Pride and Prejudice

I was in Manchester city centre for the Pride parade on Saturday. It was a wonderful sunny day, and everyone had a smile on their face; you don't see that in Manchester every day. You've never so many loons in one place in your life. Cracking stuff.

The parade is a pretty big event these days. It takes about an hour and a half to go past. Half the city seems to be in it, with the other half watching. My better half was sprinting around the parade route with her running club, the Manchester Frontrunners, so I was in town to watch.

As you might imagine, there was a small group of Christian fruitcakes just by the Town Hall, holding placards about how God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and so on. This was never going to be popular, and they were surrounded by a phalanx of Manchester's finest. There was occasionally a chorus of boos as the more militant sections of the parade went past, but they were mainly ignored or just treated as part of the entertainment. Once the parade had gone past, the Christian loon-in-chief was shouting about how further Pride events would bring destruction upon Manchester. After all, God had punished New Orleans for its Mardi Gras celebrations. A small crowd of people were stood around, roaring with laughter at every new piece of nonsense, before gradually filtering away to various of Manchester's hostelries.

It seems like poetic justice that of all the people in Manchester on Saturday, the Christian loons were the only ones not having a good time.