Floating a notion

How BLM, Pride could reach a compromise.

At Toronto’s LGBT Pride parade Sunday, honoured activist group Black Lives Matter Toronto staged a 30-minute parade-halting protest, marked by enormous plumes of multi-coloured smoke — actually the result of harmless smoke bombs.

If you were standing anywhere close to the demonstration, the sight (regardless of your take on BLM Toronto) was undeniably beautiful.

But if, like a close friend of mine, you were a few hundred yards from the sit-in, anxiously trying to determine what just happened, you might not have been impressed — you might have been afraid.

You might have thought, as my friend did, with the horror of the Orlando LGBT nightclub shooting fresh in his mind, “Why did the parade stop? Is something wrong?”

So it transpired that BLM Toronto, a group that advocates fiercely for the institution of “safe spaces,” made at least one queer person in their midst feel momentarily, very unsafe.

(Ironically, it was a nearby police officer who reassured my friend; the cop let him know that the parade had stopped on account of a peaceful protest, not an anti-gay terror attack or shooting.)

Of course, instilling fear was not BLM’s intention. And Toronto Pride, an increasingly corporate gong show, could probably use a little more radical political theatre.

But the incident I describe above isn’t meaningless. It’s a metaphor for the larger question at hand — the one clogging your social media feeds this week in the aftermath of Gay Pride and BLM Toronto’s controversial demand that police officers cease to march in the parade, out of respect to LGBT people of colour who feel threatened by their presence.

How should we prioritize the safety of an exceedingly large, diverse group like the LGBT community? And what happens when one community’s idea of safety contradicts another’s?

Let’s say, for example, that you’re an older white gay guy who can remember a time when police raided bathhouses, but who now, seeing a succession of smiling modern-day cops march in the parade, is buoyed by a newfound sense of pride and, yes, safety.

Should you be expected to cede that feeling in the service of the BLM Toronto cause?

More to the point, should you suddenly regard your positive feelings toward the police as suspect because your transgender peers of colour don’t share them? BLM Toronto would say yes. I say yes — and no. Yes, because Pride is and should stay political. It should strive to eradicate injustice. Its work isn’t done. But no, because it is also a celebration of gains won. And everyone has a right to celebrate those gains as they see fit, wearing whatever they like, or nothing at all: corporate hacks atop branded floats, activists chanting slogans from the ground, and yes, cops in uniform — gay, trans and otherwise.

(On that note, I say let Queers Against Israeli Apartheid — whose ideology I oppose — march, too. The more the merrier.)

Today’s struggles — greater police accountability and the eradication of racism and transphobia — should not preclude the celebration of yesterday’s strides: the public embrace of the LGBT community by police.

It’s important for kids watching the parade to see that there are queer cops and firefighters marching proud.

It’s important for LGBT people to know that the services they use — their banks, their phone companies, their hardware stores, are making an effort at inclusivity.

But the rage expressed by BLM Toronto is 100 per cent legitimate.

It should not be ignored or argued away as “bullying.”

Police discrimination disproportionately affects LGBT people of colour. Their fear of law enforcement is real and reasonable.

So I’d like to propose a compromise — the kind not yet offered publicly by Pride organizers themselves.

Toronto Pride should not altogether eliminate police presence from the parade.

It should significantly reduce it. There are, flat out, too many police officers marching in the parade.

If you have never been to Pride, as I suspect the majority of conservative commentators lambasting BLM Toronto haven’t, you probably don’t know just how cop-heavy it is.

There are multiple police floats and hundreds of officers marching on behalf of not only downtown Toronto, but Hamilton, York Region, Durham, Peel, Waterloo and the University of Toronto; Scarborough, Mississauga and Toronto.

(A friend even turned to me during an especially long procession of men and women in blue and said, “Is this a cop parade?”)

So no, BLM Toronto is not overreacting to the police presence at Pride. In fact, I’d wager my life savings that there were more police officers in this year’s parade than chiseled abs in the history of the event.

In view of which, why not relegate cops to a single float?

It’s a compromise that might make queer people of colour feel safer, and everyone — regardless of race, gender and sexual orientation — less bored. Emma Teitel is a national columnist.