Your correspondent BG Beck (Letters, August 12) has missed the point.

Gay people in Brighton (and Lewes, and across the UK) pay taxes like everyone else.

This money is spent on the whole of society, including education, and nobody can object to that. I certainly do not.

However, spend a couple of hundred pounds on coloured lightbulbs for Pride and the complaints start as if gay people contributed nothing.

Last year the objections were even more obvious - somebody asked 'Why is the council giving my money as a grant to Pride when my school roof needs repairing?'

For gay people, should it be a case of "pay up and shut up"?

Society only works if we all pay but there will always be money spent on services we use or don't use, things we approve of and things we don't (how many would have opted out of paying for the Iraq war?).

As for an inclusive "Citizen's Pride", anyone lining the streets on Saturday, August 6, will have attended one already.

There were scores of families with children, on the streets, on the parade and in the park, having a great day out.

Sort out the toilets, broken glass and one or two cases of full-frontal nudity and it will be even better next year.

-Brian Snow, Brighton