The Shame of Pride 2010

A tourist event now tainted with controversy, Toronto Pride isn't what it used to be. This year, queers will reclaim their roots.

My first Pride Day, in 1983, was quiet, friendly, and kind of sweet. There were no barricades, no beer gardens, no young men in green briefs dancing in celebration of TD Bank. My friends Carla and Maia and I strolled to King’s College Circle and watched with wonder and curiosity as about 3,000 drag queens, feminist, lesbian, and gay activists, and anti-right-wing organizers, and probably a peacenik or two, marched around the circle.

I saw people I knew, met some new folks, and lounged on the grass all afternoon. I had just come out, and that Sunday in June felt delightfully familiar, unfamiliar, and sexy, all at the same time. More importantly, though, it gave me – a lesbian feminist in her twenties – a history, a context, and a place to be an activist and queer.

Twenty-five years later, Pride Day has become a major tourist event, bringing in wheelbarrows of money for the city. There are more Labatt’s logos than rainbow signs. Walking down Church Street among all the tourists is a sticky and alienating experience. Most queer folk I know stay home or do brunch. I haven’t been to Pride in years.

Imagine a Caribana at which Black people felt excluded. Imagine a Santa Claus parade that was no longer for kids.

The current controversy around Pride Toronto’s banning of the term “Israeli Apartheid” from the parade has deep and complex roots. It represents a pandering to a worldwide right-wing pro-Zionist stance, spearheaded in Canada by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It exhibits a profound insensitivity to the brutal living conditions of the Palestinian people, confined behind a wall that has divided families, ruined livelihoods, and inflamed an entire new generation of activists in Palestine and Israel. And finally, it insults and distorts the mandate of the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), which is concerned about the use of gay rights as a feel-good propaganda tool to justify Israel’s apartheid policies.

QuAIA marched as a registered group in last year’s Pride Parade. Queer activist Rachel Epstein marched with them and recalls that “the QuAIA contingent was completely peaceful. I did not observe one act of aggression or anything resembling violence from anyone in that contingent. What I did notice and what frightened me was the garbage people threw at us as we marched and the bottle that was thrown into the contingent by an angry person on the sidelines.”

Pride’s censorship of QuAIA and its (as yet undocumented) claim that QuAIA makes other groups feel unsafe is both unjustified and unjust. It’s also the straw that broke the camel’s back. Pride Day after Pride Day, as the corporate presence gets bigger, the queer presence and the politics get less significant. As Matt Mills wrote in an editorial, “Pride Toronto censorship: How it came to this,” published June 17 in Xtra, “In effect, Pride Toronto secures its 2010 city funding by agreeing to limit the free expression of gay and lesbian people. It’s an assault on the very foundational root of the sexual liberation movement.”

Pride Day’s roots lie in protest and solidarity. The first march, in 1981, was organized to protest the bathhouse raids in Toronto that same year. But Pride was also envisioned as a broad-ranging initiative against the right wing, which, in the early ’80s, was gaining ascendance in North America and the U.K. The 1,500 lesbians and gays who marched to 52 Division Police Station that June did so fully aware that police violence was targeting immigrants, women, and people of colour as much as it was impacting the queer community.

All of these issues, many of them long-simmering, have unleashed a colourful, creative storm of protest and organizing in the Gaybourhood and around the world. In an astonishing act of solidarity, international grand marshals Gloria Careaga and Renato Sabbadini renounced their honour. Twenty-three recipients of Pride Toronto honours from this and previous years, including peace activist James Loney and filmmaker John Greyson, also handed back their awards.

On Monday, June 7, some 500 queers and allies jammed the auditorium of 519 Church Street. There was a fierce, joyous energy in the room. Amy Gottlieb, one of the founding organizers of that first Pride Day, recalled Pride’s activist roots and was met with a standing ovation. The groups represented revealed the vast spectrum of queer organizing and solidarity: university students, trade unions, lesbian and transgendered groups, and Latin American, Muslim, and black queers.

A newly formed group, Lesbian Billionaires for Censorship, made its debut with a culture-jamming performance. Dressed in cocktail dresses and sharp suits, they waved signs reading “Censorship is Tasteful!” and handed out Monopoly money, asking audience members, “Can we buy your pride?”

Alternative events are planned all over town during the next two weeks, and QuAIA and its allies vow to be present in the parade. For the first time in a long time, a young queer heading to Pride Day will discover a history, a context, and a place to be activist and queer.