You can sit (in) with us!

Think what you like about the demands made by Black Lives Matter – Toronto, the honoured group in 2016’s Pride Toronto parade. (I think the list ranges from “of course” to unfair; that’s my cis white male opinion.)

But their mid-parade 30-some-minute sit-in near the media area was a perfectly appropriate piece of street theatre. Perhaps even a welcome gesture, if you don’t factor in the increased rates of heat stroke and sunburn along the route and the risk of making the Prancing Elites late for their performance.

Politics in the Pride parade? Who would have thunk? But just how did Prime Minister Justin pass the time waiting for the Black Lives Matter sit-in to end?

Parades—Toronto’s Pride parades in particular—are platforms for speech, performance, self expression, unexplainable dancing styles and wardrobe choices, community awareness, celebration, politics and everything in between. The whole thing is a jumble of performances that may or may not make sense or be effective individually or as a whole.

The Pride parade has never been curated, though there have always been sources of tension about what should be included and what shouldn’t be.

To the extent the parade adopts a theme, enforcing it is untenable. Who wanted to police the “Bursting with Fruit Flavours” theme back in 2004? (This year’s theme, You Can Sit with Us!, was clever, but perhaps unbearable for nonconfirmists who don't want or need the cool kids’ permission to take a seat.) If a parade entry is uplifting and inspiring, that’s fantastic. If it’s challenging or even nonsensical, that’s fine too. This year’s edition provided my most intense and most meaningful parade-watching experience so far. When the names of the people murdered in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub—just plain little signs with names and ages—were carried down Yonge Street, I cried. I didn’t want to or expect to, but I did.

In 2004, the Raelian group was required to cover parts of signs featuring a picture of the Pope (JP II) and text like, “Official sponsor of AIDS.” Though naked marchers were arrested in 2003, they have been for the most part welcome in the parade, despite years when they were asked if they really, really, really had to bare all. For seven years, the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) was the wound in the parade that would not heal. People wanted them out and they wouldn't leave. After years of debate and acrimony, Pride ended up creating a dispute-resolution process that affirmed that QuAIA could march, despite real threats to revoke Pride’s city funding if they were not given the boot.

Perhaps the biggest get-out-of-jail-free card handed to Pride executive director Mathieu Chantelois when he took over in 2015 was QuAIA’s announcement that they weren’t interested in marching anymore.  Whew! Controversy off the table! Done and done! Let the good times roll!

And then the sit-in.

What’s not suitable for a Pride parade? My first test is: Is the entry composed of queer people expressing something, or allies expressing something queer? For Black Lives Matter, the answer is most definitely yes.

I have written before about how boring the Pride Toronto parade has become—and remains. So the second and final test: Is it boring?

Well, many spectators would say that standing in the hot sun watching the same float or, more likely, the same uncostumed marching contingent of bankers for a half hour while a protest and negotiations take place is a textbook definition of boring. But only if they have failed to let their minds ponder larger issues and themes.

Watching a parade is usually about catching quick glimpses of eye candy. We love a float because it’s creative or the people on it are sexy and talented and fun to watch—for a few seconds. But when those seconds expand to minutes, we grow antsy. First, we don’t know what’s going on, and complain about the quality of marshalling.

Then someone says there’s a sit-in. Now the event is theatre. It’s not random bits of delight anymore. It’s a larger, more cohesive narrative that someone has brought to the cacophony. A story has been imposed.

This show is not in front of you. It’s all around you, like in plays where the actors leave the stage to wander amidst and interact with the audience. In this case, not literally. But suddenly the actors have framed your experience in a way that’s completely unexpected, that brings you into the story. Like a piece of conceptual art, the sit-in was a frame focusing attention.

Focusing on what? Firstly, I suppose, on our feelings. Intrigue, annoyance, validation, indignation, solidarity, you name it. Radical art means to get in your head. For parade watchers, it was boring non-boringness or non-boring boredom. It was as boring as the conversations we were having as it unfolded. That, much more than the presence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, made the 2016 parade unique and memorable—a true achievement.

Whether spectators took the 30 minutes to think of the experience of Black Lives in Toronto, Canada and around the world, whether they thought about how Black Lives are policed or their relationship to Pride Toronto… maybe they didn’t. But a frame of reference was created, regardless of what spectators saw in it.

That’s theatre, and theatre belongs in a parade. Hence the ostentatious TV-camera-ready feathered pen Chantelois was given to sign the list of demands. It’s a stylized prop in a show within a show.

Politically, the sit-in was astute. Maybe not in the hot sweaty moment, but in the days and weeks of debate that will follow. Black Lives Matter­ – Toronto has created a large-scale conceptual frame for their issues. They turned something as ephemeral as a parade into something longer lasting. What’s the point of being given the power that comes with being honoured and not doing anything with it?

Some gay men and others have described the sit-in like it was a hostile act. “LGBT people would never stop the Caribana parade to protest homophobia.” Um, why not? Well, we got beat to it and would have to think of something else. The sit-in is a hard act to follow.

It’s not war—people get killed in those—it’s play, a much preferable and more parade-friendly substitute. Something can be playful and serious at the same time.

Yet there’s a larger political risk for Black Lives Matters organizers.

’Cause, when you give theatre, you usually get theatre back. 

My response to Sky Gilbert's critique of my IN Toronto piece on celebrities coming out

It's always flattering when someone you admire takes issue with something you said, since, at the very least, you were worth responding to. 

So I'm glad Sky Gilbert took umbrage with my piece in this month's IN Toronto magazine, which asks the bratty question "Does coming out even matter anymore?"

Sky's critique is here.

I responded to Sky directly and wanted to share my response here, for the record.
---

Hi Sky,

I appreciate your thoughtful essay and feel delighted and honoured that you took the time to respond to what I wrote.

My piece was meant to be a playful riff on a series of ideas around coming out. (It all started when a friend of mine complained that there were too many out actors and not enough out scientists, which was a weird notion I wanted to unpack.)

It might have been hard to figure out what I was saying in the piece because I was deliberately trying to be non-prescriptive--evasive even. I didn't want to tell anybody what to think or do with their lives, nor give a thumbs up or thumbs down to different celebrities. Rather, I was throwing some ideas and stereotypes into the air to see them crash into each other, hopefully provoking readers into examine their own feelings about famous people coming out. I purposely eschewed answering the headline's question so readers could answer it themselves. And you've done so yourself quite forcefully and I'm glad of that.

But I hope I was clear, especially when I write about the "enduring value of coming out"--that's the bit near the end where I laid my cards on the table--that, despite my cavalier approach and the provocative headline, I still think coming out is very important. Perhaps I buried the lead.

I just think coming out publicly has a very different social meaning than it did a decade or 20 years ago. That's progress, though not the end of our labours.

Three unspeakable observations

I think Pope Francis, who seems genuinely humble, is doing an impressive job at reframing the image of the Roman Catholic church. 

I think the Harper government, specifically Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, is doing a decent job on international human rights (let's go after Russia now, shall we? Perhaps Canada can host Pride House at the Sochi Olympics).

Closer to home, my garbage collection has been better (less mess on the street after pick up) since Rob Ford privatized it (I feel bad for the lost union jobs, but I'm speaking purely as a consumer).

Do these achievements affect my global view of these leaders? Not so much. Don't get me started on the Roman Catholic church's larger problems with sex, gender and social justice, the Harper government's job on international trade (or domestically--whoa!) or Rob Ford's vision, honesty, competence or mental health. But sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due, even if it doesn't change your vote.

Bad habits are not malice (or: Why I’m pretty sure Pride Toronto didn’t sabotage the world’s biggest Trans March)

I found this piece on Vice.com about Toronto’s Trans March, which resulted in this response from Toronto Pride, to contain much more than its fair share of conspiracy theory. The discussion I've heard around it has been interesting, but many of the allegations don't quite ring true.

Historically, activists will argue, Pride Toronto’s enthusiasm for increased trans visibility at the week-long festival has been less than stellar. I accept that. But there’s a big difference between institutional lethargy and the kind of malice Nicki Ward ascribes to Pride Toronto. Misdirection and underhandedness? Sabotage? Let’s not get hysterical here.

(Background note: I used to work with Nicki at (now defunct) fab magazine. I worked in editorial, she in advertising. I found her to be a friendly and supportive colleague, so I have no axe to grind and no horse in this race.)

As someone who mostly experiences the front end—not the planning itself, though I do hear some of the scuttlebutt—of Pride trans programming, I can say that it’s gotten dramatically better year over year and has drawn a much wider audience and a much higher level of public engagement. This year’s efforts made a genuinely impressive impact—I agree with Nicki that it was a watershed year. Did I see all the messiness of how it came together? No. But there’s a point when grievances and missteps need to be left behind in order to celebrate the good will that’s been building.

As a layperson, I saw the Trans March given equal billing to the Dyke March, the Pride Parade and the Street Festival on the cover of the Official Pride Guide, on the map and within the guide itself. Considering the parade's starring role (whether you like it or not), that's not the action of an organization that wants to downplay trans programming. The parade’s international grand marshal—which seems to have become an even higher honour than regular ole’ grand marshal—was Marcela Romero, director of the Argentine Association of Transvestites, Transsexuals and Transgender People. Trans artists made up a notable part of the mix at three of the four Pride stages I visited (the Central Stage remains the almost exclusive domain of gay men who want to dance with their shirts off and the straight couples who love them).

As a spectator, Friday night’s Trans March blew me away with its size, energy and inclusiveness. It must have taken 15 to 20 minutes to pass; this year’s Dyke March took less than 40 minutes to pass. Based on pure population statistics, LGB will pretty much always outnumber T, so that’s an impressive comparison. The large number of trans allies in the march helped give it the heft it deserved. If such a march is about building bridges and showing community-wide unity against oppression—mission accomplished.

Would a corporate sponsor—which comes with built-in media attention and cash—have made the Trans March better? I’ll bet money nobody wants to go there.

It was certainly disappointing that the march got only one lane of traffic. It seemed to require a higher number of police officers (presumably because of the obviously increased safety risk) than otherwise necessary. But thinking back to the small group—maybe a couple of hundred people?—that scurried down a pedestrian-filled Church Street three years ago, the whole thing was inspiring. I’m sure the size of the march also surprised the city, which will have to rethink such one-lane closures.

I’ve emphasized my outsiderness to the Trans Pride issue for a reason. In her piece, Nicki’s core complaint is about visibility and media coverage. She blames Pride Toronto for nobody hearing about this watershed Trans March. I’m not sure the premise is true.

But even if it is, as any journalist who’s covered Pride knows, Pride Toronto organizers basically just stick a media pass in your hand and let you get on with your work of deciding for yourself what you want to cover. There was no “gushing” about the march because, during the Pride weekend, organizers don’t usually gush about anything. They answer questions lobbed at them by reporters in between running around, putting out fires. It’s in the lead-up to next year’s festival that you’ll hear Pride Toronto gushing (hopefully about how great the trans programming was this year). That's the way the news cycle works.

So if the question is: Why wasn’t there the media coverage of the Trans March that Nicki wanted? Then the answer is: Ask the media.

Mainstream Pride coverage has become hackneyed and predictable. New elements—in the case of the Trans March, newly prominent elements—don’t fit into the template. Since the 1990s, it’s been about hot guys on floats, colourful drag queens, excited tourists, Toronto’s welcoming attitudes and the revenue generated for the city. Plus a few personality profiles. Blinded by the sexy skin and riotous colour, it can take mainstream media editors years to register a change in the body politic.

Maybe this successful Trans March will make the mainstream media pay more attention next year. More likely it would take a perfect storm (like the 2003 Ontario Superior Court decision on same-sex marriage, which cranked up coverage of Pride that year) to grab headlines and draw major mainstream attention. Changing policies and procedures, tough as it is, is easier than changing long-ingrained attitudes.

It’s true that Pride Toronto itself can be a bit too enamoured of its own template. There are Pride DJ lineups—the simplest possible thing to shuffle—that haven’t changed in years. The template has carried Pride through tumultuous times, but the tension between predictability and reinvention is never as taut as it should be. It’s easy to imagine activists presenting Pride Toronto with new ideas and getting “Where are we going to put that?” as the first reaction. (Actually, that’s a scenario that’s easy to imagine at any small not-for-profit community-based organization.)

But it would be unfair to interpret excessive pragmatism as something meant to thwart trans activists. Sometimes the weight of habit is more difficult to fight against than malice. Sometimes a misprint is just a misprint.

What’s amazing is that, despite it all, Toronto pulled off what seems to have been the world’s biggest trans march. I’m betting that record will be broken soon—hopefully during Toronto’s own WorldPride in 2014.

Is Pride more important than a high school prom?

As someone trying to figure out what the current imbroglio around Pride Toronto means for the future of Toronto's LGBT community, I found Douglas Elliott's excellent speech at the Law Society of Upper Canada's Pride reception this week especially helpful.

In his assessment of the tone of the debate over whether the phrase "Israeli Apartheid" should be banned from the annual Pride parade, Elliott was bang-on. Even setting aside the name-calling, negativity and assumptions of ill-will I've heard from both sides, the language of "otherness" has played much too big a part in this debate. There have been some very eloquent, consensus-building and compassionate voices, too. But I haven't heard so much "us" versus "them" rhetoric since the Christian Right showed up to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage. Elliott's emphasis on "we" is vital.

When Elliott set out to define the key issues, though, I lost the thread. "Pride is about our LGBT community. It is the one time of the year when it is all about us." That's true, but I was immediately reminded of another institution about which you could say the same thing: high-school proms. A few of them, here and in the U.S., have been placed in jeopardy over LGBT issues. A student wants to bring a same-sex date, the school forbids it, the conflict escalates and the school or a court threatens to cancel the prom until the matter is settled. Elliott himself is very familiar with this narrative.

You only get one graduating prom in your life. The (mostly straight) students who suffer from the same-sex date controversy did not set the policy--it's not their issue, really. Why should they be made worry if their corsages will be left to rot in the fridge? Can't LGBT students do their own thing elsewhere? Isn't their choice of date a distraction from more serious education issues? Shouldn't the issue be decided somewhere offstage, so (mostly straight) students aren't pulled into it?

I don't agree with these complaints--I do indeed think equality issues are important education issues--but I suggest them here to demonstrate how rhetoric, rather than reality, frames how we decide what issues belong where. When Elliott was fighting for the right of Marc Hall to take his male date to the prom, I'm not sure he would have accepted a "not the right venue for this kind of thing" argument.

LGBT activists like Elliott have (rightfully) supported and celebrated these teenage same-sex date-takers (there must be a more elegant expression for that) as heroes. If one particular prom suffers in the larger fight for LGBT equality, then it's a small price to pay. But you certainly don't feel that way if you're an 18-year-old straight student and it's your prom. You might be angry with your school, but you might also just want the gay boy or lesbian girl to go away or, at least, tone it down. LGBT haven't traditionally settled for the "please go away and tone it down" option.

Then there's the issue of timing. Pointing out that the federal government withheld $400,000 of expected funding this year, Elliott says "I felt that this was a time when we all needed to rally behind Pride to cope with this financial squeeze." This quote reminded me of the Bruce Cockburn song "The Trouble with Normal." According to Cockburn, the trouble with normal is "it always gets worse."

Yes, the federal funding cut was a pain, probably motivated by homophobia. Yuck. But I look at Pride 2010 and see an organization as big and as rich as it's ever been. In the words of not-for-profit types, Pride has built a lot of capacity in the last few years. The budget looks to be more than $3 million, up from $2.7 million last year. There are 10 people on staff and a crew of able, smart and dedicated volunteer coordinators. I'm sure they would have all liked to have had this discussion done with 10 months ago--or 10 years ago--or 10 years from now. But if 2010 is not a year when people can--compassionately--discuss the meaning of Pride, how it relates to the community, how it relates to the mainstream, the compromises it's prepared to make to be well-funded and who should or shouldn't be allowed to participate in it, then I'm not sure when a time for that discussion would ever come.

Why not now? Would the middle of Toronto's World Pride in 2014 be better timing?

Nationally, it's fair to say that the court-driven queer activist agenda of the last two decades is almost at an end. We won. Yay! (Add an asterisk or two here; trans people should add several.) If we want to move ahead as a community, to manifest a form of activism and collective identity beyond the courtroom walls, we need to figure out who we are and what we want to do next. The current discussion about Pride's handling of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is extremely pertinent to those questions. Well, it is if it can shake off the personal attacks, the lack of compromise, the unwillingness to admit mistakes, the broad sweeping generalizations, the paranoia and the snark.

Is it a pain for Pride Toronto that it has become a principal actor in this debate? Totally, yes. I bet they're much rather be blowing up balloons, booking talent and training parade marshals--or having a root canal. But they should also find it flattering. Pride celebrations, more than any other LGBT institution, are a repository of the struggles and dreams of our community. Even its harshest critics care what Pride does. That's not hate, that's love. I just wish it sounded more like it.

What's really been in and out of the parade

There's been so much vigorous (acrimonious?) debate over whether the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) should be allowed to march in Toronto's Pride parade, there's been little I felt I could add. But it's dawned on me today that both sides have been making not-quite-right statements about the parade's history.

As someone who's watched every parade since 2000 from beginning to end (Oy! I know! I'll never get those hours back!), I wanted to add some facts to the mix.

Several times I've read city councillor Kyle Rae implying that the content in the parade has historically been queer-specific. "What they were doing is bringing in another issue into a queer community event," he told the Globe And Mail.

Well, in past parades, I've seen anti-meat signage, anti-fur signage, "Free Tibet" signage, anti-Catholic signage and anti-Pope signage (more on the Pope in a moment). Is it true to assume Pride messaging is always positive or, if negative, aimed only at those who oppress LGBT people? Tell that to the Latin American Coalition Against Racism that marched in 2000 or the people from Gays Liberation Against the Right Everywhere who, with Rae, founded Pride Toronto in 1981. Or the marchers in 1999 who chanted "Homelessness is a national disgrace."

The 2001 parade included Jewish Women Against The Occupation and people with signs stating "Bi Babes say screw the FTAA!"

All of these causes are debatable, some of them controversial. None are queer-specific. Neither is nudism, really--I've heard that even straight people are naked under their clothes--but nobody has questioned the desire of the group Totally Naked Men Enjoying Nudity (TNT!MEN) to march in the parade, even as they've questioned their right to. (As an aside: One of the criticisms I've heard levelled against QuAIA is that they're nothing but attention-seekers. Uhhh, it's a parade. Everybody who wants to be in a parade is an attention-seeker. It's the single common denominator of parade participants.)

The Toronto parade I've witnessed (endured?) has historically operated with the assumption that queer people who have what I'll call "generic" interests are permitted to, er, expose them in the parade. I haven't done a statistical breakdown, but I would bet that at least 25 percent of parade participants are queer people expressing generic interests, from their religion to their admiration for CBC radio to their distaste of the current government, whoever that might be. It's understandable that Councillor Rae has missed this; he's spent more time in the parade--and in the early days organizing the parade--than watching it. But the parade I've watched glide down Yonge Street year after year has never been a single voice speaking with a single unified message; it's a cacophony. If something in it doesn't make you uncomfortable, you're not paying enough attention.

Now, although the gayness of TNT!MEN's exhibitionist tendencies have not been questioned, their right to participate in the parade has. When Pride's executive director Tracey Sandilands talks about the words "Israeli Apartheid" making attendees "uncomfortable," she seems to be forgetting or ignoring the discomfort TNT!MEN's weenies have caused over the years. In the early 2000s, there were complaints about them almost every year. Prior to joining in the parade in 1999, then mayor Mel Lastman reportedly tried to pressure Pride organizers to get TNT!MEN to cover up. In the early 2000s, there were times when volunteer marshals at the staging grounds encouraged them to do so. Around that time, Pride adopted a semi-official hands-off policy with regard to nudity: organizers would pass on warnings from the police and inform participants that illegal behaviour would not be condoned. In 2002, police did arrest parade nudists, leading seven of them off in handcuffs, their asses still hanging out. The charges were eventually dropped and, as far as I know, neither the cops nor organizers have interfered with nudists in the parade since then. The nudists were never banned, but they have often been discouraged and, at the very least, were left to fend for themselves.

Which brings me to a not-quite-right claim I've been hearing from critics of Pride: that "Israeli Apartheid" is the first time Pride Toronto has censored something in the parade.

Actually, the kooky cult the Raelians were censored in the 2004 parade. They had brought signs that I believe criticized the Roman Catholic Pope, John Paul II, but I can't say for sure because the words on their signs (and they had a lot) were covered up with black tape and other makeshift coverings. The signs you could read said, "Not Allowed By Pride."

You could argue that the QuAIA case is the first time Pride has voted to censor a group, but, in a way, that's preferable to a last-minute crackdown because it opens debate prior to the event and allows the group time to challenge the decision. Also, at that time, Pride's board members, rather than paid staff, ran the festival. I don't know who called for or who approved the Raelian censorship, but I'm sure board members were either involved or close by. Nowadays, volunteers and paid staff can't be confident the board members will be on site to give such advice--the organic connection between community and organization has been severed by the professionalization of Pride, by money, so to speak--so the hands-on people obviously want these things settled before the event.

Regardless of whether a vote for censorship is better or worse than impromptu censorship, the bald fact of censorship has reared its head at Pride before.

Most of this information is available in the pre-2005 archives of Xtra.ca; my memory isn't that good.

Link to 'This' article

When out came out in the fall, my piece on queer politics was paper-only, but, ever slow to catch up, I just realized it's now online.

Was Brüno mostly filler?

Was it just me or was there something desperate about Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno?

Baron Cohen and his producers devised mis-en-scène after mis-en-scène to entrap the squeamish and the homophobic (and I don't think they're automatically the same thing--the movie was as much about our fear of sex and eccentricity as it was about homosexuality). But his chosen victims were, for the most part, so controlled, so on message, so "I'm out of here as fast as I possibly can?" that he only managed to squeeze a few brief moments of discomfort out of each of them.

I mean, the setup for Congressman Ron Paul was spectacular--the hotel room, the champagne, the photos, the disappearing act with the pants--but the man did get out of there in the least embarrassing way possible. It was all build, build, build--then the person fled or, like the hunters out camping, turned silent and uncooperative, cinematically speaking.

(Which may be why so much of the movie felt set-up--the spider couldn't attract enough flies into his web. Possible exceptions: Paula Abdul taking about human rights work while, ahem, sitting on a person and the penultimate set piece, where the grudge-match fans cheered on the violence but freaked out on the same-sex kissing. But then, as if to offer an anecdote to all the hate of that scene, Brüno sings a song with celebrities he should be deflating, a set-up that had obviously been negotiated and constructed, which retroactively makes you reevaluate all the "real" incidents you've already seen.)

To fill up the holes in running time, the "plot" was pushed to the forefront with many scenes of Baron Cohen "acting" rather than "intervening." But without an audience, Baron Cohen's flamey performance is something a drag queen would do at home in front of the mirror: overwrought, self-indulgent and self-congratulatory but deeply unconvincing. When people complain that the move made them squirm, I wonder if it's Baron Cohen's interpretation of Brüno, rather than the world around him, that made them feel that way. Who'd want to watch a scripted movie performed this way? I blame the bad acting, though it could be that some audience members have not spent enough time in the underbelly of the gay world in order to set their flamboyancy meters to appropriate tolerance levels.

Even as a stereotype, Baron Cohen was one-note. Where was the defeat, the sliding of the mask in the face of the humiliation of "failing" in Hollywood? Where were the tantrums, the acting out? It's true that gay men construct studier and more ostentatious public personae than others, but it's also true that these constructions frequently falls apart. In this, Baron Cohen was very much a straight man putting on "gay face," afraid to deviate too far from his shtick for fear of striking a wrong note and alienating gay and gay-friendly audiences.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is the success of Borat. And I suppose reality TV shows in general. Even if people don't know it's Baron Cohen, they see the cameras, imagine a scenario where they will be humiliated and pull back.

Success seems to have made Baron Cohen pull back, too. It's the worst mistake a satirist can make: wanting people to like you. You can unflatteringly impersonate a Kazakhstani journalist without ever winking at the audience, because, I'm pretty sure, Kazakhstanis don't buy a lot of movie tickets. Who cares if you hurt their feelings? But the queers--cross them and they can bring you down. With Brüno Baron Cohen has tried to have it both ways--social criticism and conciliation. They are not compatible modes of expression.

The Tories & Pride

I swear. It's not like Ablonczy used any of the words in the LGBT lexicon when she was handing over the money. She must have some kind of plausible deniability. Can't she claim she thought Pride was a casino?

But seriously. Either there is a set of criteria for the federal tourism money or it is a pork-barrel program where MPs pick and choose who gets what. This kerfuffle, and the treatment of poor Diane Ablonczy, suggests that latter, which should be far more embarrassing for any legitimate government than the complaints of a few rightwingers.

If there are criteria--and I'm sure there must be--it would be hard to imagine Pride Toronto, with its size and economic impact, being excluded for any reason other than discrimination based on sexual orientation which, the last time I looked, was against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Either way, it makes the Conservatives look very, very bad. Pork barrellers or anti-Charter discriminators. Take your pick.

Pride notes

A few quick thoughts on this year's Pride celebrations in Toronto.

* Major parade trend: So many cops marching. You only have to go back a few years to the time when it was just the LGBT police liaison officer and her girlfriend driving a single car, unable to find any other officers to join them.

* Queers Against Israeli Apartheid had a large, colourful contingent. So did the pro-Israeli group. Neither overwhelmed the parade. Nobody seemed particularly shocked or upset or distressed. Guess what: Free speech works.

* The recession cast a shadow over the parade's fabulous quotient--many of the floats looked makeshift. Major sponsor TD had a lot of bodies in the parade, but the float was very basic. No lavish spending in sight. At least two entries looked to have recycled old Christmas decorations.

* I only saw one Michael Jackson look-alike all weekend.

* Yet again, the Sunday night Wellesley Stage lineup--which hosts the biggest acts-seemed designed to kill as much buzz as possible. There was talent there--Kelly Rowland, ABC and Divine Brown, for example--but the strange sequence, long gaps between acts and sleepy interstitial soundtrack cleared the air of any sense of build or excitement. I don't know if this is a contract-management problem or if Pride organizers purposefully want to drive audiences out of the venue in order to bring in fresh supplies of drinkers. Regardless, poor talent curation hurt the mood more than the rain.

UPDATES:
1. QuAIA organizer Andrew Brett gives his take on the issue here and clarifies that the pro-Israel contingent was the Kulana Toronto group. My comments on this issue are regarding the appropriateness of these two groups carrying the messages they carried in the parade--I think it was all perfectly appropriate and any debate their participation generated has been positive all around--not on whether Israel is more pro-queer than the rest of the Mideast (a fact so obvious it's not worth debating). In the last few years, Pride Toronto has increasingly taken on a global human rights agenda. In doing so, the organization has opened the door to giving a platform to groups who have things to say about what's going on in countries beyond our own and, while I think it will take some finesse to manage this evolving role (check out how Pride handled the anti-Catholic Raelian entry in 2004), the increased relevance makes the effort totally worth it.

2. I did like the parade this year; sorry if I gave the impression I didn't. Though many floats wore their budgets on their flatbeds, there was a lot of creativity and many small touches that turned what would have been dull marching contingents into something special. It's amazing what energy and splash can be accomplished with a sequined hat, a tinselled pompom and a genuine smile. When I see pictures of the beefy go-go boyed parades of, say, Paris or Sao Paulo, I am proud that Toronto's Pride parade is filled with such a diverse cross-section of this city's (this province's? this world's?) citizens who are there because they want to be, not because they're paid to be there and look good. We may not have the flashiest Pride in the world, as defined by cookie-cutter standards, but we have the most engaged and real one.

Further to the Post & Pride

This looks like a story but smells like a correction.

Who speaks for Pride?

I was mildly distressed when I read this piece in the Jewish Tribune in which a lawyer equates the critique of Israel's treatment of Palestinians as "Anti-Israel" and "Anti-Semitic." But the fact that he describes Pride's traditional freedom-of-expression stance--a stance that should come as no surprise since it comes from a group that has been silenced for centuries and has been labelled obscene and offensive too many times to count--as having "very eerie parallels to Nazi Germany" struck me as so outlandish to be laughable. Who could take this complaint seriously?

Well, the National Post could, headlining its story "Toronto Pride organizers ban anti-Zionist group." The story freaked me out because it goes against so much of what Pride is all about.

I would be the first to say I don't like a Pride parade to be a series of political and commercial messages. Entrants should concentrate on being fabulous and celebrating their sexuality. But the overlap between sexual politics and all kinds of other politics is tremendous. Politicians, the most political and partisan species known to earth, clamour to be in the thing. Queer vegans shout their message. So do queer pagans. Some political causes may seem like a stretch, but I don't think anybody has any right to start drawing a line. Pride restricts groups that participate in hate speech and discriminatory behaviour, but that, traditionally, has to be clear on the face of it. If it's a matter of debate--and you'd have to be deluded to think that the relationship of Israel and the Palestinian people is not a valid debate--Pride should step back and let it happen.

(And, with Israel's boasting about its LGBT track record, it is inviting criticism from queers on other aspects of its domestic policy. There's no obligation for gay and lesbian people to shut up and play the part of window-dressing when there are other serious issues to address.)

No individual or group "speaks" for Pride in the parade or outside of it. There are occasions when I don't think Pride organizers themselves actually "speak" for Pride. Pride is a spirit or, if that's too flaky for you, a social movement that manifests itself in a formal organization, but it is not a formal organization itself. The organization creates a platform for "Pride" but it is the participants who mount it, creating the content upon that platform. There is no finely tuned message that comes out of it. Lawyerly niggling about liability and not-for-profit tax status misses the point. Take away the sponsorships and the street closure permits and there will still be Pride.

Pride organizers have struggled with this role. I remember in 2004 the Raelians being told to cover up signs that said nasty things about the Pope--"Official sponsor of AIDS... The homophobic religion that kills!"--but they were not kicked out of the parade. (B'nai Brith Canada take note.) Organizers have not always performed as valiantly as they could, for example, not kicking up a stink when police arrested a small group of men for going naked in the parade in 2002. But they have mostly stuck up for the anarchy of voices that are at the heart of Pride.

Anyway, I found the Post story a little troubling. This morning, I was interviewing Pride executive director Tracey Sandilands for a feature story about Pride for the Toronto Star. I couldn't resist asking her about the Post story. She did not claim the Post misquoted her--thank goodness or we'd be veering close to boy-who-cried-wolf territory--but said the story was wrong.

"We have never said we weren't allowing political viewpoints," Sandilands told me. She said the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid has not been banned from this year's parade. Or at least, not yet because they have not yet applied to be in the parade. When and if they apply, it's the declared message and intent that would be evaluated for possible hate speech and discrimination that would see their application denied. Otherwise, they would be welcome.

"There so much pressure on us to take a side," Sandilands told me. "But it's not our mandate or our purpose. We don't intend to be bullied into taking a side....We are not going to take a stand on any rights or causes other than global queer rights."

If hate speech occurs in the parade without warning, Sandilands says it's up to the police to deal with it.

"We won't make that determination," she says.

I'm sure some people will find any participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid uncomfortable and provocative. But those two words should be considered synonymous with any bone fide Pride parade.

Musical high

What's astonishing about High School Musical 3 (I must plead ignorance on numbers 1 and 2 which didn't get theatrical releases) beside the joyous sweat and cuddly vim of the performances (was there a story there?) is how much cultural clutter the filmmakers must sweep away nowadays before we partake of goodhearted wholesome song and dance numbers.

And I don't just mean the de-sexed gay character, sashaying his choreography moves with his rhinestone jeans, asymmetrical argyle sweaters and pink-buuffanted backup dancers, though I can totally see Ryan Evans and his artsy prom date Kelsi boogying at a gay club in the East Village two or three years after graduation, if they're not already doing it on the weekends. Nor do I mean how the black kids get to be almost-main characters but not quite and how they can only date each other, each colour of this rainbow-coloured universe staying safely in its place. Or how Troy, because he's good at dancing, has to compensate by being hyper masculine in other ways: A glossy teen with perfect hair wouldn't have rummaged through a salvage yard for jalopy parts in any era, not even Archie Andrews. Or the victory party without drinks of any kind and the absence of drugs. I mean how everybody has to get out of the way of the heroine, Gabrielle, because she has to have zero personality characteristics except being sweet.

All the other female characters--and I should point out that the female friendships in HSM3 are closer to particle physics than intimacy--have singular defining characteristics: Sharpay's star-struck consumerism, Taylor's political ambitions, Martha's big-girl brains (she'll be at the clubs with Ryan and Kelsi soon), Kelsi's offbeat funkiness, Ms Darbus's striking similarity to Mrs. Doubtfire. Appropriately uniformed, they all do one thing extremely well. In the male world, you make your lead stand out among his peers by having him do everything well: Troy can sing, dance, play basketball, fix his car, bond with his friends, haze the juniors. His is alpha dog in all arenas. But Gabrielle? We're told repeatedly how great she is, but we never see her do anything particularly great except her swooning numbers with Troy. She's sweet, period. Even at Stanford, all she does is wander by herself, a damsel in distress as yet unaware that she needs to be rescued. It's true that near the end of the film they do say she's going into pre-law, but it might have been medicine or film studies or engineering--I'm sure the writers just made her major up on the day. In order for her to be the romantic female lead, she has to be about absolutely nothing. It's the zen approach to femininity. Girls might be good at one thing or the other, but all that's going to get them is a beta. To rise to the top, to be the one everybody aspires to be, they must effortlessly be little more than a vessel for the leading man's dreams.