Let officers march in uniform at Pride: activists

‘A shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mistake’

Pioneer activists for gay, lesbian and human rights believe Vancouver Pride officials have ethically blundered by banning uniformed police officers from future parades.

“It seems to me a shoot-yourselfin-the-foot mistake for the Pride Parade to adopt a perspective about the police that isn’t widely shared within the gay community,” said longtime rights advocate Stan Persky, a retired philosophy professor and award-winning author.

“The parade is supposedly emblematic of the spirit of inclusiveness. The presence of the police in the parade, and not simply guarding it from outside, is the result of a great deal of patient work over the years by the gay movement ... to get police departments to relate to the gay community in a co-operative rather than adversarial manner.”

Andrea Arnot, executive director of the Vancouver Pride Society, said last week her group decided not to allow uniformed officers or police vehicles in the annual parade because some LGBTQ people are “uncomfortable” seeing officers because of historic police oppression. Police will be allowed to march only in plain clothes.

Michael Kalmuk, who in 2004 took part in the world’s first official Anglican blessing of a samesex union, asked: “How can any event that is the size of Vancouver Pride be possible without the participation of the Vancouver Police Department on either side of the curb?”

If Pride officials believe in inclusiveness, Kalmuk said, then they “cannot be exclusive of people we don’t like. If we cannot include our local police in the parade, then perhaps we should cancel the whole event.”

Vancouver Pride officials banned uniformed police after interventions from various chapters of Black Lives Matter, which halted Toronto’s parade in 2016, demanding Pride organizers agreed to a list of conditions, including a ban on uniformed police. Police officers in Calgary, Ottawa and Toronto have also been warned to leave their uniforms at home if they wish to take part in Pride festivities.

Veteran Vancouver lesbian filmmaker Barbara Anderson, however, said the presence of uniformed female and male police officers in Pride parades “reminds society that, while in the past, the police arrested LGBTQ people, now there are consequences for hate crimes against us.”

How can any event that is the size of Vancouver Pride be possible without the participation of the Vancouver Police Department on either side of the curb?

Persky, who is also a director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, believes Canadian Pride festival organizers have responded to Black Lives Matter in a way that does little to combat anti-homosexual prejudice.

“The problem with this bit of what’s known as ‘intersectional’ partnering is that Black Lives Matter (BLM) insists that the Pride Parade adopt BLM’s thoroughly oppositional view of the police … That doesn’t reflect the LGBTQ’s community’s experience with the police, especially in Vancouver.”