topless on the South Lawn, some conservatives have taken to social media to declare their admiration for her. For the most part, this bold display of equity and inclusion has taken the form of middle-aged men slavering over her bust. “That tranny that flashed everyone at the White House looked pretty good and I’m tired of pretending he didn’t,” tweeted alpha male pundit Jesse Kelly yesterday. “I’m with you,” radio host Clay Travis responded. “Great boobs. And I don’t think I’d know that was a dude.

rose montoya trans

Tuesday

Cockburn

Topless trans guests reveal systemic inequality at the White House

The White House lawn became the latest battleground in the “Free the Nipple” fight this weekend.  A shocking display of inequality was captured on video when TikTok influencer and trans woman Rose Montoya filmed herself topless in front of the White House, flaunting her breasts during a Pride event. Montoya was joined by two trans male activists who were also shirtless. Yet only Montoya — whether out of a sense of decency or internalized social pressures — censored her nipples with her hands. For all the White House's moral posturing, Cockburn is shocked they would tolerate such brazen inequality.

Rose Montoya takes her shirt off on the White House lawn (Rose Montoya/TikTok)

Wednesday

Cockburn

Coca-Cola’s ‘Indigiqueer’ Pride workshops for kids

Coca-Cola is kicking off Pride Month by sponsoring events for preteens that are taught by Native American "Indigiqueer" and two-spirit artists. On the first day of Pride Month, Coca-Cola is partnering with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian to bring workshops from “across the Western Hemisphere working towards equity and social justice for Indigenous peoples” to middle- and high-school students. “Fashion is often used to confirm identities, challenge social structures and display personalities,” the event description reads. “Discover the joy of fashion in our conversation celebrating PRIDE month.” There are four panelists.

coca-cola
James Innes-Smith

Do we still need Pride Month?

From our UK edition

With Pride Month beginning tomorrow, how proud are you of your sexuality? As a white cis-gendered male, I am frankly a little embarrassed about mine. I mean, it’s not exactly cool to fancy the opposite sex these days, and many of us hetero-normies have become increasingly wary of appearing ‘inappropriate’ when making a move on someone we like the look of. So don't expect me to be parading my vanilla-flavoured proclivities through central London any time soon. What would I even wear to signal hetero-pride – baggy cords and a neatly tucked-in shirt? That said, you might well spot me at some of this year's shenanigans; after all, the organisers certainly know how to put on a show.

Sunday

Julie Bindel

Why are lesbians no longer welcome at Pride?

From our UK edition

The lesbian group Get The L Out UK, founded to protest gender ideology and the pressure on same-sex attracted women to date trans women, joined Pride Cymru yesterday to make their voices heard amidst a sea of hostility. Ever since the trans movement decided that lesbians who reject sleeping with trans women are somehow morally deficient, same-sex attracted women have been harassed, defamed and abused in the name of trans equality. Get the L Out represent those old-fashioned lesbians that reject the penis and all that is attached to it.