When Pride Becomes Dangerous
From celebration to calculation: the new cost of being seen
The past few weeks felt like watching dominoes fall in real time.
Liverpool Pride cancelled due to financial and organizational challenges. World Pride attendance down as visitors feared harassment. Tel Aviv's parade scrapped due to geopolitical instability. Vienna's Rainbow Parade opening with a vigil for victims of violence. Two thirteen-year-olds hurling fireworks and slurs into a Pride crowd in California. A man arrested for threatening to execute a school official over Pride flags.
Multiple weeks. Two continents. One brutal message: queer visibility still comes with consequences.
As a therapist working with LGBTQ+ clients across the globe, I've spent many of my sessions listening to something I haven't heard in years—the calculus of fear returning to conversations about Pride. Not the garden-variety anxiety of being seen, but the bone-deep question of physical safety. The kind of strategic thinking we thought we'd moved beyond.
The most common thing clients say is, …