Pride Month 2022: How To Get Ready For Pride Month This June

What are your pride plans?

LGBTQ+ month has kicked off with a bang; Jake Daniels has been the first professional football to come out in thirty-two years and the Church of Scotland has recently allowed same-sex couples to marry in official church ceremonies. With the UK marking fifty years of the Pride movement, what should you know before diving into those pride celebrations?

Here’s everything you need:

When is Pride Month 2022?

Pride Month is celebrated in June of every year and is for members of the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate their identities and accomplishments as well as acknowledge their struggles and where we are in the fight for equality. 

LGBTQ+ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer or Questioning. The plus allows room for other identities not covered by the acronym, and some people add I and A to stand for intersex and asexual. 

How To Celebrate This Year

There are a variety of different ways you can celebrate Pride. Many companies and brands host different events during the month that you can go along to or you can find time to volunteer at a local LGBTQ+ non-profit. Reading widely around queer studies material can help you engage with new ideas around LGBTQ+ culture and learn things about the history of Pride that you didn’t know, while also supporting LGBTQ+ authors and learning about the issues with ‘rainbow-washing’ can be one way to help support the community if you’re an ally. 

LGBTQ pride is traditionally associated with parades, protests, drag performances, memorials, celebrations and a coming together for members of the community lost to the AIDS crisis. It’s usually a combination of both political activism and celebration for the community. For members of the LGBTQ+ community who want to participate in such events, there are many main Pride events throughout the month, including in prominent cities in the UK such as London, Birmingham and Brighton. For those who want to go further afield, it’s relatively easy to find Pride events in any major city around the globe.

It’s important to remember to protect every member of the LGBTQ+ community and acknowledge that Pride events may not always be accessible, safe or feel welcoming to all groups of people and not to push people to be out of their comfort zone or into coming out. 

Why Do We Celebrate Pride Month?

Pride Month takes place during June each year to acknowledge the police raid that prompted the Stonewall riots, which led to the establishment of LGBTQ+ rights as well as paving the way for other movements in different intersections. 

The Stonewall riots occurred on June 28, 1969, when police raided a popular gay bar in N.Y.C.’s West Village called The Stonewall Inn. The LGBTQ+ community, including prominent names such as Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Riviera, protested the raid, which served as a catalyst for calling for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community in the US, and later on the world. The Stonewall Inn has since been declared a historic landmark in 2015 and was later decreed a national monument by President Barack Obama in 2016. 

Now, we both commemorate and celebrate LGBTQ+ activism throughout the years, engaging in literature, art, music, film, protests, events and gatherings to celebrate all identities within the community. The traditional rainbow flag is often used as a symbol of LGBTQ+ Pride, though has now become more synonymous with Gay Pride and those who have other identities sometimes celebrate using different variations of the flag. In 2021, the flag was altered in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protest, and now often shows blue and pink to include the trans flag.