Tomorrow is Pride Scotia! Over at the Gay Agenda we love Pride, and so we’ve put together our top 5 reasons to be proud, and our top 5 reason to keep on shouting!

Top 5 reasons to be loud!*

Pride is a protest!

*in no particular order….

1. Anti-homosexuality Bill 2014

Affectionately known as the ‘Kill the Gays Bill’ – the Ugandan government had a think about punishing same-sex relationships with the death penalty. They fortunately (and by fortunately, we definitely mean in the thank-fuck-for-small-mercies sense of the word ‘fortunately’) settled on life-imprisonment which can also be applied to anyone who fails to report known homosexuals. Excellent.

2. The Sochi Winter Olympics

President Putin was given a platform world-wide to impose all his queer-phobias on international athletes and spectators from all around the world. Boo him! But moreover boo to the International Olympic Committee for awarding the Olympic Games to a country that ladles so much discrimination on its queer community.

3. The media are still really fucking transphobic

And will find any vague, tenuous reason to talk about a person’s gender identity in totally irrelevant contexts (and let’s face it, there are very few relevant contexts). For example Dr Kate Stone who had an accident on holiday in the Highlands of which their gender identity had no relevance even tenuously, but who the media insisted upon outing. Not on.

4. India take one big step backwards!

And re-criminalised homosexuality. In 2013 the Supreme Court peeled back a High Court decision taken in 2009 to decriminalised same-sex relationships. Fail!

5. Idiot says same-sex marriage causes flooding

David Silvester, UKIP councillor (although not so much anymore), reportedly wrote to David Cameron to warn him that the introduction of same-sex marriage would see God punish us with “natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war”… And they still gained seats in the last election?!?!?!

(We did however get this hilarious twitter account as a result: UKIP weather). Good job.

Someone did not pay attention in Science. Bottom of the class Silvester.
Photo courtesy of Bernat Casero (http://bit.ly/1pmiZQo)

Top 5 reasons to be proud!

1. Ellen Page came out!

And so did Tom Daley! And so did a whole bunch of you. We’re fucking proud of everyone who had the courage to come out since last pride season!

2. Equal marriage.

Finally. We feel like we’ve been banging on about equal marriage forever. Placards after placards. Marches after marches. Posters, and social media campaigns, and staged weddings, and kiss-ins, and petitions, and consultations, and hypothetical arguments made by politicians who have no idea what this mean to my life. And now we’re there. Royal Assent achieved in March 2014.

3. Laverne Cox on the front of Time magazine.

Laverne Cox gets onto the cover of Time Magazine after her initial snub from Time’s Top 100 Influential People of 2014 list after activists all over the world cried out. This shows us that being an internet angry can produce real results!

4. Third legal gender!

In November 2013 Germany introduced a third sex to be included on their birth certificate to allow for intersex children to have their genders registered. Similarly (but differently), in April 2014 Norrie won a four year battle to have their sex recognised in Australia as neither male nor female. Yay for small steps away from the gender binary!

5. DOMA is unconstitutional

Defence of Marriage Act which attempted to over-turn equal rights for same-sex and mixed-sex couples before the law was repealed by High Court judgement. Good job!