It’s Pride month. Pride was born as a protest, it’s always been a protest, and is still a protest. This is a year not to forget that and to turn up the volume.
After what seems like decades of slow progress, queer people are under attack everywhere, and it feels dangerous. Russia, Turkey, Uganda and other countries have leaders who villainize queers and enact anti-LGBTQ laws for political gain.
Closer to home, some American states are becoming so hostile that human rights organizations are issuing travel warnings. Drag events have been banned, targeted with violence, and “groomer” and “LGBTQ agenda” rhetoric is being floated and teased out by mainstream politicians. It doesn’t just feel dangerous, it is dangerous.
In Canada we’re also seeing the rise of some of this along with other worrying events. In the last week Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass posted a video filled with anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and the York District Catholic School Board voted not to fly the pride flag.
Some will argue this is about free speech. Free speech is indeed still free: if Catholic parents, trustees and educators want to exercise their freedom they can do it without public funding. They’ve made their own case for abolishing the separate school system and merging it with the public one. That would save Ontario taxpayers $1.5 billion, but that’s not only why it should be done.
I went to publicly-funded Ontario Catholic schools, and am old enough to remember when Grade 13 existed, but also that not a soul dared to be out. The hostile atmosphere that kept a suffocating blanket over everyone drove families apart, sent people into depression, to suicide and made countless lives miserable and sting with a lifetime of regret.
There’s a reason Pride is also a celebration: like the disco and house music anthems that often fuel the parties, it’s a celebration of liberation. Do not begrudge anyone their party, but a party and a protest can be the same thing.
If the Catholic board doesn’t want to raise the flag, a most minor gesture of Christian kindness, the kind of thing Jesus would have done if the vibes in the New Testament are to be believed, do it without public funds.
As for the Blue Jays, they issued a statement saying their pitcher’s views aren’t that of the organization and Bass later made a short, awkward statement apologizing while taking no questions. In the first protest of the season, at a sellout game on the eve of Pride month Bass was met with a chorus of boos from Jays fans numerous times. Free speech is free and it is glorious.
Businesses like the Jays are in a tricky position because they’ve actively courted LGBTQ fans. When a member of that business makes fans feel unsafe and unwanted, stoking hatred, the organization must react decisively. Other businesses who’ve courted the queer community for their business, giving the illusion of support, have caved when they became the target of anti-queer hatred for that support. This happened recently with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Target and beer companies.
In Toronto and other cities, Pride parades have become a giant pageant of civil society, with all sorts of organizations and businesses marching. What happens if some of them come under attack though? Will they stick around and defend their support for the gays? What are they actually doing to make life for queer folk better and safer, beyond selling them stuff?
It’s easy to slap a rainbow on things, it’s harder to actively protect people from danger.
On June 1, mayoral candidate Mark Saunders tweeted out a photo of himself wearing a rainbow lei draped around his neck with the caption, “Happy Pride Month!” This is a despicable erasure of recent history: In 2017, when Saunders was police chief, he stated that there was no evidence of a serial killer behind the disappearances of men from the gay community, despite that same community pleading with police, insisting there was somebody hunting them. Saunders later blamed the community for police incompetence in catching the person who killed eight gay men over almost eight years. Saunders later apologized and walked back those comments, but he shouldn’t be anywhere near a rainbow.
Given this history, it’s outrageous Pride is considering cutting back the festival due, in part, to increased policing costs. The police should do it for free, like a Catholic penance, for their long history of damaging the community.
It’s been easy to think Pride has become simply a big party, but Pride never stopped being both political and a protest even as some members of our complicated-and-varied community that goes by many names and acronyms became more comfortable in a big city like Toronto and in a country where legislative wins like same-sex marriage were passed.
Some who went through AIDS & years of gay bashing feel they earned the party, and they did, but there have been members of our community who still face danger. Trans people, queers of colour, and many others have never been able to enjoy Pride as simply a party.
People who don’t like the protest part of Pride can sit this one out perhaps. Maybe sit them all out.
