The LGBTQIA+ community is losing the “media war” raging about our freedoms and lives. But, together, we can change that forever.
That was the vision outlined by Tris Reid-Smith, co-founder of the new global charity Pride Wide, in a powerful address delivered at Speaker’s House in the UK Parliament on 23 February 2026.
He launched an urgent appeal for support to combat a “fierce cultural backlash” against the LGBTQIA+ community.
The speech warned that despite achieving unprecedented legal wins, the movement faces an “inflection point,” citing a 10% drop in public support for LGB people in the US, the weaponization of trans lives, and a hostile media environment in the UK.
Tris said the world urgently needed a global LGBTQIA+ organization specializing in mainstream and social media to fight “misinformation and disinformation”.
Pride Wide has stepped up to the frontline, founded on the strategic belief that “laws are downstream from culture, and that culture is downstream from the stories we tell”.
The new charity, composed of media, communication, and information specialists, will harness fact-checked, relatable stories about LGBTQIA+ and the amplification power of AI and personalized media to help the public to see the “humans behind the hysteria”.
The organization is raising £2 million to give it a fighting chance against opponents who are investing hundreds of millions in narrative change.
The speech presented a hopeful vision of 2050 — a future where the work of Pride Wide has succeeded, creating a world where every LGBTQIA+ person is “free, equal, visible, and thriving.”
However, Tris cautioned that this future is “on a knife-edge”.
He stressed the critical urgency of action, warning that failure would betray vulnerable communities, including American families who may lose marriage equality, the more than nine in 10 trans kids in the UK who consider suicide, and 71 million LGBTQIA+ people in countries where their love is still illegal.
The Pride Wide Trust official launch event was held at Speaker’s House in the UK Parliament and brought together supporters, politicians, creators and civil society leaders.
The Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP, Speaker of the House of Commons, hosted the event and introduced Tris. In his own speech, Sir Lindsay argued that Pride Wide is important for democracy and society in general.
You can read the full text of Tris Reid-Smith’s speech, detailing Pride Wide’s mission and strategy, below.
A vision of 2050: The speech in full
Mr Speaker, your Excellencies, my Lords, Ladies and gentlemen. And, most importantly, friends!
Thank you for being with us. I must particularly thank Sir Lindsay for hosting us and for his kind words of welcome. It is an honour for anyone to have a reception in this beautiful historic space at the heart of our democracy and a special honour for a new charity.
I’d like to extend special thanks to Mark McLane and our friends at M&G who have kindly joined us as a launch sponsor and made today possible. Thank you to the two MPs, Kate Osborne and Vikki Slade who are our Parliamentary sponsors for this evening. It’s so important that this has cross-party support.
Thank you to our boards and volunteers for helping us to get to this incredible moment in Pride Wide’s history. Many of them are here today and each of them has a personal story they are keen to share; why they are passionate about our mission and our vision of the future.
As you can see, Scott and I love rocking a broach. And our Pride Wide team are not the types to be upstaged. So tonight we’re all wearing brooches. It makes it easy for you to spot them in the crowd and have a chat.
My final thanks is the most important. To all of you joining us today. You are our friends and supporters. You have helped us get to this point and it’s on your support and friendship that our future success will be entirely built.
February is LGBT History Month and I truly believe we have an opportunity to make history together today. That’s inspired me to tell our story in a different way. So I’d like you to imagine that I’m not the person addressing you. But rather, it’s a quarter century in the future. I’ll be 75 (I know, unbelievable!). And I’ll be standing in the back, hearing aid switched on, listening to the CEO of Pride Wide in 2050.
Let me set the scene. It’s reassuring to know that these splendid rooms will still be here in 2050. And I think we can expect Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to be floating around space in billion-dollar galactic superyachts – some things never change!
Another thing that won’t have changed… I WILL still have my blond hair even in 2050. If necessary, I’ll buy it in a bottle. Any my amazing partner and fellow-founder Scott Nunn will still have at least some hair.
But for the LGBTQIA+ community, I hope, with your help, that everything will have changed. Here’s what I want to hear that future Pride Wide CEO say:
Dear friends.
Twenty-five years ago, in the mid-2020s, our movement faced an inflection point. We had achieved unprecedented legal wins in many regions, yet we were grappling with a fierce cultural backlash.
In the US, trans lives were weaponised as a wedge issue. And there was a 10% drop in public support for LGB people over four years. In the UK, a hostile media had made the most vulnerable in our community into a punching bag. Around the world, a mix of toxic public debate and aid cuts were literally killing LGBTQIA+ people.
We had great NGOs with expertise in policy and litigation. But there was no global LGBTQIA+ organisation specialising in mainstream and social media. By contrast, our opponents were investing hundreds of millions in narrative change against us.
Many asked if the arc of the moral universe truly bent toward justice.
At Pride Wide we insisted it did.
But we recognised that unless we won the media war, everything else our community tried to do would fail. This was an Information Age. Information is power. We couldn’t continue to allow misinformation and disinformation to win. We needed a new, dedicated charity, made up of media, communication and information specialists, to fight for us all. Pride Wide stepped up to the frontline.
At the time, a divisive TV journalist, Piers Morgan, was seeking $30million to grow his YouTube channel. We asked our supporters for less than a tenth of that, just £2million, to give us a fighting chance.
We had brought together an unparalleled group of global experts and they helped us make some very sophisticated strategic bets.
We bet that laws were downstream from culture, and that culture was downstream from the stories we tell.
We bet that if we could harness the emerging technologies of the time—AI, personalized media, and global connectivity—not to shout louder, but to connect deeper, empathy would win.
We bet on future generations. The demographics showed an undeniable wave of inclusion rising with Generations Z and Alpha. Our job was to ensure they had the tools to remake the world in their image when their time came.
So how did we make that huge change happen?
We hired journalists, storytellers, and communication specialists to dig deep for relatable stories about real LGBTQIA+ people around the world, helping the public to see the humans behind the hysteria.
We invested in the latest tech to personalise these stories to target audiences, translating them into all major languages and across cultural barriers. Within just a few years, we were reaching hundreds of millions of people around the world.
We recruited and trained a movement. Helping artists, creators, TV and film producers, journalists, comics, authors and influencers tell our stories and amplify each other’s.
We built the Pride Wide website, podcast, video and social platforms as a trusted hub for fact-checked information and a go-to source for journalists, students, parents, politicians and content-seekers of all types to find storytelling they could rely on.
At the time, many businesses were in a tailspin, afraid to do anything for fear of doing the wrong thing. We helped them recognise a universal truth of communication, that silence isn’t safety, it’s irrelevance.
We helped them pivot from DEI to growth, from policy to people, from being perceived as transactional allies to being understood as authentic friends. Our strategists deployed storytelling and open, respectful conversations to drive colleague and customer loyalty. The result? Our partners unlocked their share of the $342 trillion in growth from gender and social equality that the world economy has achieved over the last 25 years.
Alongside this we pioneered a series of events, right from the start in 2026, to inspire others to join the collective effort. Each May, our Summit brought together civil society, creators and corporates to learn from each other. Our annual awards championed the best creative talent and ideas. And, because these were dark times, we brought laughter through our gala comedy night and inspiration from our annual art auction.
Most importantly, we unlocked the power of people of all intersections across society and made them our friends.
At the time, too many NGOs treated LGBTQIA+ people as hapless victims, or at best, passive funders of their work. But we saw them as active agents in their own liberation. Our supporters could reach where we couldn’t, speaking to their friends, their colleagues, their grannies, that irritating bloke down the pub who was obsessed with toilets. We gave them the facts and the stories, they did the work.
Today, standing in 2050, I am profoundly moved to report that those bets paid off. Not only did our work change laws around the world, it also changed lives.
Dr Adebayo is the 38-year-old Chief of Surgery at a hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. They said:
“My uncles tell stories of the 2020s, of having to hide. Today? My biggest worry is the hospital budget. Being non-binary is the least surprising thing about me. My wife and our three children are just a family. We are visible not because we are activists, but because we are living. That mundanity is the real victory.”
Jerome is 24 now. He was adopted in 2026 by a gay couple in Idaho. He said:
“I have the best dads in the world. I think it was hard for them at first. Not all the other parents accepted them. But they never let that affect me. They drove me to Little League matches and school play rehearsals, hosted sleepovers and birthday parties and sat on the PTA. Back when I was a baby, the Supreme Court almost took marriage equality away from them. How wild is that? I’m so pleased my kids will grow up in a world where that would never happen.”
And Emily, is a 16-year-old student in rural Northumbria. She said:
“We were watching a movie from 2026 in history class where a gay teenager had a ‘coming out’ scene. My friends and I didn’t really get it. It’s sad they had to go through that. I just liked who I liked. When I had my first girlfriend, nobody at school or home blinked. It wasn’t a ‘moment.’ It was just Tuesday.”
Thanks to you, the world we envisioned a quarter century ago—where every LGBTQIA+ person is free, equal, visible, and thriving—is no longer just a vision statement. It is the baseline reality for billions.
My friends. Now it’s time to bring you back to 2026. I know, it’s depressing, but at least there’s free wine.
I have shared our vision.
But tonight that future is on a knife-edge. If we fail to act, we will fail. We will fail the American families who may see marriage equality stripped from them. We will fail the more than 9 in 10 trans kids here in the UK who consider suicide. We will fail the 71 million LGBTQIA+ people in over 60 countries where their love is still illegal.
So I appeal for your help to make Pride Wide a reality. Everyone agrees with our strategy, our tactics. Everyone agrees this is urgent. We all know what needs to be done.
None of you are here by chance. We hand-picked you because we need your help.
I’ve seen time and again, how much power and influence there is among LGBTQIA+ people; our friends and supporters. But I’m always struck by how poorly we exercise that power, how afraid we are to ask for what we need.
Perhaps, growing up scared people won’t accept us, we’re afraid of asking too much, afraid of imposing on people.
Well, it’s not an imposition when lives and futures are on the line. It’s not an imposition when we are doing work that can only benefit society as a whole.
Today, we hope to start a friendship with you that will make our shared vision a reality.
Together we will achieve this. Together we will decide our own future.
Please, enjoy the rest of the evening, have great conversations.
But I have one request. Please don’t leave without speaking to at least one Pride Wide team member about how you can play your part. Remember, look for the brooches!
Thank you for joining us, thank you for being our friends, thank you for sharing our hope. Thank you.
