Zizi Sparks: Pride parade needed in Rotorua and Tauranga

The 2017 Auckland Pride Parade on Ponsonby Rd. Photo / File

Tauranga's Pride Picnic is returning to the city next year with aims of making the world a better place for vulnerable young people and celebrating society's different factions together, free of discrimination and judgment.

But what is Rotorua doing?

Hundreds of people attended the first Tauranga Pride Picnic in March this year and organisers launched the second last week. It will be held in March 2020.

There were hopes the picnic could one day be a full-blown parade and while there is work to be done before that happens, at least Tauranga is further ahead than Rotorua.

The 2017 Pride Parade along Ponsonby Road. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

I'm not saying Rotorua isn't inclusive but the last mention I could find of a pride event in Rotorua was a picnic in 2015, held for the first time since 2012.

Waiariki MP Tamati Coffey chose to take his Proudly Rotorua float to the 2015 Auckland Pride Parade.

He even chose to announce he and husband Tim Smith were expecting at Auckland's Big Gay Out 2019.

Waiariki MP Tamati Coffey with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after announcing he and his husband were expecting at the 2019 Big Gay Out. Photo / File

Perhaps if Rotorua or Tauranga had Pride events then he'd have done it in the region he represents.

More can be done in Rotorua, and more can be done in Tauranga.

I'd like to see Rotorua have an equivalent pride event to Tauranga and maybe one day both events could match Auckland's old Pride Parade, which attracted thousands in its heyday.

As Tauranga Pride Picnic organiser Gordy Lockhart says: "We all remember being a teenager; You are struggling to find your identity regardless of what that even is. And to understand as you get older that you might be different from what society views as the norm, it can be a scary and not happy place to be."

Labour MP Tamati Coffey and his husband Tim Smith at Big Gay Out where they announced they were expecting. Photo / File

I don't know what it is like to identify as LGBTQI, what it is like to struggle to fit in or struggle with your own identity. But I can only imagine an event like a pride parade or picnic would make it that much easier to go through those things.

Same-sex marriage was legalised in New Zealand on August 19, 2013.

Since then, New Zealand has come so far.

It's time Rotorua and Tauranga caught up.