The theme of Brighton Pride this year was “Pride and (No) Prejudice” and our float took the form of an H. G. Wells style Time Machine where we paraded our LGBT heroes from the past and though there were no heroes from the future, Lady GaGa looked as thought she might have been with her holographic silver outfit. Some other characters were Elton John, Alexander the Great and Edward Carpenter.

Big thanks of course to our brilliant and tireless cutters, painters, designers, driver, wheel stewards, trainers, Brighton & Hove Council for the grant and everyone else who made the float possible.

You can see a bunch of other photos here.

Explanation of Costume for Pride 2010: Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga: "Just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time!"

The Bisexual platinum selling pop star from the late 2000's, was named after Queen's Radio Gaga and inspired by Bowie & Madonna. With androgynous and outlandish styling created by her own creative production team, known as the Haus of Gaga. "Whether it's a dress made of Muppets or strategically placed bubbles, Gaga's outré ensembles brought performance art into the mainstream."

Lady Gaga has been an outspoken advocate and activist for LGBT rights throughout her career. She took part in the National Equality Walk in USA, won a GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) award for outstanding music artist and continues to put her time and money where her mouth is in support of LGBT people worldwide.

Rumours abound about Lady Gaga: Is she a boy/a girl/Transgender? Is she Gay/Straight/Bisexual? The truth is she's a Bisexual woman, but her image embraces, welcomes and plays with all these labels. Not just for the column inches (though it must help shift a few singles!) but with sincere respect for fans who see themselves reflected in the fluidity and flamboyance of her act.

I personally chose to dress as Lady Gaga for Pride 2010 because of what she represents to me: Fun, diversity, openness, loyalty, and a creative, fantastical lust for life. She's talented, passionate about her work, open about her sexuality, committed to her LGBT fans and vocal about human & civil rights.

Plus her costumes were crying out to be adapted for a Pride float and I just really wanted to see if I could make a dress out of silver cardboard!

Washington Post
Wikipedia
Lady GaGa

Explanation of Costume for Pride 2010: Stephen Watson as Edward Carpenter
Born Brighton August 1844, educated Brighton College. Died Guildford June 1929

Socialist poet, socialist philosopher, anthologist, ‘Gay’ activist,Vegetarian

Instrumental in founding the Fabian Society and Labour Party and a close friend of Walt Whitman

Corresponded with Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Gandhi, William Morris and John Ruskin

Published 'Civilisation, its cause and cure'

Closer ties with nature and development of our inner nature were his approach and was a strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a 'gay' community near Sheffield he had a profound effect on D H Lawrence and E M Forster

He introduced sandals to Britain!

Envisaged a future of 'primitive communism', rejecting Victorian industrialism.

Believed that Socialism should not only concern itself with man's outward economic conditions, but also affect a profound change in human consciousness. In this new stage of society Carpenter argued that mankind would return to a primordial state of simple joy: "The meaning of the old religions will come back to him. On the high tops once more gathering he will celebrate with naked dances the glory of the human form and the great processions of the stars, or greet the bright horn of the young moon." (1889) Civilisation: its cause and cure. This brand of "Mystical socialism" inspired him to begin a number of campaigns against air pollution, promoting vegetarianism and opposing vivisection.

In 1891 (age 47) he met George Merrill, a working class man also from Sheffield, and the two men struck up a relationship, eventually moving in together in 1898.[2] Merrill had been raised in the slums of Sheffield and had no formal education. Their relationship endured and they remained partners for the rest of their lives, a fact made all the more extraordinary by the hysteria about alternative sexualities generated by the Oscar Wilde trial of 1895 and the Criminal Law Amendment Bill passed a decade earlier "outlawing all forms of male homosexual contact". Their relationship not only defied Victorian sexual mores but also the highly stratified British class system.

He strongly believed that same-sex attraction was a natural orientation for people of a third sex. His 1908 book on the subject, The Intermediate Sex, would become a foundational text of the LGBT movements of the 20th century.

Sexual education for Carpenter also meant forwarding a clear analysis of the ways in which sex and gender were used to oppress women, contained in Carpenter's radical work Love's Coming-of-Age. In it he argued that a just and equal society must promote the sexual and economic freedom of women. The main crux of his analysis centred on the negative effects of the institution of marriage. He regarded marriage in England as both enforced celibacy and a form of prostitution. He did not believe women would truly be free until a socialist society was established. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, however, this led him to conclude that all oppressed workers should support women's emancipation, rather than to subordinate women's rights to male worker's rights. He remarked, "...there is no solution except the freedom of woman - which means, of course, the freedom of the masses of the people, men and women, and the ceasing altogether of economic slavery. There is no solution which will not include the redemption of the terms free women and free love to their true and rightful significance. Let every woman whose heart bleeds for the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself and to constitute herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman."

After the First World War he had moved to Guildford, Surrey, with George Merrill.[7] In June 1928, Merrill died suddenly, leaving Carpenter devastated. Carpenter's state of mind is described vividly by the noted political activist G Lowes Dickinson, "Edward's grief when that occurred was overwhelming. I remember him walking on my arm to the cemetery at Guildford where they had buried George a few days before, and where he himself was to lie a year or so later. It was a day of pouring rain, and we stood beside the grave, while Carpenter [cried] again and again, 'They have put him away in the cold ground'."

Harry Hay was so inspired by the work of Carpenter and his prophecy of the coming together of gay people to fight for their rights that he decided to put the words into action by founding the Mattachine Society which started advancing gay rights in America. In Britain, Carpenter’s words were frequently quoted by gay rights activists.

Edward Carpenter Community
The Edward Carpenter Archive

Above you can see some of the 2550 choristers who attended the RAH to sing Faure's Requiem and to perform the World Premier of Karl Jenkins' Gloria and somewhere in there are 5 Rainbow Chorus members! The photo captures some of the scale of this amazing event.