Imagine turning on the TV to watch a civil conversation about Pride Month, only to be handed a wet napkin of lukewarm outrage and regressive soundbites disguised as concern. Alexander Armstrong—not the charming one from Pointless, but the other one, who seems dead-set on proving just how ironically misnamed British breakfast programming can be.
During a segment of Do We Need Pride Month? on GB News (a network quickly becoming the Fox News of shepherd’s pie), Armstrong declared:
“Things like Pride do the exact opposite to what Jonathan [a guest on the show] thinks they do. It turns people off. What I see when I see some of those Pride events is fetishes being displayed on the street, men running naked around, thinking that’s acceptable when there are children walking around.”
Well, color us shocked. Another straight man misunderstanding Pride like it’s a deleted scene from Eyes Wide Shut.
RELATED: Pride Replaced? How Title IX Became June’s New Political Statement
Armstrong continued with this slice of rainbow-colored resentment pie:
“It doesn’t show anything good about the gay community. It stereotypes them, and there’ll be millions of gay men, thousands of them watching tonight, who’ll go: ‘Actually, I don’t want that representing us.’”
Weird how millions of gay men apparently phone into Armstrong’s internal monologue every time a rainbow flag is waved. Must be a hell of a group chat.
Look—we get it. If you only engage with the LGBTQ+ community through tabloid headlines and clips curated for moral panic, Pride probably looks like Mardi Gras after a Red Bull binge. But the real Pride? It’s a vibrant, sometimes chaotic, often joyful, politically powerful tradition rooted in defiance, resilience, and the refusal to apologize for existence. And yes, sometimes there are leather harnesses. That’s called liberation, darling.
Armstrong’s idea of progress, however, seems to have hit a nostalgic wall.
“During the 2000s gay rights was being relatively accepted, people have got over the fear of it all and moved on. The public had moved on. Do you know what? We don’t really care anymore.”
Translation: “You got civil partnerships, now why are you still being so… visible?” It’s the classic straight-ally fatigue syndrome: support is fine, but only if it comes with a mute button.
Then came the real kicker. Armstrong took to Instagram to double down:
“Millions of gay people are sick of having their sexuality weaponised, being told it’s the most important thing about them. Then you get the far-left activist LGBT groups pushing their degenerate ideology down people’s throats on top of it all.”
When someone uses the word “degenerate,” you can practically hear the gramophone of 1930s fascism warming up in the background.
To be clear, Pride isn’t perfect. And yes, it sparks debate within the queer community too—about representation, accessibility, and whether capitalism has swallowed our glitter whole. But here’s the thing: it belongs to us. Not pundits, not provocateurs, and certainly not men who think assimilation is the goal.
Pride is still necessary because queer people are still being misrepresented, misunderstood, and sometimes outright maligned on national television—often by men who think their discomfort is a barometer for what’s “acceptable.”
So, if you’re asking whether we “still need Pride,” the answer is easy.
As long as there are microphones handed to men who confuse liberation with a lack of decorum, yes. We need Pride now more than ever.