I thought we were over homophobia – MSP Emma Roddick calls for Pride to return to protest routes after being confirmed as speaker at Highland event
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Emma Roddick is delighted to be one of the speakers for "special" Highland Pride this summer.
The Pride event celebrating the LGBT+ community will be held in Inverness for the third time on Sunday, July 22, and MSP Roddick's role on the day has been confirmed.
She was in attendance at the first two events in 2018 and 2019, and cannot wait to get involved as it returns for the first time since the Covid pandemic.
"They were just fantastic days," Roddick said of the previous Pride events in the Highland capital.
"It's quite something to see the support – the flags, banners and placards – in Inverness.
"I used to go down to Edinburgh and Glasgow to go to those Prides, but to actually have one in the place where you live and see people you bump into everyday supporting those rights, it's really special.
"It's really exciting to get to speak at one for the place I grew up, and where I live.
"I went to the first Highland Pride and the last one before Covid, so it's great to see it coming back."
LGBT+ issues have been thrust into the spotlight over recent months.
Towards the end of 2022 the Gender Recognition Reform Bill was dominating headlines, while more recently First Ministerial candidate Kate Forbes came under fire for saying she would have voted against same sex marriage and the GRR had she been sitting at Holyrood at the time of those votes.
Pride events are rooted in protest – having sprung up as a result of the Stonewall riots in America in 1969 – and while the political landscape could change drastically by the time July comes around Roddick suspects Pride as a protest could be one of the themes of her speech.
"Politics is moving at such a pace right now, who knows where we will be with Section 35, with ending conversion therapy – there is ongoing work with all of these issues," Roddick reasoned.
"I suspect either way that there will still be a lot to say around political discourse and the quality of it, because I don't see the hatred, and the far social conservatism we're seeing being normalised right now going away in that time.
"It always has been a protest, and there have been times where people forget that because they weren't feeling politically under attack.
"When equal marriage passed in Scotland, it felt like a huge step forward had been taken.
"The homophobia that I'm facing in my role right now, I thought we were over that to be honest. I haven't had it at this level for years, and I think we maybe forgot for a few years that Pride is still a protest.
"Equality isn't done, we haven't achieved it and that's it, progress still has to keep being made.
"Right now we are seeing real hostility, and real radicalisation against queer people, and we need to get back into remembering that Pride is a protest and we still have messages to get across to my colleagues. We've still got fights to win."
LGBT+ in the Highlands
As someone born and raised in the Highlands, Roddick has a first-hand account of what it is like to be LGBT+ in the area.
Opportunities to immerse herself in the LGBT+ community, though, were relatively few and far between.
Rather than internalise that as a source of frustration, Roddick's overriding emotion growing up was one of confusion that there was not as much of a presence in Inverness as other Scottish cities.
"I just found it strange that we didn't have things like Pride events," she added.
"When I was a teenager I kept saying it was so weird that Inverness didn't have a gay bar, because everywhere has a gay bar.
"People – mostly people who don't live here – have this view that the Highlands are backwards and not as accepting.
"For some people that's true, that's their experience, but I think overall we are quite good and quite open.
"It is self-perpetuating. If people believe that the people around them are intolerant, they're not going to open up to them and they're going to want to leave.
"If we can show them that's not the case at events like Pride, people will have less of a hard time being themselves in the Highlands."
