Someone threatened to put a bullet in my head last weekend. My offence? Questioning whether a local Pride event was suitable for children.

At Medway Pride in north Kent, I saw photographs of men in leather fetish gear, a placard reading ‘Trans rights or I bite’, and a young child posing beside an inflatable shark carrying a Progress Pride flag. The shark has become an unofficial mascot of the trans community, while the Progress Pride flag incorporates colours representing trans and nonbinary identities, alongside the traditional rainbow. Most parents I know want their kids to be kids – not introduced to bonkers ideas like there are 100 genders or that some people are ‘born in the wrong body’.

Medway Pride looked relatively tame compared with some. I’ve seen photographs from Pride events of adults wearing puppy-play masks, collars, chains and harnesses. It’s not uncommon to see stalls selling sex toys. Or hear of sex acts being performed in public. Adults are free to do what they like consensually, of course. But surely adult sexual subcultures don’t belong at daytime events marketed as family-friendly.

I posed a reasonable question on X: ‘Do men in fetish gear belong at Medway Pride?’ I tagged in local Labour MP Tris Osborne, who had been raving about the event on his socials. Osborne responded to suggest that if I was making an ‘allegation’, I should contact the police, before wishing me a ‘relaxing weekend’.

When a gay friend asked whether Medway Pride actually recognised homosexuality, Osborne was similarly dismissive. And when another constituent objected to the Progress Pride flag being flown from Rochester Castle, the MP replied: ‘Sure they’ll miss you’, before suggesting he move to North Korea.

Meanwhile, among the online responses to my tweet were ‘cunt’, ‘Nazi’, ‘dangerous nut job’ and ‘don’t breed’. One man called me a ‘fucking bitch with zero brain cells’ who needed a ‘bullet in my head’.

Osborne is far from a one-off. Plenty of politicians seem determined not to look too closely at Pride. Take Sadiq Khan, whose City Hall positively embraces Pride. In July, central London streets were eerily lined with neat rows of giant Progress Pride flags. Luke Pollard, Plymouth’s first openly gay MP, recently celebrated Pride with a video warning that ‘hate is growing in our society’ and that people are trying to ‘turn our community on each other’. Southend MP David Burton-Sampson has meanwhile attacked Reform UK’s moves to stop Progress Pride flags being flown from council buildings in Essex. Local women tell me he is far less willing to discuss women’s rights – dismissing that debate as a ‘toxic culture war’.

I can’t decide whether MPs who reject the idea that anything could be wrong with Pride are actually ignorant – or just pretending to be. Osborne, Pollard and Burton-Sampson are openly gay and might be expected to understand better than most how much Pride has changed.

Over the past few years, a number of people with organisational links to Pride groups have been convicted of, have pleaded guilty to or have been charged with serious child-sex offences. The most notorious was Stephen Ireland, co-founder of Pride in Surrey, jailed for 24 years for raping a 12-year-old boy and other serious offences. He was no fringe figure: he was reportedly described by a former chief constable as ‘a friend of Surrey Police’ and accompanied officers into schools for Pride engagement work.

But even without those cases, surely it’s clear to anyone with eyes that Pride is no longer simply about acceptance of gay and bisexual people. It now also encompasses gender identities and the wider QTIA+ umbrella, which is a different set of ideas altogether. And once Pride becomes a vehicle not just for gay rights but for broader ideological and sexual subcultures, you get a blurring of boundaries.

This is how you end up with men in fetish gear, on leashes and wearing gimp masks, marching through high streets on a Saturday afternoon alongside the cashiers from Tesco or nurses from the local hospital. But if you object to men in fetish gear hanging around your kids, you’ll be accused of hatred or bigotry – rather than seen as an adult concerned about child safeguarding.

Acknowledging Pride has a problem is not the same as saying Pride causes paedophilia, nor that everyone involved in Pride should be regarded with suspicion. It means organisations that actively involve children and families should expect safeguarding scrutiny – just like everybody else.

Ofcom is currently investigating GB News after more than 12,000 complaints about comments made by Caroline Farrow linking Pride with paedophilia, bestiality and other sexual subcultures. Her comments were challenged on air by the presenter – but apparently that still wasn’t enough for those who believe Pride should be beyond criticism.

Whatever you think of Farrow’s formulation, Pride clearly deserves scrutiny. The photographs exist. The videos exist. Anyone can look. Yet our political class appears strangely incapable of saying that perhaps not everything conducted under the banner of Pride is suitable for children.

So what exactly are they afraid of? Being called homophobic? Or transphobic? Losing the approval of activists? Admitting that a movement they have spent years enthusiastically endorsing may have developed serious problems? Pretending not to see them won’t make them disappear.