Toronto’s LGBQT community has not always had a warm and fuzzy relationship with police, to say the least.

That’s why it’s so important that police have been participating for more than a decade now in Pride Toronto’s annual parade with floats and frolickers — not to mention keeping revelers safe.

It’s vital that relationship continue and that Pride Toronto make clear police are welcome to continue being part of the parade. It is designed to be inclusive and excluding such an important group would send the opposite message.

There’s a question mark over all this following Pride Toronto’s annual general meeting on Tuesday evening.

Most members there voted to support a list of demands from Black Lives Matter Toronto, including one to ban police from the parade. That was part of BLM’s demands when it briefly halted last year’s parade as part of a protest.

However, Pride Toronto’s newly elected board has yet to weigh in on the issue. And co-chair Aaron GlynWilliams says the group is still considering what to do.

However long it takes them to decide, it would be a mistake for Pride Toronto to ban police from participating in the parade.

The bottom line for Pride Toronto has always been that its events should be inclusive. And that means police officers should be allowed to march alongside the LGBQT community, which, by the way, includes officers.

In fact, when BLM first made its demands known at a sit-in at last summer’s parade one of the first people to respond was Chuck Krangle, a Toronto police constable who is gay. He wrote an open letter to Pride Toronto that concluded: “Exclusion does not promote inclusion.”

He was right. Regardless of BLM’s worthy goals of drawing attention to racism, it is way off course in demanding that Pride Toronto not allow police floats and officers to be part of the parade.

Police participation is important for the LGBQT community, and indeed, for people of colour who are part of it.

As the Star argued after BLM Toronto made its demands known last summer, surely it is to the good that police, both as individuals and as an institution, publicly endorse inclusion and tolerance and develop positive relationships with the communities they are meant to serve.

Pride Toronto should keep this in mind as it grapples with the issue. And it should make sure that police remain welcome at the parade, both as protectors and as full participants.

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