Edward Keenan
Mayor’s joy at the raising of the rainbow flag at city hall shows a big difference between leaders
Something like the mayor attending a flag-raising ceremony for Pride Week shouldn’t be a big deal — but Rob Ford made it one,
“What a difference an election makes,” Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam said at city hall in the early afternoon Monday, referring to the mayor.
That’s a sentiment that hasn’t been heard as often as many people expected in the half-year since John Tory took over the job as head of the city’s government from Rob Ford. On so many issues — the Scarborough subway, budget revenue, car travel, the intimidation of civil servants, even the urban-suburban council divide so recently evident on the Gardiner vote — the difference has appeared so far to be more style (and sobriety) than substance.
But on Monday, as hundreds of people gathered on the green roof outside the council clamshell to celebrate the raising of the rainbow flag to kick off the annual Pride festival, a significant difference between the two leaders of our city was finally evident. “Things have changed,” Wong-Tam said, and introduced Tory.
The mayor, wearing a rainbow-coloured tie not nearly as bright as his grin, welcomed the crowd to “our city hall.” He marvelled at how far our society has come on sexuality issues and noted how far we still have to go. He said his whole family would enthusiastically march in the parade. And he made a promise to the LGBT community in Toronto: “You have a friend in the mayor of Toronto.”
Something like this shouldn’t seem like a big deal, really. In this city, home to one of the most established visible gay communities in the world; this city whose annual Pride parade may be the third largest in the world, depending on whose numbers you trust; this city where, in 2003, right inside city hall, the first legally recognized same-sex marriage in North America was registered. A mayor proudly marching in Pride — as three previous mayors since 1996 have — should be unremarkable. And yet Rob Ford made it a big deal. When, as mayor, he steadfastly refused for so long to participate in any Pride events. When, after finally, grudgingly, attending a single Pride event — the flag raising in 2013, at the very height of his drug scandal — he demanded the very next year that the flag be taken down from outside city hall.
When his brother Doug, in trying to excuse him, raised the dog-whistle spectre of “buck naked men” exposing themselves to children. Just for starters.
No one, anywhere, had been under any illusion that homophobia had magically vanished. But Ford brought it into the highest office in the city and provided symbolic sanction for intolerance in a city where the proud motto reads “Diversity our strength.” Wong-Tam, typically a moderate-tempered diplomat of a politician, but also Toronto’s first open lesbian councillor, was summarizing by the end of Ford’s term, “he is homophobic, he is bigoted,” and remarking that she thought his attitude gave tacit permission to other homophobes in the city to become more vocal. To pick open a wound that was on its way to slowly healing.
So this week it was Wong-Tam, no political ally of Tory’s, who got to triumphantly note that the new mayor has put an end to that. And it was Tory who put an exclamation point on it with his exuberant joy in participating and his proclamation that he thought every single member of council ought to be marching in the parade next weekend.
It’s all symbolic, of course. Some words, an attitude, a flag. But symbols are important.
At roughly the same time as Tory and Wong-Tam were out on the green roof at city hall, the mayor of Charleston, S.C., was holding a press conference calling for the Confederate battle flag to be taken down from the spot where it flies on the state capital grounds, a sentiment that would be echoed later in the day by the governor of the state and some of its longest-serving legislators. It is a flag that has symbolized racism and racial terrorism, horrific violence and state-sanctioned discrimination.
Taking the flag down won’t end the problems of racism, but it will signal an end to the statement the flag seemed always to be making, that such attitudes and actions, rooted in that state’s institutional history, carry the ongoing endorsement of the government.
The Pride flag raised by Tory and Wong-Tam and others Monday, by contrast, is a specific symbol of inclusion, its coloured stripes representing an embrace of diversity and difference, its history rooted in demands for greater tolerance and acceptance, in defiance of hate, in pursuit of the legal and societal recognition of the legitimacy of love.
Its rainbow has flown outside our seat of civic government every year for almost two decades in recognition of the values it stands for and the ongoing struggle it represents. By itself, that doesn’t end the struggle, but it provides a declaration of which side we — officially, collectively, as a city — are on. We once again have a mayor who will happily declare Toronto’s allegiance to the celebration of mutual respect. It shouldn’t be remarkable, but it is not insignificant. It’s a fact worthy of the name of the festival: Pride Toronto. Or maybe, if the mayor’s attitude on this basic issue seems a strange thing to be proud of, it is at least no longer a source of shame. And that, in the recent history of this town, is a change worth celebrating. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire