As a young gay man, Paul King marched in Toronto’s first Pride Parade.

The year was 1981 and the parade was launched by a community politicized in the aftermath of notorious bathhouse raids across the city.

King was caught up in those too, rousted by police.

Now 61, the hair stylist has participated in all but one parade since the inaugural event. “Two years ago, I thought, I’m too old to drag my sorry ass up a parade route. But I went anyway.”

King helped raise funds for the palliative precursor to Casey House — Fife House, as it was then.

Diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1986, he watched despondently as a whole generation of mostly gay men was wiped out by AIDS.

It’s hardly ever spoken of anymore, the AIDS crisis. A younger generation has scarcely any memory of those dark days. And little regard for gay history beyond their niche issues.

“Most of my friends from back then are gone,” King tells the Star. “They never made it to the age I am now. They’re not here to defend themselves, to defend what we fought for. I say to the younger generation, get your own battleground, don’t take mine.”

He means the Pride Parade, which has fallen into divisiveness, bickering and hostility, reflected in a recent and close vote to overturn a decision by the Pride Toronto executive board which had moved towards inviting Toronto police to participate in the parade again — in uniform, with a float and cruisers — following a two-year ban, sparked by Black Lives Matter. At this past week’s annual general meeting, board co-chair Erin Edghill also resigned after a no-confidence vote.

An audit showing Pride Toronto in $700,000 debt for 2018 — which many blame on sponsorship withdrawal and public disapproval of the police ban — carried no influence with a vocal activist rump, led by the No Pride in Policing Coalition.

The vote came on the same day that Bruce McArthur pled guilty to first-degree murder in the killing of eight men he’d befriended around the Gay Village over a decade. That wound runs deep in the gay community, where alarm bells had long been raised about a predatory serial murderer and men who’d vanished without a trace. The police response, many argue, was laggard and inefficient.

Their dismay is understandable. But the anger, King counters, is misplaced and potentially ruinous to the broader gay population as Pride Toronto falls victim to internecine wrangling along other demographic lines, co-opted, he says, by Black Lives Matter and entrenched hatred of police.

“I remember watching when Black Lives Matter stopped the parade.” That was in 2016, when the group briefly blocked the route until the then executive director of Pride Toronto signed a document agreeing to their demands. At the time, BLM co-founder Alexandra Williams claimed the objective was to hold Pride Toronto accountable for what she called “anti-Blackness.”

“I went ballistic,” King continued. “These people were sitting on the ancestral bones of my friends. They hijacked everything we’d fought for. And that includes all the efforts we’d made to repair the relationship with police.

“They are using a platform we fought hard for, people who are no longer here to defend it.”

He’s just one man talking. It’s impossible to say whether his views are shared by the majority of the gay community. If not, he suggests it’s a generational schism and its fractured the collective.

In an earlier email, King said he’d marched all these years “for the sheer joy of celebrating … of standing up with Pride and acceptance.” And he rejects the concept of “no innocent bystander.”

King recalled an occasion when he was struck by a rock when entering the St. Charles Tavern for a Halloween party — a rock thrown by someone in a crowd that had descended to harass and jeer. “Two police officers picked me up, gave me first aid, and took me to St. Michael’s emergency. They stayed with me until I was seen. As they left, they stated how sorry they were and that they hoped in the future they would no longer be needed at the door of a gay club for protection.

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A year later, at the Pride Parade, he recognized one of those officers. “He shook my hand and said, keep going mate, you’ve got to stay the course.”

At another parade, a Red Ribbon float volunteer who’d faltered in the heat was literally held up by a cop, “for a block, holding the pole banner until someone else could be found. He did this with no request. Another time, “a rather portly gentleman in drag was having trouble clambering onto our float and three laughing cops obliged with much cheering and teasing from surrounding volunteers.”

It infuriates King that all this good will is being undone. He’s particularly concerned about the impact on gay police officers who have been relegated to the stay-away sidelines if they wear their uniform and aren’t on formal parade duty. “They’re pushing gay cops back into the closet, telling them, you’re not part of the big picture, get back in your little isolated box.”

He worries, as well, about ramifications from the straight community. “We used to be all together in this and it was fun, it was inclusive. I’ve partied like nobody’s business. I’ve taken my godchildren to the parade. There was a lady who came to my salon and she marched in high heels. I told her she was crazy. She said, honey, I’m a Jewish woman. If a drag queen can march in high heels, so can I.”

Ah, but there’s precious little room for humour any more or mutual respect.

I’ve had emails in recent weeks declaring that my voice has no place in the debate because I’m not gay. “As a straight woman, Pride isn’t about you,” wrote one woman. “It’s by and for the LGBTQ community. Cops harass, assault and have raided our spaces. Pride is not about corporate dollars.”

By that token, Black Lives Matter — which I fervently support as a movement — doesn’t apply to browns or aboriginals.

We divide to be conquered.

Wrote King: “Many stories and voices were lost to the scourge of AIDS, leaving a void in accountability and reason. Have there been negative incidents with police? Yes. However, there have been many positive too.

“Let us build bridge of inclusion, not close doors.”

For 2019 at least, that door has been slammed shut.