ON the way back from the Oxford Pride Festival I walked back to along Queen Street holding my husband’s hand only to hear a man in his late 50’s who we had just walked past and who was with his wife shout from behind us, ‘filthy perverts flouting it’. 

I said to him: “It is because of people like that you we need Pride.” 

No one intervened or told him he was out of order. 

I am Irish and this has never happened to me in Ireland. I have walked down the streets of Dublin and Galway holding my husband’s hand or in Manchester where I work.

I had to come home to Oxford where I live to be abused by a stranger for holding the hand of a man whom I have lived with for 25 years and who is my husband. 

That stranger does not know if his own children or grandchildren may, in time, be gay but I can see all too clearly why young people if they had a parent like him would be afraid to come out. 

Homophobia is indeed alive and well in Oxford.

BERNARD MCKENNA