“Gay Pride Week” in Toronto just ended last weekend with a parade attracting over 1,000,000 people! The parade marks the end one of the largest annual festivals for the Gay, Lesbian and Trans-gendered.
There are now Gay Pride Celebrations all over the world; from Sydney to Sao Paulo; Chicago to Calcutta.
In Toronto Pride Week is a fun and festive occasion; but it wasn’t aways so. This is the 28th edition of Pride Week in Toronto. This vibrant festival that actually began as a protest march against police raids on “gay bathhouses”.
As recently as 1990, the then Mayor of Toronto refused to sign a proclamation declaring “Pride Week”. This year, parade participants included the current Toronto Mayor.
Pride celebrations take place the world over and usually in late June. This is to commemorate to the 1969 “Stonewall Riots” in New York City that were in response to the continuous police harassment of homosexuals.
That was the same year that a confidant and forward thinking Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, made his famous statement: “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” He then acted to have homosexuality decriminalized.
This year recruitment booths were set up at the festival by, at least four regional police forces and the Canadian Armed Forces. You see, at Toronto’s Pride Festival “Don’t ask and don’t tell” is not what is required or even asked.
Now what they are saying is you are what you are and you will have the same rights and opportunities as anyone else – no more, no less and as it should be.