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Jason Kingsley, Calgary Pride president and executive producer, told CBC the group looks forward to doing some relationship-building with the UCP “and having them demonstrate their commitment to the gender and sexually diverse community through their new platform and policies over the next year and onward.”

How do you hope to build relationships if you keep people away from the groups with whom they’re supposed to build those relationships? The workshop-attending requirement was not imposed on the NDP, the Liberals or the Alberta Party. Workshops are an artificial environment. They do not break down barriers. The only way for people to get to know and truly understand each other is to reach out in ordinary, everyday life. They need to mingle, to strike up conversations, to discover common ground that leads to developing friendships. This can’t be forced; it can only happen organically. And it won’t happen if the UCP members are kept out of the parade.

The parade organizers are guilty of doing to the politicians what for years has been done to them – judging and labelling others. They ignore the fact that UCP members are individuals; many already have progressive views about human rights. Why are these people being shunned?

The divisiveness in today’s world has reached frightening heights. The parade offered a chance to make a dent in that. Pride parade people, you blew it. You had an opportunity to reach out to a group who, for whatever reason, was reaching out to you. Instead, you shut them out and told them they had to attend some phoney-baloney workshop so they would learn to think all the right things. And all this to join a parade. It’s just a parade; it’s not some world event of earth-shattering importance. A parade goes by in a few minutes and it’s over; the relationships begun by letting the UCP march could have led to a permanent new perspective. But that’s not going to happen now, thanks to the misguided thinking of the folks whose parade is supposed to be about inclusiveness.