Cover up if you want to celebrate your pride
They say, “Everyone loves a parade.” But I’m not sure that holds true for a parade that promotes unrestrained hedonism in front of impressionable young children.
Thousands of Vancouverites lined the streets last Sunday for the city’s annual Gay Pride Parade. Families stood along the streets, while tiny children who likely understood nothing about the event waved rainbow flags and wore rainbow Tshirts bearing slogans such as “Sexual preference to be determined.”
What a diverse and accepting society we are. The next day, media reports showed highly sanitized images of people in fun, yet outrageous, costumes walking beside brightly coloured rainbows, and the headlines proclaimed, “Vancouver gets colourful with pride.” Really, what else could you say?
But what you see in the media is not necessarily what you get in the parade. Yes, there are relatively benign floats and characters made up with pretty rainbows, but there were also a lot of uncovered penises and breasts on public display. Parade participants were naked on top or on the bottom or on the top and bottom. Private parts were pierced or flamboyantly decorated. If you’ve any doubt, it’s all on the Internet.
T-shirts and signs are loaded with sexual inferences and imagery; some said things that can’t be written in the media. The pro-foreskin group (that promotes “foreskin education, appreciation and stimulation, and advocates against circumcision”) wore T-shirts (pants and underwear were obviously optional) saying, “I ‘heart’ my foreskin” while proudly displaying their foreskin.
The parade covered the gamut — from leatherbound people with chains in cages to Bert and Ernie, proudly kissing while displaying their marriage certificate. Others tossed condoms to the crowd, just like candy.
No wonder newspaper headlines proclaimed, “Vancouver’s pride on parade.”
What? This is the very best that Vancouver has to present to the world? A parade where naked men and women expose themselves to children in the audience, and the parade, itself?
It should be noted that if just one of these men chose to expose himself — even for a moment — while standing in a playground just two blocks away, he would be arrested. So are these people above the law? Why are they allowed to parade their naked (and in some cases, not that great, naked) bodies throughout the city’s most prominent streets, while accompanied by the proud members of the police department and the fire department, and prominent politicians?
What kind of message does this send to children? If an adult exposes himself to you, have a parade? Call a policeman to join in? And what parent would think that this so-called celebration of diversity could in any way be a positive experience to which they should expose their children?
Yet every gay pride parade has its share of politicians and celebrities who willingly endorse its message. The Vancouver Pride Guide boasts a proud and supportive welcome message from Mayor Gregor Robertson. Vancouver Canuck Manny Malhotra was there and, no doubt for the kids, he brought along Fin, the orca mascot for the Canucks. It doesn’t say if he brought along his young son. Politician Hedy (the crosses are burning) Fry was decked out as a mermaid.
Naheed Nenshi was the first city mayor to act as marshal in last year’s Pride parade in Calgary. Premier Alison Redford made sure to be a part of the Edmonton parade, saying how pleased she was to be in a province that respects diversity.
No doubt that sponsors such as Viagra and Trojan knew exactly what kind of parade they were sponsoring, but one wonders if sponsors knew that they were putting their corporate citizenship on display by supporting (and taking an active part in) an event marked by public nudity and debauchery, rather than a progression of human rights.
Therein lies the irony of this event. The pride movement stems from taking a stance against discrimination and for equality rights. Yet its most public event, the pride parade, offers no celebration of the real and positive contributions to society that have been made by gay people through medicine, the arts or history.
Celebrating a movement and its social progress should involve more than an outward expression of one’s sexuality, and it’s a disservice to the pride name if they continue to define themselves only through the promotion of their own sexuality. If being gay means only a no-holds-barred sexual lifestyle, then any public impact will be limited to those who have similar views. Surely, the sign that homosexuals are truly accepted is when they begin to celebrate something other than their sexuality.
I’m sure many of you are rushing to post a note about Martinuk being a bigot or a homophobe. But I respect each individual, whether or not I agree with their practices, actions or beliefs. Herein, I’m criticizing the parade, not the people. So let’s be grown up enough to get beyond the labels and consider the situation within the framework of common sense.