As darkness falls tonight, thousands of pink light bulbs will turn Brighton seafront into a kitsch wonderland for the UK's biggest gay festival, Brighton Pride, writes Fionola Meredith 

Brighton and Hove City Council installed 5,000 bulbs above the promenade between the city's two piers as a flamboyant welcome gesture.

But while Brighton Pride participants bask in the rosy glow of community support, revellers at the 15th Belfast Pride festival are gamely partying on in an atmosphere of chilly disapproval.

Organisers may have defeated the attempt by the Free Presbyterian Church and the Stop the Parade Coalition to ban tomorrow's Pride parade, but they know they remain part of a small, embattled "pariah community" in the intensely conservative North.

At last Saturday's Pride launch in Belfast's Exposed photography gallery, Liam Larmour, the quietly-spoken secretary of the Pride committee, seemed wistful.

"Other cities like Brighton have huge public backing for Pride events, but we've never had that here in Belfast. Even when there's not outright naked hostility, people aren't keen to embrace us. But it's our city centre too, it's not as if we're strangers."

A Christian himself, Liam despairs of the fundamentalist anti-gay rhetoric used against his community.

"For far too long Northern Ireland has passed religious guilt and homophobia on from generation to generation, quoting the Lord and taking the Bible literally. We're not asking people to sacrifice religious principles for secularism. We just want the freedom to celebrate our achievements."

While many cities across the world take Pride participants to their hearts, Belfast Pride isn't alone in having to fight for its rights.

Neil Jarman of the Institute for Conflict Research in Belfast says: "I'm keeping a rapidly expanding file on similar cases in Warsaw and Jerusalem. In particular, there is a groundswell of opposition to Pride parades in eastern Europe."

Two weeks ago, Latvia's first Pride march in the capital Riga only went ahead after a court overturned a council ban on the event.

In a striking echo of the words of the Belfast protesters, prime minister Aigars Kalvitis said: "For sexual minorities to parade in the very heart of Riga, next to the Doma church, is unacceptable."

But Belfast Pride organisers have been heartened by a message of support from multi-denominational organisation Zero 28.

The group comments: "The controversy raised by our brothers and sisters in the Stop the Parade group is a sad reflection of the tendency of some of us in the churches to react from a perspective of sincere misunderstanding at best, and prejudice at worst, and to equate conservative values with the teachings of Jesus."

Amnesty International also supports the festival. Amnesty's Northern Ireland director Patrick Corrigan says: "Prejudice against people based on their sexuality is, sadly, all too common in Northern Ireland and around the world.

"Politicians, church leaders and ordinary people all have an obligation to stand up against such prejudice and stand in solidarity with gay people here and worldwide who face persecution and violence.

"Again this year Amnesty International members will be taking part in the Belfast Pride parade to demonstrate our belief that love is a human right."

Sally Young, co-chair of the Belfast Pride committee, thinks that while the battle to ensure the Belfast Pride parade went ahead took up much energy and time, it has had the positive effect of generating sympathy for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community.

In a society where homophobia is still regarded as "a respectable and acceptable prejudice", any thawing of public suspicion is welcome.

And yet Northern Ireland's equality legislation is impeccably progressive by international standards.

At the Pride launch, the outgoing chief commissioner of the Equality Commission, Dame Joan Harbinson - resplendent in sequin-studded denim jacket - congratulated the LGBT community on its increasing confidence and visibility, a confidence bolstered by this legislation.

But the disjuncture between the far-reaching equality laws and the spiralling rates of homophobic harassment and attacks is uncomfortable.

Is the LGBT community's growing prominence connected to the rise in anti-gay hate crimes?

Barbary Cook, a gay rights activist and one of the founders of the Belfast-based Coalition on Sexual Orientation, says: "The public profile of the LGBT community in Northern Ireland has been massively transformed; bit by bit LGBT people are becoming fully integrated into all the equality mechanisms of the state.

" In the past, when people could pretend there were no queers, they didn't need to do anything about it. But now we're seeing the societal reaction to that progress. And how do people in Northern Ireland deal with things they don't like? They resort to violence; it's habitual."

But for the past week, the grim realities of life as a member of the LGBT community in Northern Ireland have been temporarily forgotten in a whirl of festivities counting down to the parade itself.

All tastes have been catered for: some Pride-goers have opted for a gentle group stroll in the Belfast hills, while others have sampled the more exotic delights of the naturist sauna night.

A highlight was last night's Pride Fashion Show, in which all participants were spectacularly outshone by the glamorous host, well-known Belfast drag-artist Titti von Tramp.

More than 3,000 people are expected to take part in the biggest Pride parade through Belfast city centre tomorrow.

Earlier this week it emerged that 50 Free Presbyterians had been granted permission to hold a counter-demonstration close to the starting point of the march.

But Barbary Cook isn't bothered. "I just shrug my shoulders - I'm not going to engage in a theological debate with them.

"The people who look after your kids, who serve you in a shop - these are the minds to be changed. We have to show them that living with difference is not just a slogan. That's the real work to be done."