Diocese of New Westminster frozen out Vancouver Pride Parade

The Vancouver Pride organization is compelling participants in the August 2nd parade to sign a pledge supporting transgender equality legislation. Neither the B.C. Liberal Party nor Premier Christy Clark will be taking part in this year’s parade because they have not signed the pledge. Although the wording may resemble an exhortation from the 19th Century Temperance Movement, this pledge is, of course, more a pledge of intemperance.

Ironically, this may have excluded the Anglican Diocese of Inclusion, New Westminster.

Read here:

Although Taylor said she is not aware any organizations other than the B.C. Liberals have been denied entry to the 2015 parade because their senior executives refused to sign the pledge, the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster has been frozen out for mostly bureaucratic reasons.

Michael Kalmuk, who in 2003 became the first Anglican in the world to take part in an Anglican same-sex blessing (with partner Kelly Montfort), said Thursday the diocese cannot take part in this year’s festivities because the church’s official decision-making process typically takes months or years to reach a conclusion on such matters.

“It’s really unfortunate. There was no intent to screw us up. It was just red tape,” said Kalmuk, who only learned this month about the transgender pledge required for entering the parade, which typically accepts about 150 entries. The first Vancouver Pride parade was in 1978.

Somewhere over the rainbow crosswalk

In preparation for Vancouver’s Pride Week, the city has painted tax-payer funded rainbow crosswalks onto the street; the rainbow crosswalks are to remain after Pride Week as a sign that Vancouver is an inclusive city – anyone at all can walk on them:

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From here:

The rainbow crosswalks were put in over the weekend as part of the annual Pride Week in the city and feature two more colours than the usual pride flag.

Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson said that’s because they’re a throwback to the ‘70s.

“The eight colours is the original flag,” Stevenson said. “Since this is the 35th anniversary (of Pride Week) they decided to put the original eight colours in.”

He said the $25,000 project isn’t just for the crosswalks, picnic tables and plants that adorn the area, but also for making a nice little meeting point in the centre of city’s LGBTTQ community.

The Diocese of New Westminster is also doing its bit by displaying a rainbow stained glass window on its website – neither real nor permanent, I suspect – as a sign that it is an inclusive diocese. It is so inclusive that the largest Anglican church in Canada was driven out of the diocese; it’s funny how an over-abundance of inclusion tends to do that:

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