From the CBC:
Jewish groups are angry that organizers of Toronto’s Gay Pride festival have decided to reverse an earlier ban that prevented the Queers Against Israeli Apartheid group from participating in the Pride Week events.
Earlier this year, Pride Toronto decided to ban the group from their July 4 parade for fear that allowing them to participate would jeopardize their funding from the City of Toronto.
That decision caused an outcry within Pride Toronto, with some members saying the decision smacked of censorship.
On Thursday, Pride Toronto’s board lifted the ban, saying it was not up to them to decide whether groups violated the city’s anti-discrimination policy. Instead, Pride Toronto will now ask all groups participating in Pride Week to first sign the city’s anti-discrimination policy.
Giorgio Mammoliti, who is also running for mayor, will introduce a motion at council demanding that Pride return all city funding, about $250,000.
Generally I am all for allowing anyone to say whatever they want; that some people – including Jimmy Carter – foolishly call Israel’s attempts to protect itself “apartheid” is more a comment on their own blinkered anti-Israel bigotry than anything else.
But now we have the organisers of the Gay Pride festival who, if criticised, are only too ready to deflect the criticism with shrill cries of “homophobia” and “hate speech”, permitting a contingent in their parade to display – hate speech. And the city of Toronto is paying $250,000 – so far, at least – to help them finance it.
The idiocy of all this is not diminished by the fact that the only country in the Middle East that allows a gay pride march is the one Queers Against Israeli Apartheid are determined to vilify.
I would think that by now this Pride event is large enough to fund its own activities, and therefore not rely on the city funding. Doesn’t it carry international standing and have a huge following? I think it’s time to stop paying for it, and let them argue amongst themselves as to who’d in and who’s out!
If you cut pride from funding that brings millions into Toronto’s local economy, then we should cut funding to all other things like Carabana, the Jazz Fest, and Taste of the Danforth etc. Something tells me your views won’t be the same for those events.
But those groups don’t allow shrill, illogical, philosophically and ethically inconsistent and incompatible protestors to hijack their events.
Pride apparently does, and happily so. I would love to see the organizers try to stage Pride events in Gaza or the West Bank (or Jeddah, or Riyadh, or Baghdad, or Tehran or Amman or Tripoli or Beirut or Tehran or Mogadishu or Kuala Lumpur) or bascally anywhere where Islam has reached its ugly, violent and stone-aged tentacles.
By allowing this group to join their parade the Pride people too are tarred with the brush of discrimination. The city should ban them completely. But it won’t. So the city then should be sued for allowing, nay paying for allowing discrimination and lets see where that leads.
If only the GLBT “community” that stages the Pride Week events could somehow take a step back and objectively re-examine their own premises and assumptions [about Israel, Judaism, Islam and the Islamic population etc.], in the same way that they have quite successfully managed to get a large quantity of the rest of the population to do with respect to the issues of homosexuality transgendered persons etc. Unfortunately they seem unwilling or perhaps unable to do so.
It is unfortunate because it allows them to lapse into the untenable position of condemning and repudiating the actions of the only vibrantly democratic nation in the middle east and the only one that not only tolerates homosexuality, but also accords the GLBT LEGAL rights.
Pretty much everyone else in Canada, with the notable exception of the GLBT community is aware of how Islam views homosexuality and how Muslim nations treat homosexuals (terror, torture, executions – stoning, hanging, genital mutilation etc.) but what the GLBT community is ESPECIALLY willfully ignorant about is the abhorrent and shocking way in which Islamic terror organizations (such as the “Palestinian” HAMAS the Lebanese Hezbollah etc.) treat their own people who happen tobe of the GLBT orientations.
If members of the GLBT community were willing to do some HONEST research and soul-searching (to check, for example, into how humanely Israel accepts GLBT “Palestinians” trying to escape the horrifying fates that await them if they remain as “Palestinians” we would probably see each and every participant in the Pride Parade carrying not only a pink triangle or rainbow flag but ALSO a Star of David and/or Israeli flag. And not only would their be no mention of the ABSURD notion of “apartheid”, followers of the Islamic faith (unless they were self-professed apostates) would probably find themselves DISTINCTLY un-invited from Pride events altogether.
That the Toronto Pride committee would conduct themselves the way they have to-date has made me ashamed and reluctant to conider myself a member of the GLBT comunity of Toronto, and has made me doubly apologetic to every Jew I meet for the Pride Committee’s outrageous, outlandish unacceptable and shameful stance on this issue.
Why would anyone want to ban them from marching or speaking? What kind of sense does that make? Let them go on in their lunacy so it’s visible to all, as is the whole parade to begin with. Nobody should be paying for this annual parade of stupidity and decadence then the participants themselves.
Well luckily for us all your own particular definitions of “stupidity” and “decadence” are not, Mr. McKillop, the final arbiters of broad public opinion in this city, province or even nation. While the Toronto Pride parade does feature some rather “in-your-face” exuberance that could be accurately described as “not in the most discreet of tastes” the fact of the matter is that th parade in its entirety also features many labour groups, church groups and NGOs doing useful work toward building a more tolerant and more just society who all participate/march in a dignified manner. (As a side note Mr.McKllop, if you are going to criticise anything in a public, Internet-based forum such as this, you would be well advised to learn in advance the difference between “then” and “than”.
I hate to be picky, but you wrote “th” when you probably meant “the”. I’m sure it was a typo, just like “than” appearing as “then”