Past Time for Reconciliation on all Fronts

"We brought the Pride parade to a full stop with a list of demands (see below) reflecting the needs of some of Toronto’s most marginalized LGBTQ2SIAA community members. These demands challenged the erasure of Black infrastructure and called for the removal of police floats from the Pride parade and community fair, among other things."
"Canada, too, has a long history of homophobia and transphobia. From the 1950s to the 90s, LGBTQ2SIAA people in Canada were surveilled, violated and brutalized by police forces, resulting in raids and incarceration."
"We achieved a commitment to our demands despite intense push-back from a primarily gay white male community. The same community did not want Black Lives Matter involved in Pride at all, even going so far as to create a group on Facebook called No BLM in Pride. Gender and sexual diversity, it seems, does not preclude racism or white privilege."
"The majority of the leadership within Black Lives Matter – Toronto and Black Lives Matter internationally identify as queer or trans. Pride has always been for the most marginalized, and has always been for us."
"Since the action, I have received hate mail and death threats, primarily from gay-identifying men. I have been screamed at on the street. I have been called a “nigger” more times than I care to count. People have told me I’m no longer part of the queer community because my Blackness has no place there."
Janaya Khan, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, 6 July 2016

Ethan Eisenberg   Black Lives Matter – Toronto activists brought this year's Pride parade to a halt.

From the horrors of persecution, societal rejection and violence against gays just about everywhere in the world, to the present time where society has finally learned to accept human beings in all their diverse, natural dimensions and projections, fully invested in living their lives as they were meant to be in reflection of their biology and their values, we have the amazing spectacle of the once-persecuted, now mainstream, continuing to hound and demean other equally-deserving members of communities who have long lived on the edge of 'normative' society.

Activists within the black community who identify as varied-gendered are outraged that within the greater community of diverse iterations of sexuality, they have been shunted aside as irrelevant and unwanted, to deal with the consequences of historical predation of their dignity as human beings. When most gays were hounded and desperate to escape the threats aimed against them, they were still privileged as white males in comparison to people of colour, coping with skin-discrimination alongside that of gender-orientation rejection.

Now that the varied different-gendered community has found its place with pride in general society in many countries of the world, including Canada, where they were once rejected and harried and violated, it is only natural for outsiders to conclude in their wholesale ignorance that all is well within the community itself. Yet it is human nature to be obtuse, and to not want to know more than what appears on the surface. And it is also human nature to define one's own interests as being superior and more worthy than those of others.

The black LGBTQ2SIAA community clearly finds itself outside the heartfelt welcome of the Caucasian LGBTQ community and feels aggrieved and ill done by. And during Sunday's annual Pride Parade that took place in Toronto, Black Lives Matter protested their exclusion within a supposedly inclusive community. It is a moral comeuppance. A reminder that if a community truly does represent the best interests of all its members its actions and its general atmosphere should reflect that. Toronto Pride fell quite a bit short of doing that.

The irony for some lies in the fact that the greater Pride community  had previously allowed itself to be highjacked by an agenda that attempted to politicize Gay Pride in a manner that coloured it not rainbow but black and bleakly self-harming when it adopted the searingly rancid message of the supposedly underdog Palestinians in messaging that Israel is an Apartheid State, when the reality is that Israel is anything but that, and that the LGBTQ community in Israel has legal status and security, the only place in the Middle East where this is true.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid delivered a searing message of pure hatred on a pretense of justification, and Gay Pride Parade was clearly complicit until public pressure and bad press resulting from it convinced it to re-neutralize itself publicly on the issue. This certainly did not redeem it, but it removed an irritant. Now, it transpires that bad blood of discrimination exists in the LGBTQ community along racial lines just as it does outside that community, when compassion bred of knowing what it is like to be a victim should logically have cleansed the community of rejection.

Not everyone will be in support of Black Lives Matters' demand that there be no police presence at future Gay Parades. Historically, police action reflected that of societal demands at a time when that social contract scorned and denied gays their equal place in society. Just as much has occurred since then to legitimize the presence of the LGBTQ community within society at every level, gaining them not only acceptance but protection under the law once denied them, so too have police services themselves been irretrievably altered in their relations with the LGBTQ community.

"I can say with absolute pride that my peers, and my employers/senior management, ahave never made an inappropriate comment to me. I have never been made to feel discriminated against. I speak as an individual. One who saw his first Pride, only to be excluded from the next", explained Constable Chuck Krangle in his open letter to Pride organizers, a man who had 'come out' at work, with the Toronto Police Services, of which he is a proud member.

Black Lives Matter's demands of Pride

• Continued space, including stage and tents, funding and logistical support for Black Queer Youth. 
• Self-determination for all community spaces at Pride, allowing community groups full control over hiring, content and structure of their stages.
• Full and adequate funding for community stages, including logistical, technical and personnel support.
• Doubling of funding for Blockorama to $13,000.
• Reinstatement of the South Asian stage.
• Prioritizing of the hiring of Black transwomen, Indigenous people and others from vulnerable communities at Pride Toronto.
• More Black deaf and hearing sign language interpreters for the festival.
• Removal of police floats in the Pride marches and parades.
• A town hall organized in conjunction with groups from marginalized communities, including but not limited to Black Lives Matter – Toronto, Blackness Yes and Black Queer Youth, in six months, where Pride Toronto will present an update and action plan on BLM-TO’s demands

Defying (new) Convention

"It is no longer acceptable to impose western cultural questions and approaches on our societies. We absolutely reserve the right to make these choices and decisions, now and forever, on our own terms and in our own way."
"At present, we do not hear our concerns and approach in either side of this very strained discussion. Our understanding of marriage appears to be quite different from the dominating society and both sides of this discussion within it."
Indigenous bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada

"I don't know how we can move forward on this, or make a change, if we can't all feel that we're moving together. And if some people say we need a little more time, then I hear them."
Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate, Anglican Church of Canada

"What is different is this is a canonical change so, theologically, the church's understanding of what marriage is."
"And that's a huge ethical, theological understanding which some people wrestle with."
Meghan Kilty, communications director, Anglican Church of Canada

Julia C. Smith Photography / Via juliacsmith.com

The American counterpart of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church, last year voted to authorize gay weddings in its houses of worship. Other countries such as South Africa and Brazil have agreed that they too are prepared in their Anglican communions, to give full consideration to the idea of accepting gay marriage. And, for the most part, the Anglican Church of Canada appeared prepared to forge ahead.

The church's governing body has announced a vote on same-sex marriage to take place in July, while acknowledging that the support needed to alter its rules of inclusivity may not be adequate to the task. Bishop Geoff Peddle suggested on a local radio show in eastern Newfoundland that the resistance to the formalization of the Church's acceptance of gay marriage emanates from aboriginal bishops.

He was not, he said, singling out one group of bishops, but empathizing with all points of view whether they came from indigenous or members in the gay and lesbian community, but all must be given equal opportunity to have their positions considered. Indigenous bishops Adam Halkett in Saskatchewan, Lydia Mamakwa in northern Ontario and Mark MacDonald, the national indigenous bishop, led the statement speaking of "very strained" internal debate.

At the same time the indigenous bishops while speaking of "a dangerously complex cross-cultural discussion", emphasizes the acceptance of gay and lesbians as "brothers, sisters, children and elders". They simply separate that acceptance from the insistence that gay marriage formalized in the Anglican Church represents an expression that mirrors indigenous cultural values.

"There is no place for hatred and separation in indigenous communities and, especially, in indigenous Christian communities", they stressed.

In that, simply because they balk at the imposition of what has become the norm in non-aboriginal communities of gay marriage acceptance, does not diminish their right to refuse that same acceptance in the same manner. Their acceptance of gays and lesbians as equals does not equate with giving them equal rights to the sacrament of marriage, reserved for heterosexual couples.

ndependent.co.uk

While disagreement on the issue is present within their own communities and their elders the discussions become confused with deciphering past practices within their communities as a result of "the widespread and deep destruction of our history and traditions by colonial occupation", emphasizes their collective position statement. When all else fails, the fall-back of reaching backwards toward historical resentment of cultural interference and wrong-doing of colonialists is always useful.

Two-thirds support is required from each of the church's main groups; bishops, clergy and laity, over a period of three years and two meetings. The resolution is set for the July agenda when the General Synod, the Anglican Church of Canada's governing party gathers in Toronto. Ironically, the country that federally led the way to acceptance of gay marriage as one of the first to do so, sees the United States, which was a relative laggard, preceding them in the Episcopal Church.

itratophoto.com

Toronto's World Pride

"We are free here. We're able to express ourselves in a better and a more accepting environment -- something we cannot do back home."
"It's homely. It feels like the whole world is here."
Mojalifa Mokoele, 29, Zimbabwean

"I've seen so many people from every corner of the world, literally. [Canada] is a place that actually gets it, that stands up for human rights around the world and welcomes people in."
Liberal Party of Canada leader Justin Trudeau

"Half my riding is in the parade, the other half is watching. Hanging out here is never a bad idea as an election strategy. But I'm actually here because this is about celebrating peoples' right to love."
Adam Vaughan Liberal candidate, Trinity-Spadina

Matthew Sherwood for National Post   The Toronto World Pride parade heads down Yonge Street in 

Toronto on Sunday, June 29, 2014. 

 

Over ten thousand people, inclusive of Canadian politicians, actors and Olympic athletes were present in Toronto, to march at the largest-ever pride parade on Sunday, after ten days of festivities celebrating gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities. This was the first time a WorldPride festival has taken place in a North American city, and it was Toronto playing host, though it was also the 34th year such an event has taken place in the city.

Fittingly, perhaps, given that the province has just elected its first female, gay premier. Who was front and centre at the parade, herself proud of the event. "The energy is always up during this event but it's just on steroids this weekend", said one marcher. "It's been fantastic, absolutely fantastic."

An awful lot of people agreed, people who came as visitors to Canada from the Netherlands, Uganda, Texas, Australia, South Africa, Jamaica, to name a few.

People wore elaborate, colourful costumes and feather headdresses. Some marchers wore nothing. Bystanders wore rainbow colours, WorldPride T-shirts, and simply watched the proceedings, many with young children in tow.

Still, it remains a mystery to many other people why those who identify themselves as gay and other allied categories must flaunt their sexuality. Some see it as fun, others as in extremely poor juvenile taste. The latter, needless to say, stay away, while the former are there, cheering it all on.

To each their own. Sexuality however, is a private matter.

Laura Pedersen/National Post    Olivia Chow parades down Yonge Street during the WorldPride Parade 

in Toronto, Ontario on Sunday, June 29, 2014.

Why make such a show of it? On the other hand, there are worse things than bad taste. In other parts of the world contempt and violence reflect cultural mores that were once in evidence in Canada, including Toronto and any other city in the country. In that sense, we've come a long way.

Matthew Sherwood for National Post   The Toronto World Pride parade heads down Yonge Street in 

Toronto on Sunday, June 29, 2014.

Wot?! Gay Pride In Turkey!

Participants wave a huge rainbow flag during a Gay Pride Parade in central Istanbul. REUTERS Photo / Osman Orsal

Istanbul is the capital of an Islamist government in Turkey. Where the Justice and Development Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan must surely be squirming with discomfort. Not only because of all the protests that have been taking place in the country this year, and the popular secular outrage of Turks over their prime minister's autocratic dictates and the revelations of corruption within the government, but because homosexuality is not yet illegal in Turkey.

Which has empowered the country's LGBT (Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender) community to appear in their colourful thousands on Istanbul's main pedestrian street, Istiklal Avenue. Which is where this year's gay pride parade took place. Nothing untoward occurred, which was nice for the LGBT crowd, though police were there to intervene 'in the event of violence'; the march, however, was a peaceful, celebratory one.

Where those present waved rainbow flags and holding signage for an end to homophobia. "Love knows no gender", read one; "Another kind of family is possible", read another, and "Stop homophobia" read yet another sign. "In Turkey, we all have difficulty exercising our rights. This is why we must fight and why we all walk together today", stated Aykut Yanak, one of the participants of the homophobia that remains firmly entrenched among the conservative population.

Islamists took issue both with the fact that the government permitted the LGBT community to hold the event, and that the parade happened to coincide with the start of the holy month of Ramadan. The violent government crackdown last year sparked by a controversy over popular Gezi park destined to become a commercial venue began the public's backlash against the government, when protesters took to the streets in protest against heavy-handed rule.

"Where are you my love?" chanted part of the marching crowd. Others within the crowd responded: "I am here my love." "Put your legs on your shoulders against fascism", "We are the soldiers of Freddy Mercury", "AKP go away, the queers are here", and "The earth would shake if queers were free", represented additional popular slogans appearing on banners.

There was some tension when police blocked entry to Taksim Square in a deliberate action to prevent the march from entering the symbolic area of Gezi Park, cordoned off an hour before the march began. Some of the activists painted the infamous water cannons omnipresent on Istiklal Avenue with rebellious messages. It's called getting the message through to the authorities. Seemed they did a quite creditable job of it, too.

Reuters

Being Homophobic

"I am not homophobic. I'll go to anyone's house, anyone's place to help them out. I take offence when people say that to me."
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford

Mayor Ford, whose reputation has soured with the stench of puerile and ill-suited-to-a-mayor behaviour on the wrong side of social mores and the letter of the law remains committed to communicating with the people of Toronto, insisting that it is his pleasure and his determination to represent everyone equally. Although he has his firm detractors and his goggle-eyed supporters his shocking behaviour certainly surprised them all equally.

People of sober-minded social propriety (even modest intelligence) are aghast at the man's unpredictable, antic mannerisms and even more so at his purported and often witnessed churlish and wretched public behaviour. Giving ample ammunition to those who detest him to mount a civil opposition to his continuation as mayor of Canada's largest city, though at the present time he hangs on like a lividly plump limpet.

He and his almost-equally disreputable brother, city Councillor Doug Ford continue to court the public in their determination to cash in on the loyalty of Ford Nation, hoping that in the next mayoral election, Rob Ford will be returned as mayor with full administration of the city restored to him. Mayor Ford released a video recently in which he claims to have been offended by those who insist he is homophobic.



The charge relates largely to his steadfast refusal to attend Toronto's Gay Pride parade, seen as a required courtesy on the part of city officialdom, but rejected by the Fords as unnecessary. "I've never been to a pride parade. So I'm not going to change the way I am", he asserts. Truth be told, who can blame him? The events where mature adults shed their clothing and prance about in absurdly suggestive poses may appeal to the juvenile among us, but hold no appeal for many others.



Those who attend the event because it is seen as a social and political requirement to 'prove' to the gay community how tolerant they are, and appreciative of the 'different' values of the gay, lesbian, transgender, transvestite and queer community, do so to avoid being labelled homophobic. Those who are conspicuous by their absence like the Fords speak the truth when, as Doug Ford stated, feel gay "bullying" behind the fear of offending the LGBT community.



Much as it pains those of us who consider Rob Ford and his brother to be quasi-barbaric louts, and even though we cringe at agreeing with him, he deserves credit for not hesitating to speak the truth in this matter. When Mayor Ford expressed his opinion that a rainbow flag be removed from city hall when the Sochi Winter Olympics began, raised as a symbol of solidarity with gays in Russia, he doubtless echoed the opinion of many of his constituents.

None of whom would dare venture such an opinion for fear of being labelled homophobic. "Our Canadian flag should be up there, not the pride flag", he stated, and one can only agree, even with the knowledge that the rainbow flag took the place, on a "courtesy" flagpole, of the City of Toronto flag.

Unfortunate Population Control

"Problems. How? There are no problems. Not any problems. You can see for yourself.
"Cabaret Mayak has been working ten years already. We are the first gay club that has lasted so long. We do not disturb anybody. Nobody disturbs us. And thank God.
"Let the Olympics happen every year, for you to come to see us more often. There were not so many foreigners here in the past. Now there are more of them coming and life is more interesting."
Miss Zhuzha, Cabaret Mayak, Sochi

Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson attends the drag queen performance at Cabaret Mayak, one of the 

gay bars in Sochi, Feb. 2, 2014. Stevenson is in Sochi to meet with IOC to negotiate the charter to include 

sexual orientation in the Olympics. (MARK YUEN/POSTMEDIA).

"This is alarmism on the part of the West. They don't quite understand the dynamics here. They take things at face value.
"Certainly horrible homophobia exists here, but it exists in Canada, too. My personal view is that there is not a serious problem in Russia with gay rights. (But) nobody denies that Russia is not in the same place as western Europe for social progress.
"I personally do not think that Putin is a militant homophobe. He has used such remarks to get support when he is politically weak. He probably realizes he went too far because real homophobes came out of the woodwork."
Olda Childs, Moscow lesbian, Sochi

Gays, lesbians and heterosexuals crowded into Sochi's gay bar seem undisturbed over the furor President Vladimir Putin's statements and anti-propaganda gay laws have provoked in the West. They are unperturbed to the point of being oblivious of their questionable legal status in Russia. Comporting themselves blissfully as though they were located in Norway, Denmark, Sweden.

Located a brief walk from a park where Vladimir Lenin's statue stands close to an immense hospitality tent ready for Olympic photographs, the bar brims with colour and noise and cheer.

Cigarette smoke hangs over the dance floor. A large screen TV plays music videos. Sushi is being served to Club Mayak patrons. A campy floor show is on view. Not too sophisticated, but exceedingly in-your-face and meriting huge applause. The are no exterior signs reading 'gay club'. Club Mayak is located on a narrow lane opening up to a park facing the Black Sea. It is equipped with surveillance cameras. Entry is strict, with a large steel door to ensure only recognized faces are permitted entry.

A Vancouver city councillor, Tim Stevenson, also a gay United Church minister, sat in for a performance at Club Mayak. Later he met with members of the International Olympic Committee, who confided to him they were considering a pride house in Rio for the 2016 Summer Games. In response Mr. Stevenson informed them he had spoken "to Russian activists and their word to me is that it is indeed very difficult (for Russian gays and lesbians) and these laws that have been instituted have made it far worse".

Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson attend the drag queen performance at Cabaret Mayak, one of the 

gay bars in Sochi, Feb. 2, 2014. Stevenson is in Sochi to meet with IOC to negotiate the charter to include 

sexual orientation in the Olympics. (MARK YUEN/POSTMEDIA)

Sochi has Russia's second-largest gay and lesbian population; only Moscow's is larger. Miss Zhuzha, born and raised in Sochi, insists she is a huge supporter of the Winter Games. Although most Olympians competing in Sochi have yet to arrive, Western gay rights activists are in town, criticizing President Putin's statement that his country needs to "cleanse" itself of homosexuality, to raise the Russian birthrate.

Gayly Accepting

It's that time of year again. Toronto is preparing for its Gay Pride bash. In some minds, the event, once thought well of, has been tinged with wretchedly-obvious anti-Semitism, rendering the entire presentation distasteful, even though a minority group is responsible for tainting the entire Gay Pride parade-party. The virulently anti-Israel Queers Against Israel Apartheid (QuAIA) and D[ykes]AIA have forever changed the way in which many view this annual event.

Toronto City Council is conflicted over its role in helping to fund the event; on the one hand, it is a popular event, it represents tolerant acceptance within the broader community that such an event has become commonplace, and the festivities themselves, raucous and colourful, invite the presence of many onlookers, including tourists whose presence in the city is a commercial boon to business and to the business of tourism.

Those of the QuAIA persuasion had their puzzlingly spiteful inciteful sensibilities sharpened pre-parade by the admission-free guest appearance at the 519 Church Street Community Centre of Ali Abunimah, author of One country, a Bold Proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, speaking of "How Israel uses sex and marketing to distract from Apartheid". As members of his audience they will discover that his "solution" to the stated impasse between Israel and the Palestinians is to obliterate Israel's purpose as a Jewish state.

Among the committed QuAIA and DAIA marchers, contempt for Israel is difficult to overlook; the marchers wear tee-shirts emblazoned with swastikas, the concept of Israel as a Nazi state impelling their determined hatred for the only country in the Middle East where homosexuals have equality rights under the law, and gay pride parades to equal and surpass those that Toronto mounts are considered normal.

The irrational hatred for Israel is not difficult to pinpoint; any excuse, real or imagined will do to label the Jewish State as a pariah. Anti-Semitism is alive and well among those cohorts where, if they lived in the region, they would find comfort and security only within Israel, and never within the confines of Israel's neighbouring countries in the Middle East.

Participants hold flags during the gay pride parade in Jerusalem July 29, 2010. This year's parade marks the one-year anniversary of a shooting attack in a gay and lesbian youth center in Tel Aviv, in which two people were killed and 13 were injured. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun (JERUSALEM - Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY) (Credit: Reuters)

 

Explanatory legends put together by the Pew Research Center elaborates: "As some countries grapple with the issue of same-sex marriage, a new global survey finds many societies are divided over whether homosexuality should be accepted or punitively punished. 'There is far less acceptance of homosexuality in countries where religion is central to peoples' lives'." 

The following are fairly self-explanatory:

• Sudan: Homosexuality is punishable by lashings and the death penalty, for men on a third offence;
• Mauritania: Homosexual acts between males are punishable by death if witnessed by four individuals;
• Yemen: Unmarried men are lashed, married men receive death by stoning as rewards for homosexual activities;
• United Arab Emirates: Homosexuality is banned, full stop. Some dispute remains whether the death penalty is applicable;
• Saudi Arabia: No "gay" executions reported since 2002, but homosexuals are flogged and imprisoned;
• Iraq: Homosexuality is not strictly illegal, but gay rights groups report hundreds of gay men killed since 2003 by "death squads"'
• Iran: Death penalty is believed to have been used against gay men in the last few years.

"As the Times of Israel reports, gay Palestinian Arabs are flocking to supposedly repressive Israel. In the West Bank and Gaza, they face persecution and death. In Israel, they find freedom. Palestinian gays not only can’t come out at home. If they want to meet as a group, the only place they can go is Tel Aviv, where as the Times of Israel notes, a monthly gathering called the Palestinian Queer Party convenes. That’s because the repressive Muslim culture that predominates in the territories considers gays to be anathemas while Israel is a liberal democracy where, despite deep differences between various elements of society, people can live and do as they please. Though the “Israel is apartheid” crowd is at pains to stifle discussion of the gay angle to the Middle East conflict, it actually tells you all you need to know about the difference between the two societies and why hopes for peace need to wait until Palestinians embrace freedom for their own people as well as coexistence with Jews."
Commentary