Crowds converged at midday on Victoria Park as attendees geared up for the 2025 Bermuda Pride Parade through Hamilton, starting with the Party in the Park featuring artists and speakers before setting out through the streets of the capital.

The celebration of the island’s LGBTQ+ community, a commemoration launched in 2019, was one among many in a week of events held by the charity OutBermuda — but stood out as the loudest and most visible.

Joshua Samuels, the charity’s executive director, said that turning out to support Pride continued to matter because there remained young people in Bermuda vulnerable to the belief that it might be better to be dead than gay.

“I want to speak to those young people today who were like me as a 15-year-old in Bermuda, scared and afraid and feeling like I had no way to embrace all of my identity,” he said.

“I want to speak to you today and say you deserve to be here, you deserve to take up space and Pride is for you.”

Mr Samuels said that discrimination persisted on the island, that events like Pride helped improve visibility and that visibility saved lives.

He recalled returning to the island for Pride 2023, answering a call for members of the LGBTQ+ community to come back to Bermuda.

“The theme was ‘Homecoming’,” he said. “I had moved out of Bermuda when I was 14. I had come out as gay while I was out of Bermuda, and coming back and being gay felt really strange to me.

“I made the decision to come back. It was a beautiful moment. I remember walking around, I didn’t know anyone, no one was with me at the parade, but it was the first time my queer identity and my Bermuda identity were intersecting.”

He said that he was invited onto the Pride truck and celebrated through the streets of Bermuda.

Mr Samuels told the crowd that OutBermuda had put out a policy manifesto calling for inclusive education to protect children from bullying, equity in healthcare to ensure life-affirming and gender-affirming care and equality under the law.

“There are still things that are not equal,” he said. “Equal marriage does not exist in law in Bermuda, and that needs to change.

“We are calling on our government leaders to make Bermuda the inclusive, beautiful, welcoming Bermuda that we know we can be.”

Sponsors for this year’s festivities included Bacardi, Carey Olsen, Fortitude Re and Renaissance Re.

Chen Foley, one of the founders of Bermuda Pride, told the cheering gathering: “We’ve been talking this week a lot about legacy, and the people who came before us who made this event and celebration possible.”

Mr Foley highlighted that 2026 would mark 20 years since the activist Mark Anderson got barred from taking part in the Bermuda Day Parade, but walked the route regardless as the drag artist Sybil Barrington.

He said: “She showed up the next day and walked all of Hamilton. There were no Pride flags, no rainbow crosswalks, no soundtrack. She showed up with courage.

“Twenty years later, people are still showing up by themselves, courageously, in discriminatory environments.”

Mr Foley added, to applause: “We still have to fight to get marriage equality back, and still need the power of pride to stand up against bullying in the classroom.”

While the gathering was a celebration of diversity ahead of the march through Hamilton, protest was part of the year’s theme, as trade unionist Linda Bogle Mienzer reminded attendees.

She said: “One thing about protest is, when you decide to protest, you have to let people know you’re there. You know how our union is when we march in the street — we don’t tiptoe.”

Ms Bogle Mienzer said that despite laws barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the battle for acceptance and equality continued.

“There are people who have been kicked out of their houses by their parents, their family members,” she said. “It’s not being enforced, because we aren’t protesting.”

Ms Bogle Mienzer said she was proud of the recognition she had been afforded for her various roles, but added: “The award I am most proud of is to be an icon in this community — the gay community.”

Among performers ahead of the international guest Crystal Waters was the transgender artist Chrissie Dior.

After taking to the stage, she said: “Today, we march with love in our hearts and pride in our steps, for all those who can’t, for those still finding the courage to be seen.

“This is not just a movement — this is a promise that we will never go back, we will never be silent and we will always, always stand together.”

Roderick Ferguson, a human rights campaigner, said it was wonderful to see Pride celebrations continue on the island.

“I cannot believe it was six years ago that we were all blown away that it was happening for the first time,” he said. “It is just so great to be here and see this energy.

“People getting along, having fun, being who they are. I hope that not only does that continue, but that it spreads ‒ because everyone could use a bit more authenticity.”

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