At the first ever Hay Pride earlier this month, a group of local church members took part in the procession and other celebrations.
To show that there is more than one Christian voice within the wider Anglican Communion, Christians from the Abbeydore Deanery provided a joyful, loving, inclusive Christian presence at the festival.
Pride festivals take place across the country and in many places across the diocese. June is typically commemorated as Pride Month, remembering the Stonewall riots of June 1969, which gave birth to the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
This year, the theme of Pride is Remember, Resist and Rise Up, inviting participants to celebrate the movement of sexual diversity.
For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) people, Pride is a way of protesting against discrimination and violence. The month-long celebration promotes their dignity, equal rights, and self-affirmation and is a way of increasing society’s awareness of the issues they face.
Ministers and members of churches in the Abbeydore Deanery joined together in solidarity, providing entertainment and activities at Hay Pride
Rural Pioneer Priest, Rev Luci Morriss said: “Whatever Christians believe about same-sex relationships, we can all agree that discrimination is wrong.”
She added: “The concept of Pride is challenging for some Christian traditions. For us, participating in this event was about recognising our shared identity as children of God, which is certainly a message worth sharing widely!”.