Hong Kong Pride Parade Day 2020

At the most recent Pride Parade that was allowed to 

take place on the streets of Hong Kong

 

A message and sentiment that still resonates in 2020

 

Some color and whimsy are also pretty much always welcomed :)

 

For the second straight year, there will be no Pride Parade on the streets of Hong Kong.  Instead, 2019 saw a static pride rally in Central after the Hong Kong police banned the annual march over safety concerns (hmmm...) while 2020 has seen the pride parade go online after the Hong Kong police again refused to provide a letter of no objection for the event -- citing Wuhan coronavirus pandemic fears this time around.   

With things going the way they are doing in Hong Kong (with pretty much every planned march getting banned; the latest being what would have been a journalists' march to highlight the suppression of the media and issues such as the arrest of the Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) producer Bao Choy Yuk-ling), I'm thinking the odds are pretty low that there'll be a Pride Parade in 2021.  Too bad since the 2018 Pride Parade had been such a wonderfully joyous as well as rainbow colored affair which brought together gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals, couples, singles, parents, children and so forth -- all united in calling for equality for all under the law.

 

More than incidentally, heterosexual people are welcome to participate in the Pride Parade.  Just as men can be feminists, heterosexuals can be allies and friends of LGBT folks, after all.  And while 2018 saw me participating for the first time in a Pride Parade in Hong Kong, it was not the first Pride Parade I took part in -- with my maiden participatory foray having taken place decades ago when I was living in Philadelphia.  

The reason for my deciding to go march came out of an incident in a classroom at the university that I was attending in Philadelphia.  It involved the professor being casually making disgustingly homophobic remarks of the kind that just would not have been accepted in the much more liberal liberal arts college that I was an undergraduate student at.  

 

Going from a college where I had so many lesbian, gay and bisexual friends that I sometimes joked about being moved to wonder who at the college was actually heterosexual to one which was noticeably more conservative, socially and politically, had been quite a shock to the system.  Even so, I honestly hadn't realized -- and thus was pretty shaken -- that homophobia was so tolerated, probably even condoned, in that particular place and institution of higher learning.  (And the fact that the homophobic professor was an anthropologist really did make things seem so much worse in my eyes!)

 

So caught off guard was I by the homophobic remark that I actually hadn't issued any protest in the classroom.  So when I heard of a Pride Parade taking place on campus a few weeks later, I figured taking part in it would be a good way to make amends for my silence in the classroom that day.  Thus it was that I came to take part in my first protest march ever -- but by no means my last; with Hong Kong being the part of the world where I've taken part in so many protest marches over the years.  

A reminder re why Hong Kong is such a city of protest: it has never been fully or really democratic.  In lieu of voting for what was always a rigged Legislative Council (which recent events have now made into a rubber stamp legislature), people have often sought to make the voices heard on the streets.  But while the authorities are doing their utmost to deny people even that, they have not succeeded in silencing us yet.  

 

Instead, people find alternative venues to voice their concerns and demands such as  Apple Daily ads, online (like with this year's Hong Kong Pride Parade participants) and even pop concerts like the Tat Ming Pair's last night!  As one of the chants I've heard at Pride Parades go:  "We are loud; we are proud; get used to it!" (And should it not be apparent: no, we are not dead yet!)