Love, Not Hate

"It's the reflex. Go. Go to the fire. Stop the action. Stop the activity. Don't let no one get hurt."

"I'm not a hero. I'm just some dude."

"I wish I could have saved everybody in there."

"I wish I could have done more."

Rich Fierro, former U.S. military

 

"He had just gotten a new job at a Colorado Springs FedEx distribution centre, and was thrilled to have received his first paycheque.:"

He couldn't wait to save enough money to get his own apartment."

Family of 22-year-old Raymond Green Vance

Richard Fierro, right, talks with his brother Ed Fierro about his efforts to subdue the gunman in Saturday's fatal shooting at Club Q, during a news conference Monday, Nov. 21, 2022, outside his home in in Colorado Springs, Colo. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)

Richard Fierro served fourteen years in the U.S. military, was awarded the Bronze Star twice, serving as a field artillery officer in three tours of Iraq and one of Afghanistan. He just happened to be at a Colorado LGBTQ club in support of a drag show performer who was a friend of his daughter. When gunfire broke out, his army training took over.

 

He grasped the armour-wearing gunman, pulling him to the floor, then took possession of a pistol the man was wielding and beat him with it. This followed the gunman's shooting to death of five people and wounding at least 17 others. Among the dead was Fierro's daughter's boyfriend, Raymond Vance.

Colorado Springs' mayor, John Suhers -- where the assault on the gay bar took place -- had earlier identified Mr. Fierro as one of two 'heroes' who had sprung into action. Thomas James was the other, who "saved a lot of lives" by taking the gunman out of commission, at the Colorado Springs Club Q.

Mr. Fierro described a young man who had been dancing with his daughter, pulling her away to safety when the shooting began. And he described a drag performer who kicked the gunman with high heels while Fierro held down the 22-year-old shooter. He praised James for removing the rifle from the gunman's grasp, an AR, and kicking him.

When police arrived on the scene, they saw Fierro holding the gun he had taken from the shooter, detaining Fierro for an hour, questioning him. He spoke of the shock of his daughter's boyfriend's death. A young man he had known since his daughter was in high school. "He's a good kid. And I loved him", said Fierro.

 

The young man was there, at the club as a first-time visitor, as a supporter of the LGBTQ community. The families of all five shooting victims spoke of their loss, of their love and admiration for their lost children, sister, wife. Kurt Paugh spoke of his wife Ashley who he described as an "amazing mother", who worked at a non-profit helping to find homes for foster children. "This included working with the LGBTQ community to find welcoming foster placements for children", he added.

Two transgender club bartenders were murdered in the assault, both young, with their lives ahead of them, cut tragically short.

In this image from El Paso County District Court video, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, center, could be seen slumped over in a chair in a brief video appearance from jail in Colorado Springs, Colo., Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2022. | El Paso County District Court via AP

New Day Dawning in Ontario Politics?

Doug Ford before a transition meeting at the Ontario legislature. Stan Behal/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

"Our government will take action to ensure that events like Al-Quds Day, which calls for the killing of an entire civilian population in Israel, are no longer part of the landscape in Ontario."
"Blatantly racist or anti-Semitic ideology should never be permitted on the grounds of the legislative assembly of Ontario, or anywhere else in our province."
Doug Ford, Ontario Premier-Elect

"Some on the left have claimed Ford's description of Pride as an event where 'middle-aged men with pot bellies' run down the street 'buck naked' was evidence of homophobia. I would say that was just an accurate description of what goes on. Disturbingly, more and more parents are bringing young children to watch the parade, exposing them to provocative displays of sexuality that no child should witness."
"If a politician believes in family values, why would he or she want to be associated with such debauchery?"
"...There are some perfectly legitimate reasons to skip the annual bash. I'm gay and I boycotted the parade last year. So did a lot of other people. The reason fewer people showed up seems obvious. Pride endorsed hostility and division when it allowed the parade to be hijacked by Black Lives Matter Toronto in 2016, and subsequently gave in to their demand that police in uniforms be banned from marching in 2017."
"The best thing about Pride before the GLMTO takeover was that everyone was welcome, so the decision to exclude gay- and gay-friendly cops really ruined the fun."
"So long as our politicians are willing to defend equality, that's all that really counts. Many of us couldn't care less whether they parade down Yonge Street posing for selfies [Justin Trudeau] in the summer."
Josh Dehaas, freelance writer, Toronto

The "progressive" provincial Liberals have been tossed out of their governing perch, finally, and it's past time. Their "progressive" approach to every facet of government over the past fourteen years has effectively taught the voting public in the province that more of Liberal mis-administration of the province represents a punishment that the population can and will no longer tolerate. That done with this election, and the Liberals reduced to non-party status with the Progressive Conservatives given their turn at governing, there is hope that responsible administration will ensue.

Starting with a more intelligently judicious use of tax-payer-funded initiatives. And extending to more social order heightening respect due from one segment of the citizenry to the others with whom they share an obligation to take part in dedication to upholding the decency and moderation of public debate while enhancing the public weal. Which blatantly offensive displays of anti-Semitism and slanderous accusations against Jews alongside threats of mass murder fail to qualify.

And nor do the juvenile, spoiled-child attention-seeking of the greater majority of the LGBT2Q community rate as a communion of law-respecting citizens, and fair communication with segments of society who accept gay and lesbian human rights without wishing to be part of grotesque public displays of rude and inflammatory innuendo and behaviour of which the LGBT2Q community appears to feel entitled to expect obsequious acceptance on the part of straights.



So if the incoming premier of the province chooses to be absent from the latest iteration of Gay effrontery it should be recognized that this is his privilege and is not an indication that he has any intention whatever of turning back the clock to an era when gays and lesbians were horribly discriminated against through threat, disentitlement and violence.

Similarly, the components of the provincial population who feel it their given right to march in public with the emblems of violent terrorist groups in full display should be disabused of that notion.

The yearly Al-Quds Day rallies represent an instrument of defamation and intolerance rife with threats and the violence of mass murder engineered by the Islamic Republic of Iran, spread throughout the Muslim world as a symbol of oppression by Jews of Arabs and Muslims; a true David and Goliath fantasy of dysfunctional hatred in a religious culture given to global terrorism in aid of upholding Islam's most basic tenet of intolerance for other religious through the instrument of jihad.

Hoisting Palestinian flags in empathetic support of Palestinian Arab 'return' to 'their' land with the destruction of the State of Israel, marchers carry Hamas and Hezbollah banners to ensure that any witnesses to their hate-fuelled event are fully aware that these two Iran-sponsored and -funded terrorist groups, both of which remain on Canada's official outlaw list, are prepared to launch bloody war against the Jewish state with the popular support of the organizers and marchers of the Al-Quds Day event.

Pronoun Sensitive Authoritarianism

"Because the logic underlying the arguments is that ... biological sex, gender identity and gender expression vary independently [happens to be] absolutely contradicted by the data. It has become unmoored from the underlying reality [representing] all interpretation."
"Well, if it's all interpretation it's not distinguishable from fashion."
"I started to understand the role that ideology played in these underlying horrors of the 20th century and that put me deep into the study of the psychology of religion and that's really what happened."
"I've had a number of clients who have been bullied into states of mental uncertainty by their politically correct peers."
University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson, psychologist, author, intellectual, iconoclast

Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor who refuses to use gender neutral pronouns, participates in a heated discussion with some students at the university's downtown campus.  (Eduardo Lima / METRO NEWS)

Professor Peterson has no love of pretension and demandingly entitled social blackmail engaged in by gender-confused, alt-gender and all other individuals who refuse to conform to their biologically determined sex, pouting and blaming general society for their lack of acceptance as "normal but different", a group that includes so many alternates to the binary relationships of nature-conventional male and female, that he has risked his professional standing by taking a deliberate stand to express his denial and frustration with the issues of political correctness in the tender matter of gender.

It is most certainly worth asking the question: when did social sanity fly out the door to become a mass psychosis genuflecting to the petulance and accusations coming out of the alt-gender community? The answer may very well be when society surrendered to guilt over never having in the past, taken the situation seriously and using the issue as a topic for light-hearted incredulity. And, of course, much, much worse in less polite and politic, diplomacy-absent portions of society. When, then, society opened the window to increasingly absurdly dysfunctional socially-gendered demands and took them seriously.

Sex and gender, in fact, are private matters. And as such have no loudly, glaringly visible place in the social arena. In the sense that what happens in the bedrooms of the nation should remain there, discreetly, behind locked doors. As in who, really, cares? Do your own thing. Enjoy it, take pleasure in it, keep it to yourselves, don't flaunt it, because no one is interested. Of course under the new, open and accepting mind-bending social aura, what was once viewed as an absurd circus is now viewed as a respected sideshow, and gay parades are vaunted and lauded as a symbol of society's accepting manner.

Where once people paid admission to enter circus sideshows, they now flock to downtown streets of towns and cities in the Western world to show their grovelling support for the garish display of rude and nasty costuming and behaviour that once was guaranteed to bring embarrassment and shame to the minds and hearts of ordinary people. Ordinary people have now become aficionados of coarse and offensive behaviour in public, chuckling with appreciation at the bizarre and the wretched display of sexual license gone frantically insane.

Professor Peterson alleges none of this; he is an academic, a diplomat though his detractors would deny that, who simply insists on making a distinction between the absurd and the acceptable. Language in particular matters to him very particularly, and when language is contorted unreasonably and made effectively meaningless on the assertively loud whims of a minority he finds it unacceptably offensive. He advocates for simple, intelligent and workable language to defy the chaos of reworking society, subordinating it to a juvenile whim, complicating human inter-communication.

"One of the things I've come to understand is that the central functional axiom of Western civilization is that language ... is the process that keeps chaos and order in balance ... and that when [language is] corrupted, we careen into chaos or pathological order." Not for him the efficacy of appeasing the demands of the LGBTQIA community or communities by surrendering to the dire necessity not to continue hurting their tender feelings by committing to their non-binary gender pronouns. "The people who made these words are possessed by ideology and not to be trusted", he claims.

"We're going to have 31 different classes of pronouns? No, we're not. It's just not possible. People can't do that. Our language doesn't allow for that; we can't remember that; what if we make a mistake?" In New York City, evidently 31 gender identities and expressions have now been formally recognized. From "bi-gendered" to "agender", "gender-gifted" to "genderbender", and how about "genderfluid"? To make light of these demands is to insult those who count upon the goodwill and weak spines of those unwilling to be identified as philosophically Philistine.

"Part of it, apart from the untenability, is that ... you actually don't have the right to demand that of someone. You know that every individual is surrounded by the mass of humanity. And the mass of humanity is to be categorized in the fastest and simplest manner possible because you can't do it any other way. We use 'he' and 'she', and we use 'they' when there's more than one person, and we do that for purposes of simplicity of interaction. And for you to come to say, 'You have to mark me out as singularly special in the manner that I require and you have to remember it, no, it's like, no, you can't ask that of me, because you're actually not singularly special."

Michael Peake/Postmedia/File     Professor Jordan Peterson claims that the University of Toronto is attempting to transform its human resources department into "a politically correct institution."

His colleagues at University of Toronto are scandalized. He received two warning letters, one from the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences which Dr. Peterson identifies as "an exemplar of Orwellian doublespeak", reminding him that the university is engaged in protecting the issue of gender neutrality, as gender identity and expression are now protected classes in the human rights code. The arts dean wrote of the university stance on free speech to be defended, and a paragraph later felt the need to impose a limit on free speech emanating from Dr. Peterson.

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