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I’m not a big fan of the Pride parade and tend to regard it as simply an event on the civic tourist bureau calendar, but I certainly don’t have anything against it. I belong to an earlier generation that invented Gay Liberation, and I don’t have much of a personal stake in the fate of the parade (unless someone wants to prevent the parade).

Still, the parade is supposedly emblematic of the spirit of inclusiveness, and the presence of the police in the parade (and not simply guarding it from outside) is the result of a great deal of patient work over the years by the gay movement and many Pride organizers to get police forces across Canada to take gay bashing seriously, to relate to the gay community in a cooperative rather than adversarial manner, and to directly endorse Pride by participating in the parade. Given the public character of the parade, having police participate in it contributes to combatting anti-homosexual prejudice.

This particular decision is the result of Pride parade’s attempt to include and support Canadian branches of Black Lives Matter (BLM). The only problem with this bit of what’s known as “intersectional” partnering is that BLM insists that the Pride Parade adopt BLM’s thoroughly oppositional view of the police.

While the LGBT+ community understands the arguments and experiences of BLM (both within society in general as well as within the gay community), it seems to me a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot political mistake for the Pride Parade to adopt a perspective about the police that isn’t widely shared within the gay community and that doesn’t reflect the LGBT+ community’s experience with the police (especially in Vancouver).

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