A raucous and aggressive group of gays and lesbians voted at the Pride AGM Tuesday night to capitulate to Black Lives Matter (BLM) Toronto and ban police from marching or participating in future parades.

But asked after the vote whether Pride Toronto still welcomes the free police security offered to the yearly parade and other events, board co-chair Alica Hall told me “of course.”

(In 2016, Toronto taxpayers subsidized Pride with $512,000 worth of free police security. That figure does not include the cost of pay-duty police, which is subject to privacy laws.)

Although the BLM demands — made when they disrupted the July 3 Pride parade with a 30-minute sit-in — were not on the AGM agenda, it took less than 10 minutes for a group of self-described “white butch dykes” to sabotage the meeting and insist the demands be added as the top item.

When the meeting chairman valiantly tried to explain that changing the agenda was out of order because proper notice had not been given, the group — led by Gwen Bartleman and Cami Chisholm — challenged the chair and presented their motion to the crowd of nearly 400 asking them to vote on the eight demands.

Those demands ask Pride Toronto in large part to commit to more money for black programming in the parade and to hire more black staff at their headquarters.

By far, the most contentious is the final demand that all police floats and booths be removed from future Pride parades and other events.

“It is disrespectful and problematic not to allow conversation about the racism inherent in Pride Toronto,” Bartleman said before the vote. “We should take the power back in our community, that’s reasonable and revolutionary.”

“This needs to be discussed ... This is our organization,” added Chisholm, to boos and shouting from the crowd at the meeting chairman and cries that Pride Toronto “deliberately” tried to keep the BLM issue off the agenda.

Chisholm said she was particularly incensed with the Toronto police for recently targeting gay men having sex in Etobicoke’s Marie Curtis park.

She said gay men are “families too” and their use of the public space is as legitimate as anyone else’s.

When a gentleman suggested they were there to vote for a new board and hear the financial results for 2016 — and not to be hijacked by BLM — he was accosted with shouts of “white privilege.”

Prior to the meeting — which started 20 minutes late and was running an hour behind because of the BLM vote — outgoing co-chairman Aaron GlynWilliams told me it would be new era of democracy with five new board members to be voted in.

He said he hoped people would be pleasantly surprised with the progress they’ve made since the summer — which was dominated by not just the BLM issue but the resignation of executive director Mathieu Chantelois amid allegations he’d engaged in abusive and racist language and had sexually harassed Pride staff.

He also said a new executive director would be in place by month’s end.

GlynWilliams insisted a ban on police participation in the parade was never on the table. But that was before the vote, of course.

SLevy@postmedia.com