One of the biggest cheers of a rainbow-colourful Belfast Pride Day on Saturday was for the gardaí and PSNI officers marching down Royal Avenue in full uniform.
About 30 members of the Garda Síochána, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and some English forces joined about 8,000 others for the parade, whose main focus was the demand for the introduction of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.
Earlier Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, in a casual light-blue shirt and jeans, joined some of the officers to commend them for taking part in yet another historic day in the North: the first time officers from either force marched in uniform.
Not everybody was happy, of course. One man carried a placard with a picture of an officer wearing his police cap and a rainbow-coloured suit. “It’s not policing as we know it,” he had inscribed on his banner.
That was outside Belfast City Hall, where he was joined by a very small number of protesters who prayed and read from the Bible.
The Taoiseach did not attend the parade – he had to be at Croke Park to see Dublin play Monaghan in the evening’s All-Ireland quarter-final – but he did join the early Pride people for breakfast at the Northern Whig pub.
There too a crowd of about 25 evangelical Protestant opponents of the parade had assembled outside the pub. A minister delivered a sermon on the theme “the wages of sin is death” while a man with a sign on his back that read “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh” tried to hand out Bible leaflets to those about to join the parade.
Just then a big float with drag queens wearing the most flamboyant of ball gowns drove by. The contrast was a shock for one observer, who declared: "My goodness. We're a long way from 'Save Ulster from Sodomy'."
Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, joined Mr Varadkar at the breakfast. She said that the large attendance at the parade was “yet other powerful demonstration that the demand for equality, and in particular marriage equality, is building”.
Also at the parade was a team of SDLP politicians, including the party's leader, Colum Eastwood, who had dyed a patch of his beard in rainbow colours. "This is the only place on these islands where we maintain a hierarchy of love," said Mr Eastwood. "We must all stand together to deliver a powerful message of hope and acceptance to our LGBT friends and family, young and old, that the love they share is as equal as any other and that we will not allow it, or them, to be treated as lesser any more."
The same point was made by a tall marcher wearing a wedding veil and a T-shirt– and not much else – with the slogan “DUP . . . What about me!”
That indeed was the thrust of the day, but for most it appeared to be as much a carnival as a political occasion.
Many of the floats and outfits were brash and ostentatious, with, in addition to gay-rights organisation, most sections of society represented, including trade unions, the ambulance service, the RNLI and the Samaritans. There was even a Belfast City Council bin lorry kitted out with bright balloons.
And it wasn’t just humanity that was represented. Besides the dogs that a number of paraders had with them, the most striking animal on view was a horse masquerading as a unicorn, complete with rainbow tail and pink hoofs. It was that sort of day.
