As I mentioned here, Andrew Asbil, the Anglican bishop of Toronto, extended an invitation to all his parishioners to join him in today’s Pride Parade: “My wife Mary and I hope to be at Toronto’s Pride Parade on June 25 with the other Proud Anglicans, and I invite you to join us.”
Tempting though this might have been, some of us had other engagements and could not attend. Luckily for us, some videos of the event were taken so you can see what you missed and why the bishop was so eager to attend. It was Diverse.
There is more, but you’ll get the general idea.
The bishop of Toronto, Andrew Asbil, will be attending Toronto’s Pride Parade on June 25th.
Not only will it be a celebration of the triune god of the Anglican Church of Confusion (ACoC for short), Diversity Inclusion Acceptance, but it will protest the rise of homophobia and transphobia. After all, our liberal government has only donated a parsimonious $40 million to 2SLGBT+HAVEIGOTTHEMALL causes in the last 4 years; it doesn’t get much more phobic than that.
Asbil goes on to make the required denouncement of the revised Ugandan homosexuality laws while conveniently ignoring the homosexuals routinely thrown off rooftops in Islamic countries. To mention that would be Islamophobic and he can’t risk a battle of the phobias.
The Pride flag will be raised at Queens Park on June 19th. In 2017, I distinctly remember the March for Life flag being taken down from Ottawa’s City Hall. What I don’t remember is any ACoC bishop protesting; not a murmur. Are they all babyphobic?
Asbil ends his missive with an invitation to join him in the June 25th Sunday worship featuring water pistols and homoerotic cavorting. Attendance is mandatory.
Read it all here:
Dear Friends,
This year feels different.
On Sunday, June 25, hundreds of “Proud Anglicans” will come together in downtown Toronto for the annual Pride Parade. This is always a great celebration, complete with sashes, glitter, music and Super Soakers. It’s a party, celebrating the beautiful diversity of the children of God. Pride is also an affirmation of mutual love and respect within the greater human family, for we are all made in God’s loving image. The Toronto Pride Parade began almost 50 years ago as a protest but has become more of a celebration over the years as LGBTQ2s+ people have moved from the margins to the mainstream.
But this year feels different. The rise of homophobia and transphobia both far away and here at home reminds us that the struggle for inclusion, acceptance and dignity is not yet won. It seems the progress we’ve made in the areas of sexuality and gender identity is more tenuous than many of us would care to consider. In Uganda, new laws passed this month continue the criminalization of same-sex relationships but with added harsher penalties, including life in prison for those who identify publicly as LGBTQ+, and the death sentence for “aggravated homosexuality.” South of the border, in the state of Florida, the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws prohibit instruction of sexuality and gender identity in all grades, effectively excluding families with two Dads or two Moms from being included in the school curriculum. Here at home, some local school boards have decided they will not fly the Pride flag this year because Pride does not align with their values.
It seems that there has been some proud Anglican pilfering of the rainbow sashes sported by with-it Anglicans in the World Pride Parade.
Anyone guilty of proud sash purloining should return them at once to the fellow in the tiara. It’s the decent thing to do, particularly considering they are rather hard up. Or, as Charles Ryder’s father in Brideshead Revisited so eloquently put it when his son asked him for money:
‘Well, I’m the worst person to come to for advice. I’ve never been “short” as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stonybroke?’ (snuffle). ‘On the rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that.’
From here:
If you were in the Pride Parade, I need your help: quite a few of our rainbow Proud Anglicans sashes did not return. They’re not like giveaway Tshirts – we want to use them again.
The Toronto District School Board is not known for its staunch social conservatism or as a haven for delicate prudes so, when a few of its members hint that they would like Canada’s nudity laws enforced at the Toronto Pride parade, it’s reasonable to take the request seriously.
As one of the members noted:
“This is a municipal matter and it has to do with the policing and the enforcing of the laws of Canada in the streets of Toronto,” he told CBC News. “If you were to do this in any other ward throughout the city at any other time of day during that same period, you’d likely be arrested.”
Naturally, there have been cries of “homophobia”:
Some have criticized the trustees’ motion as homophobic
Yet, if gay men and women truly want their lifestyle to be accepted as normal, surely they would want to be treated just like everyone else in every circumstance; to do otherwise is discriminatory. By not arresting an individual parading himself naked during the Pride Parade, the police are exhibiting a type of homophobia: the fear of treating homosexuals just like heterosexuals.
