B.C. Liberals won’t take part in event over pledge
Participants asked for transgender bill support
The Vancouver Pride Parade is a loud, fun event attended each year by more than 100,000 people, many of whom love wearing the colours of the rainbow.
“But it’s not just a big event like the Calgary Stampede. Pride is political. It’s about human rights,” says Chrissy Taylor, vicepresident of the Vancouver Pride Society.
The Vancouver society is returning to its political roots this year, Taylor said Thursday, by making almost all participants in the Aug. 2 parade sign a pledge supporting transgender equality legislation.
As a result, neither the B.C. Liberal party nor Premier Christy Clark will be taking part in this year’s parade. The party’s executive refused to sign the pledge, which is based on a private member’s bill introduced by NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert (Vancouver-West End).
Provincial Liberal party executive director Laura Miller maintains that B.C.’s Human Rights Code already protects people who are transgender and “gender-variant” from discrimination, without naming them explicitly.
“Pride started out as a protest movement,” Taylor said. “And with this issue (of transgender legislation) we’re bringing it back to that.”
Even though most Canadian politicians, even those from socially conservative parties, now go out of their way to be seen at boisterous Pride parades across the country, this week’s controversy in Vancouver over the non-participation of the B.C. Liberal party echoes similar conflicts from previous decades.
Pride parade politics has often proved to have clout.
In 2002, Vancouver Pride organizers gave an ultimatum to two senior federal Liberal cabinet ministers and two other members of the party to clearly state their position on same-sex unions before deciding whether to let the politicians march in that year’s parade.
The Vancouver Pride Society asked then-cabinet ministers Bill Graham, Allan Rock and MPs Stephen Owen and MP Hedy Fry for their opinions on the federal Liberal government’s decision to appeal a court ruling that included same-sex couples in the definition of marriage.
Even though all four ended up taking part, with Pride officials conceding no one was required to make any pledge before marching, both Rock and Graham confirmed their support for legally sanctioned homosexual unions a day or two after the city’s parade.
Although Taylor said she is not aware any organizations other than the B.C. Liberals have been denied entry to the 2015 parade because their senior executives refused to sign the pledge, the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster has been frozen out for mostly bureaucratic reasons.
Michael Kalmuk, who in 2003 became the first Anglican in the world to take part in an Anglican same-sex blessing (with partner Kelly Montfort), said Thursday the diocese cannot take part in this year’s festivities because the church’s official decision-making process typically takes months or years to reach a conclusion on such matters.
“It’s really unfortunate. There was no intent to screw us up. It was just red tape,” said Kalmuk, who only learned this month about the transgender pledge required for entering the parade, which typically accepts about 150 entries. The first Vancouver Pride parade was in 1978.
The Pride Society offers exemptions to various organizations that are unable to sign the pledge.
Pride’s media partners are not required to agree to the transgender pledge, because “they’re expected to be neutral,” Taylor said. Non-profit organizations that accept federal or B.C. government funding also don’t have to adhere to the pledge, because they shouldn’t have to jeopardize their taxpayer dollars to support Pride.
Asked if the Pride Festival’s major corporate sponsors — such as the TD Bank, Stolichnaya Vodka, Urban Fare, Pet Smart and Nordstrom — have been approached to sign the transgender pledge, Taylor said they had. However, she did not have information on which companies had formally agreed or not.
Other than Victoria’s Pride Society, Taylor was not aware of any other Pride group in Canada or the U.S. that was making participants agree to support transgender rights legislation.
Vancouver Pride Society president Ray Lam made no apology for thrusting a political edge back into North America’s LGBTQ festivals, which some have criticized for becoming too mainstream and corporate.
“It’s completely false to say the Pride Festival is just one big party. Pride is political, because it started out as queers fighting for their rights. LGBTQ people aren’t equal yet. And the mainstream doesn’t know that trans people are definitely not equal.”