“Let them do whatever they like, but at home.” Prague Pride once again shows what Czech tolerance looks like
As soon as the first rainbow flags appear on the streets, the comments under articles and posts on social media start to feel like an annual repeat of the same old show. “And where’s the heterosexuals’ march?” “They’ve already got all their rights.” “I don’t mind it, just don’t force it on me.” “Why are they dragging children into this?” The individual commentators may change, but the arguments remain almost exactly the same.
The current Prague Pride is taking place from 3 to 9 August 2026; this year’s parade will set off on Saturday 8 August from Wenceslas Square and, for the first time, head for Štvanice Island. The theme for this year is ‘Times Are Changing ’. However, it also serves as a reminder that social progress is neither automatic nor irreversible.
Pride is not just a party lasting a few hours with loud music. It is simultaneously a celebration, a demonstration, a community gathering and a reminder of why LGBT+ people began taking to the streets in the first place.
1. “Why don’t heterosexuals have their own march too?”
They can have one. Nobody is stopping heterosexuals from holding a demonstration or a public gathering. The question, however, remains: what exactly would they be demonstrating for?
Pride didn’t come about because gay men and lesbians one day decided to publicly celebrate who they were attracted to. The first Pride march took place on 28 June 1970 in New York, a year after the Stonewall riots, which followed a police raid on a gay bar. Its participants demanded the right to live openly, safely and free from police harassment.
Of course, being heterosexual does not guarantee a happy relationship, a good job or a trouble-free life. Heterosexual people may experience violence, poverty, illness or discrimination for many other reasons. As a rule, however, they do not have to fear that their heterosexuality alone will lead to rejection by their family, bullying at school or an attack whilst holding their partner’s hand.
A Pride parade is therefore not a medal for being part of a sexual minority. It is a response to specific historical and contemporary disadvantages. Asking why there is no ‘heterosexual Pride’ is a bit like demanding a ‘Right-Handers’ Day’ simply because there is an International Left-Handers’ Day. No one is claiming that right-handed people have no value. They simply haven’t been forced to adapt to a world designed predominantly for the right hand.
2. “I don’t mind, as long as they don’t force it on me”
This statement often comes across as more conciliatory than an outright insult. In reality, however, it can mean: ‘You can exist, as long as I don’t see you.’
Heterosexuality is constantly present in the public sphere. A man mentions his wife at work, a woman posts a photo with her boyfriend, an advert shows a couple in love, and a fairy tale ends with the prince and princess getting married. Most people do not perceive this as a political statement or a display of sexuality. It is simply life.
When two men or two women do the same, a section of society starts talking about provocation. A kiss between a heterosexual couple is usually seen as romantic; a kiss between two men suddenly becomes a ‘display of sexual orientation’. It is therefore not always about the amount of sexuality in public spaces, but about whose sexuality is accepted as natural there and whose is tolerated only in private.
Moreover, visibility is not an end in itself. According to the Czech findings of a large-scale survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 48 per cent of LGBT+ respondents from the Czech Republic stated that they often or always avoid holding hands with a same-sex partner. A quarter avoided certain places for fear of being attacked.
This is precisely why it is important that a queer relationship in public does not come across as an extraordinary event.
3. “But they already have all their rights”
Czech law has indeed progressed. From January 2025, same-sex couples will be able to enter into a civil partnership, which, with certain exceptions, carries the rights and obligations of marriage. A partner may also adopt the other partner’s child. However, the relevant amendment to the Civil Code continues to use a term other than ‘marriage’ and does not allow a couple to jointly adopt a child of whom neither partner is a parent.
The difference is not merely a matter of semantics. The state offers marriage to one group of couples and, to another, an institution that is intended to resemble it as closely as possible, but which must not bear the same name. The existence of two separate categories sends a symbolic message that one type of relationship is still regarded as the fundamental norm and the other as a special case.
Moreover, these rights are not limited to family law. They also include the ability to go to school safely, to work, to seek medical help or to walk down the street without being subjected to abuse. In a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 35 per cent of Czech respondents stated that they had experienced discrimination in at least one area of their lives during the previous year. Harassment was reported by 63 per cent of those surveyed.
These are the experiences of participants in a large-scale voluntary online survey, not an exact proportion of the entire LGBT+ population. Nevertheless, the results show that formal changes to the law do not automatically eliminate the problems that queer people face in their everyday lives.
4. “Why does it have to be so visible?”
Because invisibility is not the same as acceptance. For much of modern history, queer people were accepted mainly when they did not speak about themselves. They could be neighbours, colleagues or relatives, provided their relationship never appeared in a family photograph, their partner was not introduced at a company party, and they did not allow themselves to display the same gestures in public as others.
Pride rejects this condition. It says that an LGBT+ person does not have to measure out their existence so carefully as not to unsettle anyone. This can be particularly uncomfortable for people who have become accustomed to viewing queer invisibility as proof that ‘it wasn’t such a big deal in the past’.
It wasn’t often discussed precisely because the price of being open was too high. At the same time, visibility helps people who feel they are alone in their community. A teenager from a small town might never actually attend a pride parade. But even just a photograph of thousands of people in the streets can show them that their future doesn’t have to involve hiding.
5. “Why are there people half-naked and people in dog masks?”
Not everyone has to like every costume, banner or performance. Pride is not an aesthetic discipline, and its participants do not form a unified organisation with a prescribed dress code. Just as at a music festival, a carnival or a football celebration, it is usually the people who look the most striking who attract the most attention from photographers.
A few extravagant photographs can easily create the impression that the tens of thousands of parade participants consist exclusively of men in leather harnesses and drag queens in high heels. Left out of the frame are families with children, older people, people in ordinary T-shirts, charitable organisations, friends and heterosexual allies.
It is entirely legitimate to say that one finds a particular display distasteful. However, this does not mean that the entire group loses the right to assemble publicly. The questions ‘Do I like this costume?’ and ‘Are LGBT+ people allowed to demonstrate?’ are, in fact, unrelated.
Moreover, flamboyance has its place in the history of Pride. People who have long been told by society to be inconspicuous have used exaggeration, fashion, drag and humour as a way of refusing to feel ashamed any longer. A parade can therefore be both political and playful. Joy is not the opposite of protest.
6. “Why are they dragging children into this?”
Because LGBT+ people are also children and parents. Queer topics are often labelled as inappropriately sexual the moment someone tells children that, alongside families consisting of a mother and a father, there are also families with two mums or two dads. Yet the same logic is not usually applied to heterosexual relationships. A fairy tale about a prince who marries a princess is not considered premature sex education. It is simply a story about love.
Telling a child that two men can love each other is not a detailed account of their intimate life. Just as a photograph of mum and dad does not describe what they do together in the bedroom.
Moreover, the idea that children can be ‘protected’ from the existence of LGBT+ people overlooks queer children themselves. According to the Czech section of the FRA survey, 52 per cent of respondents stated that, during their school years, they had experienced bullying, ridicule, insults or threats because of their LGBT+ identity. At the same time, two-thirds of those surveyed stated that their school curriculum had never addressed LGBT+ issues.
Silence therefore does not automatically protect children. On the contrary, for some, it conveys the message that there are no words, role models or safe spaces for their experiences.
7. “Pride only divides society”
Pride can bring to light a conflict that already exists in society. But that does not mean it creates it.
When a minority demands equal treatment, some within the majority may perceive this demand as an attack on the existing order. Equality, however, is not a pie where granting rights to one person leaves less for others. Marriage between two men does not diminish the value of marriage between a man and a woman. The rainbow flag does not prevent anyone from flying a different symbol. The safety of a queer child at school does not threaten their heterosexual classmates.
This does not mean that Prague Pride or the global LGBT+ movement should not be subject to criticism. The commercialisation of the festival, the approach of its sponsors, safety, its environmental footprint, and whether it gives sufficient space to less visible parts of the community all deserve debate. However, criticising a specific decision is not the same as questioning the very right of queer people to be seen.
Pride isn’t compulsory. Respect is
No one is obliged to attend Prague Pride, carry a rainbow flag or admire every aspect of queer culture. A free society does not depend on everyone liking the same things. It is based on the ability to recognise that people whose lives we do not understand, or whose lifestyle we do not identify with, have the same right to be part of the public sphere.
So when the question arises again as to why heterosexuals don’t have a march, the answer may be surprisingly simple: they can have one. However, heterosexuality has never needed a mass movement to be considered normal, to be allowed to appear in films, or for the state to call its relationships ‘marriage’. Pride does not say that queer people are more important than others. It says that they no longer want to be regarded as less important.
