“I have lived in Eastbourne for 34 years, not as a gay man but as a man who happens to be gay”

At a stringent time when pressure on any council’s funds is severe, it is especially untoward to find the local branch of the cumbersomely titled LGBT group – sometimes with an I and/or a Q at the end of it, sometimes not – to be seeking public money for a Pride march.

As a homosexual man myself, I have never seen my orientation as something of pride, any more than of shame.

I have lived in Eastbourne for 34 years not as a gay man but a man who happens to be gay, providing for only one facet of my character, whatever that is!

Pride should arise, if at all, from accomplishment, not from a state of being.

Otherwise why not demonstrate pride over being left-handed, or one-legged. For the latter I can see the book title now: ‘My Pride as a Unidexter’.

I also speak as someone who discovered his homosexuality at a time when its manifestation could have earned me up to seven years in the slammer.

I need no lectures about equality and fail to see the continuing fuss about it.

We even have equal marriage rights now; one wonders just what more is wanted.

Make the case in terms of Brunei, or Pakistan by all means, but not here.

Any local council faces serious demands.

We hear of care homes being considered for closure.

Recently it has been children’s centres in Old Town and Hampden Park at risk.

In the face of such threat, it ill behoves special interest groups to demand public funds, or for that matter for a council to offer a grant of £2,500, as our council did, towards the celebration of the last Chinese New Year.

The message to the LGBTQ and any other special interest group is clear.

Get over yourselves, get on with your lives, and stop taking yourselves quite so seriously.

And if you do feel the need to be proud of what you are in festival form, then raise the funds yourselves.