To the Board,

So Pride Toronto has allowed itself to be bullied by fringe activists.  In the name of free speech, you are willing to allow groups to promote hatred.  In the name of free speech, you are willing to risk the security of the parade.  In the name of free speech, you are willing to act against the will of the House of Commons and the Ontario Legislature.  Do you truly understand what it means to target a minority group, and what the consequences are?  People get bashed and murdered when they are hated.  They get gassed and bombed.  Two levels of government have condemned the use of the word ‘apartheid’ as odious and hateful.  Why do you prefer the opinion of activists who’s MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE in a gay pride parade is the deligitimization of Israel?  While gays are being bashed even in our own village, while our neighbours to the south still struggle for equal rights, while our brothers and sisters all over the world are being thrown in jail, slashed or killed by the state, while we dare not hold hands in most of our own country, and continue to be ostracized by our own families, those with the most energy, use it bash the country with one of the best gay rights policies in the world!  Does this make any sense at all?  Do you honestly believe that this vocal minority is representative of the greater community?

Pride Toronto’s ultimate goal has always been to provide safe space for both the celebration and freedom of expression of the LGBTTIQQ2SA communities. The Ethics Committee was originally intended to pre-review messaging but the feedback from the community has clearly voiced that Pride Toronto needs for a more fluid way to interact with our community participants.

Pride Toronto is not a censoring body and nor does it want to be. Our role in the community is to promote, celebrate and organize an exceptional weeklong festival. Part of that task includes clearly outlining the responsibilities we expect from all our community participants. Our terms and conditions for the Parade and Dyke March are quite detailed and map out our objectives well. The three policies we expect all our participants to abide by are the Criminal Code of Canada, City of Toronto’s Anti-Discrimination Policy and our Freedom of Expression policy.

We will also continue working with the police and other city services to make sure that we foster a safe space for both celebration and political discussion. 30 years ago, we began from a political movement and as such our communities have an identity rooted there to this day. We need to continue to recognize our pride and celebrate the history, courage, diversity and future of our Toronto’s LGBTTIQQ2SA communities.

Genevieve D’Iorio & Jim Cullen
Co-chairs, Pride Toronto

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Genevieve and Jim:

Pride has sure changed a lot over the years since I started attending in the 80’s when I was a teen. It has become more mainstream and has become in many ways more reflective of our changing role in society as a whole.

Pride may need to get with the times on the QuAIA issue. I remember way back, the controversy was about the participation of NAMBLA in Pride. Pride organizers then initially took the same view to NAMBLA that you’re taking to QuAIA. They didn’t approve of pedophilia but they did not want to be in a position of excluding anyone or of being censors. In the end, they finally realized that NAMBLA’s participation discredited Pride and hi-jacked what Pride is supposed to be about - Gay rights and celebrating our culture. Rather than help us reach common ground, it separated us from many of those we wanted to include.

If you look at QuAIA and what they’re doing, I think you’ll see some similarites and Pride may want to be a bit more proactive before QuAIA does Pride more harm than it already has, in terms of financial loss and credibility loss.

The QuAIA people are obsessed with an issue that has nothing to do with Gay rights. That doesn’t necessarily mean they should not be in the Parade, but they are single-minded haters of a country that respects Gay rights more than any other country in its part of the world, while QuAIA is interested in pacifying some horrible, homophobic regimes.

They also don’t care about Pride, other than, as Kyle Rae said, to piggyback on Pride to exploit it for their cause of the moment. If they actually cared about Pride, seeing the harm they’re doing, QuAIA would voluntarily not participate. No one is stopping them from spreading their message, but Pride is not the appropriate venue.

QuAIA is really discrediting Pride and on the 30th anniversary, after so much progress, it’s sad to see the selfish QuAIA, who are obviously only interested in showing off as activists and don’t care at all about the success of Pride, being allowed to hurt the event for everyone else. If QuAIA doesn’t care about Pride, wouldn’t it be appropriate for Pride to care about itself and not allow the participation of those mean-spirited QuAIA fanatics?

Free speech is all well and good. Perhaps, however, we can press for something called fair speech. Singling out only one country - which does not even persecute gays - and totally ignoring the middle east states that actually execute gays is simply not fair speech. It is unfair and illogical and predudiced as well not to mention plain dumb.