Lycra and lucre at Mardi Gras

The floats were out in force. There was the opening motorcade of 'dykes on bikes', the caricatures of political figures, and, of course, the flesh, the sequins, the Lycra.

At 20,000, last night's numbers were down on the heyday of Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, but it was still a great show.

Last August Mardi Gras went bankrupt with debts of £175,000, and this year's festival only got off the ground thanks to a fundraising blitz in Sydney's gay community.

The resurrected New Mardi Gras is one firmly in bed with corporate sponsors, to the consternation of many queer Sydneysiders who feel that their community festival has been lost to the money men.

But with a debt mountain and a party whose bill tops £700,000, organisers insist there is no choice. 'Mardi Gras has to evolve,' said New Mardi Gras co-chair Michael Woodhouse. 'If it doesn't evolve, it won't be around at all.'

The parade has come a long way from the night 25 years ago when around 1,000 people marked the anniversary of New York's 1969 Stonewall riots. In its early years it was above all else a civil rights march. Homosexuality was illegal in New South Wales and police refused to grant a permit for the 1978 demonstration, which ended in a near-riot. New South Wales finally decriminalised homosexuality in 1984.

Shorn of its politics, hedonism enveloped the festival. 'There's been the beginning of a disengagement with gay and lesbian politics,' said Craig Johnston, a veteran of all 25 parades.

Tension over the festival's direction came to a head last December when the board voted to rename the festival Sydney Mardi Gras, dropping the 'gay and lesbian' that promoters had spent years trying to get TV newsreaders to utter on-air.

The ostensible reason for the change was that the traditional name excluded the bisexual, transgendered and straight people who had been involved in the movement since it began. A popular revolt saw the old name reinstated.