An intended march by a Christian group into the heart of Toronto’s gay village Saturday stalled moments after it began when police peacefully separated it from a group of LGBTQ2S activists and supporters, in a showdown that closed major downtown intersections and lasted hours.

Following a rally led by organizer and evangelist preacher David Lynn on Church St, between Front St. and The Esplanade, the Christian group of several hundred people toting signs that read “Civil Rights are for Christians too” and “These are our streets too” started marching north, with a live, amplified band on a trailer pulled by a red pickup truck.

For a moment, the group’s leading banner was of Maxime Bernier and the People’s Party of Canada, until Lynn quickly switched it for one that read “We are Canadian Christians,” and added a Canadian flag.

Toronto’s LGBTQ2S communities were ready for a showdown.

Lynn was arrested in June at the start of pride month for causing a disturbance after attempting to preach in The Village, and is widely viewed by the community as a threat, which accuses him of spreading hate. Lynn is a founding member of Christ’s Forgiveness Ministries, according to the organization’s website. The ministry espouses “radical” preaching with a “global” goal to be on “every major street corner.”

The police were ready for the showdown too. Hundreds of officers were on hand, including members of the public order unit.

The Christian march did not make it even a block. Police had blocked off the large intersection near the St. Lawrence Market, which, to the north up Church St, was lined many rows deep with hundreds of LGBTQ2S activists and supporters, a small number of whom were dressed in black and wore masks.

That group’s lead banner read: “Not in our city — United against hate.”

For several hours, police kept both sides apart, forming a cordon around the intersection, and parking two large vans in front of the Christian group, obscuring each group’s view of the other. Tourists and passersby were able to get through, but through one route only. Then, on a day that was rainy, then not, it rained again, and the crowd of Christians began to thin.

Then it moved to Yonge St, as did a smaller group from the pro-LGBTQ2S side and a fleet of police officers on bikes.

The two sides came to a stand-off at Adelaide St and then again at Richmond St, paralyzing parts of the arterial roads for close to three hours. Shortly before 7 pm, the police forcibly moved the groups apart and the crowds dispersed.

Earlier, Lynn told his crowd people should stop regarding him and the group as haters, and chastised police for stopping them from heading north up Church St, and separating the groups. “This seems like Israel and Palestine,” he said at one point.

A small group of men dressed in black, including one wearing a T-shirt that read “Make Canada Righteous & Godly Again” marched ahead of Lynn and the group, taking video and photos. There were also a couple of men wearing yellow vests. But for the most part, the crowd was made up of families, many of them people of colour, and newcomers to Canada.

A woman who was initially holding one side of the Bernier banner and asked not to be named said her husband is a huge Bernier fan. She said the gay community has too much power, but that “it’s not about hate” from the Christian group, “it's about differences of opinions. It’s about civil rights. It’s about freedom of speech.”

No one stopped anyone from speaking Saturday.

At noon, before the showdown, there was a first in Canada, organizers say, when more than 20 faith leaders, most Christian, gathered together to rally in support of the LGBTQ2S — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirited — communities, and to apologize for decades of harm done in the name of religion.

Dubbed the Unite for Love Rally, and held in the heart of Toronto’s Gay Village, it was attended by community groups, residents and politicians, and was clearly a response to Lynn and his Christian group.

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In addition to faith leaders — including Rev. Jeff Rock of the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, Rev. Cheri DiNovo of Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church and Rev. Alexa Gilmour of Windermere United Church — Toronto Mayor John Tory, former Ontario premier and MPP for Don Valley West Kathleen Wynne with partner Jane Rounthwaite, city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam and other politicians gathered under a grey sky at Barbara Hall Park.

Hundreds came out in the rain, many wearing the colours of the rainbow pride flag. There were young people, and those like Rounthwaite who was around during the 1981 bathhouse raids, and others, like artist and writer Jake Peters, who lived through, and survived HIV and AIDS, while watching friends die.

For younger people, current and recent threats to the communities brought emotions that hadn’t been there before.

Marta Ziemelis of Toronto was one of the younger people there. Before the event even started, she’d spoken to two journalists, something she’d never done before. Afterward, she was surprised by how emotional it was.

“I was not expecting to cry, but I did, in a good way,” said Ziemelis. “I don’t think it’s okay that people can just walk through a neighbourhood and make other people feel unsafe because they don’t like the way they live, and I’m here to support my community.”

Stephen Harvey of Toronto, who met up with Ziemelis at the event and wore a “Proud to be me — Bi-furious” T-shirt, said he came to “be a part of a response to people, and the organizations that do not like us, that want us back in the closet, that want us to be invisible again.”

DiNovo, who opened the event, said in an interview that “we’ve won rights, and we’re not going back. We’re people of faith, and the vast majority of people of faith in this country, be they Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, whatever they are, are LGBTQ inclusive, and guess what, we’re also Queer, we’re not only here, we’re also there.

“That’s our Canadian mosaic, and that’s our Canadian life and the haters are not part of that and the haters represent a small minority of that faith spectrum.”

Tory told the crowd “I am the mayor of all the people, every single person who lives here, I’m their mayor. But, I will not stand shoulder-to-shoulder with, or stand beside, people who are about division and about polarization and about stigmatization and about discrimination.”

The mayor said it was an honour to be there and that the people in the city “are about love, we’re about unity, we’re about understanding, we’re about acceptance. That’s what Toronto is, and that’s who we are, and that’s why I’m here as mayor,” which was met with much applause.

He added that “99.9 per cent of people understand that is what is special about the city, that is what has the world over understanding that our way of life is that kind of positive, accepting, embracing, learning way of life, and may it always be so.”

Wynne, who was raised Christian, said before the event that the thought that Christianity is being “used as a weapon, makes me very angry and I think we have to say it’s not acceptable, and this village, this space, has over the decades become a safe space for everyone, and we can’t let that backslide.”

There’s a “new permission for homophobia and transphobia that have never gone away,” said Wynne. “They’ve always existed but there’s new permission for those to be used against people and I think the other reason is that the church and religion has a lot to answer for in terms of excluding people, but there’s no religion that preaches hatred.”

The noon event ended with the unfurling of a giant rainbow pride flag, carried into the park by hundreds.

Correction - October 1, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version to update a photo caption that misspelled former Ontario premier and MPP for Don Valley West Kathleen Wynne’s surname.