The LGB Alliance supporter was escorted away from the Manchester Pride Protest by police. (Twitter/ Pudz890)
When a man showed up to Manchester’s Pride Protest decked out in LGB Alliance merch, queer demonstrators told him exactly where to go.
On Saturday (28 August), as the official Manchester Pride festival kicked off, an alternative Pride event got underway – the Manchester Pride Protest.
Following a storm of controversy surrounding the finances of the city’s official Pride organisation, queer activists organised their own march, bring Pride back to its roots.
Hundreds of protesters joined the unofficial march, calling for “Pride not profit” and “trans rights now”, but one man decided to join them wearing a T-shirt and beanie emblazoned with the logo for the anti-trans group LGB Alliance.
In a moment caught on video, the unified crowd of demonstrators began chanting: “Trans lives matter.”
The man was later escorted away from the protest by police.
Transphobic bigot in an LGB Alliance t-shirt being yeeted the fuck out of Pride as chants of ‘trans lives matter’ ring in his shitty fucking ears.
A very big YES to all of this.pic.twitter.com/KPKoeeiXma
— Max Morgan 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@SpillerOfTea) August 29, 2021
Of course, a host of anti-trans social media users have claimed that the incident is an example of “homophobia”, because the LGB Alliance supporter was reportedly gay.
But, as writer, podcaster and LGBT+ rights activist Max Morgan explained on Twitter: “Like it or not, Pride is a community event. And the community spoke as one to say, ‘Transphobia is not welcome here.’
“You can shriek about ‘homophobia’ all you want, but it’s not that. Gay men, lesbians, bisexual people and trans people rose up together to say, ‘F**k this.’”
The faux outrage from the transphobes is delicious.
“You chased a gay man out of Pride!”
And? Pride is for the whole community. If you attend seeking to exclude people, expect to be excluded yourself. Gay or not.
— Max Morgan 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@SpillerOfTea) August 29, 2021
They added: “The faux outrage from the transphobes is delicious. ‘You chased a gay man out of Pride!’
“And? Pride is for the whole community. If you attend seeking to exclude people, expect to be excluded yourself. Gay or not.”
The LGB Alliance supporter that attended the Manchester Pride Protest march has since claimed online that he was “assaulted” and that he was a victim of “theft” because a protester ran off with his beanie hat.
He also said that police officers were escorting him away for his “own safety”.
PinkNews has approached Greater Manchester Police for comment.
The government’s Charity Commission is in talks with LGB Alliance after it compared LGBT+ inclusion to bestiality
The government’s Charity Commission said that it was “engaging” with the LGB Alliance after it breached Twitter rules by comparing LGBT+ inclusion to bestiality.
The anti-trans group was given charity status this year, in spite of fierce objections, but this month it wrote on Twitter: “Adding the + to LGB gives the green light to paraphilias like bestiality – and more – to all be part of one big happy ‘rainbow family’. Wake up policy makers.
“LGB people refuse to be used in your artificial and dangerous argument that we must all be lumped together. #NoToHomophobia.”
The Charity Commission’s decision to register the LGB Alliance as an official charity is currently subject to an appeal, filed by trans children’s charity Mermaids and backed by the Good Law Project.
Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, said: “Charitable status is for those who serve the public good.
“Denigrating trans people, attacking those who speak for them, and campaigning to remove legal protections from them is the very opposite of a public good.
“We do not believe they meet the threshold tests to be registered as a charity.”