Members and allies of the LGBTQ community participate in the Pride Walk and Rally through downtown Washington, DC on June 12, 2021.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
When I added Washington to my June calendar to attend World Pride 2025, I was hoping cross-border relations would warm up a bit first, to ease my non-boycotting guilt. That this event, which changes location each time, coincides with the 50th anniversary of Washington’s annual Capital Pride makes it a bit of a double-whammy. Now with festivities a few weeks away, I’m definitely apprehensive, wondering how things will play out.
All the Canadian premiers have been to Washington, so it’s my turn. If diplomacy and discussion isn’t winning the day, what about razzle-dazzle and short-shorts?
Look who’s sorry now: Americans are an apologetic bunch to this Canadian on vacation
Though the number of Canadians travelling to the U.S. has decreased, I’m making an exception, mainly because I’m curious, pondering what the vibe will be like given the dark times our star-spangled friends are going through, and the political and legislative attacks on the LGBTQ community. I wonder how politically charged everything will be. Will it lean more toward a march or a dance? My guess is a bit of both.
After curiosity, my urge to rebel with thousands of other people like me comes next. World Pride 2025 will be a rallying cry for equality at a time when LGBTQ rights are at the forefront of global debate about trans rights and pronouns, drag show- and book-banning, marriage equality, surrogacy and more. Blatantly horrible anti-LGBTQ sentiment – like Hungary banning this year’s Pride events, Greece banning surrogacy for male couples and idiots crashing and trashing a trans picnic in Manchester – has to be challenged in some way.
I also want to show support to my gay American friends, who I’m sure will be out in full force, and to do what I can to help prop up an extremely fragile trans community, so vulnerable currently and truly the last people anyone should be picking on. Honestly, it feels like the world has taken a 50-year step back, and I don’t particularly feel like living through the 1970s again. It was hard enough the first time.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t experiencing a small amount of reticence. Will I be safe? I’ve been to Pride events in the U.S. before. In Orlando, religious fanatics with megaphones set up camp across the street from the event’s main entrance and loudly predicted my eternal damnation. It felt unnerving and weird, just as it did another time in Milan, not 20 years ago, when city streetcleaner trucks trailed the Pride parade, their scrubbing brushes quickly “erasing all the filth” as I put it to friends afterward. It’s experiences like these that remind me Pride is a protest, after all.
Participants take part in the 47th Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade in Sydney on March 1.DAVID GRAY/AFP/Getty Images
The inaugural World Pride was held in Rome in 2000, created by InterPride, which is a global association of Pride planners. The second was in Jerusalem in 2006. Both of these were politically charged happenings that faced significant religious static. Tensions have lightened up since then at World Pride events in cities such as London in 2012, Toronto in 2014, Madrid in 2017 and New York in 2019, a celebration that coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. In 2021, Copenhagen and Malmo, Sweden, co-hosted the event, and it was held in Sydney in 2023. I attended that city’s Mardi Gras earlier this year and can verify that it is still a well-oiled gay machine, the model of Pride efficiency. I think Washington’s World Pride will be a fusion of activism and festivity, a moment in time to savour, a global celebration of queer identity and rights. Maybe I’ll even see a few politicians, who knows?
I have a few more “what ifs.” What if the internet trolls come out of their basements and do something inconceivable? Or what if the events are overpoliced so that participants feel unnerved or confined? While I suppose there is safety in numbers, there are a lot of guns in the United States.
Going to the U.S. capital is also my chance to bear witness to a moment in history – I realize this sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s true. I’ve never been to Washington before and I’m looking forward to eating my way around town and checking out all the landmark architecture and free museums. In the end, I hope my weekend is fun. But knowing this crowd, I’m convinced it will be an absolute gas.
