Domesticating gay politics?

Re Pride Toronto says uniformed police officers will be able to march in 2019 parade, pending application, online, Oct. 16

I attended the Pride AGM hoping in vain for an answer to a littleknown but disturbing development. A month after Pride’s executive director Olivia Nuamah defied the membership and invited uniformed police officers back into the parade, she appeared in the media smiling with Finance Minister Bill Morneau. As quoted in the Star, “following talks with government officials,” Pride Toronto received $450,000 of an eventual $1.2 million over five years for a “cross-country examination of the … relationship between police and ‘marginalized’ members of the LGBTQ community.” One wonders about Pride Toronto’s ability to do this work, given their actions betray the demands of said marginalized members. Most troubling, however, is that a similar scenario happened a few months earlier.

2019 is the 50th anniversary of the 1969 decriminalization of gross indecency and buggery/anal intercourse between two consenting adults in “private.” In May, queer activists failed in getting Senate to widen the scope of Bill C-66, the Liberal bill to expunge unjust convictions for gay sex.

At the hearings, the advocacy group Egale went against other LGBTQ+ groups to side with the government. On the day of Justin Trudeau’s apology, the government granted Egale $770,000 to “celebrate and commemorate” decriminalization in 1969. Six months after receiving these funds, Egale awarded the prime minister its inaugural leadership award for LGBTQ advocacy. Hence my questions: is the federal government using funding to domesticate gay politics? And are LGBTQ willing to sell out some members of our community for a price? Richard Fung, Toronto