Free to be, well, stupid

Editorial

Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford, took heat for cooling off at his family’s summer retreat over the Canada Day long weekend, rather than participating in the city’s gigantic Pride Parade.

Choosing to be with his family in cottage country, rather than with hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians and their allies, Ford invited the rage of many. Among typical comments was the suggestion that Ford should be at the parade because people like him still exist, and the assertion that the parade is, for a mayor, part of the job.

In the end, Ford let his priorities speak for themselves. Voters will remember, or they won’t, and the whole matter will remain a sideshow in the greater (not always gay, but always colorful) parade of politics.

This is the second year in which politics, narrowly defined, have erupted as a distraction to the Toronto Pride parade. Last year, the city threatened to withdraw funding for the event (about one-third of the budget) because of the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). This year, that group appeared to try and smooth things over by voluntarily agreeing not to participate, but one of the mayor’s closest allies took his video camera to the Dyke March the night before the main parade event and what his camera captured, he says, is reason for the city to review its funding this year.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti captured images of participants and bystanders wearing T-shirts and carrying signs with such slogans as “Israeli apartheid” and “Boycott Israeli products.” Some were chanting, “We’re sexy! We’re hot! Israeli apartheid’s not!”

Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion. At least, that has generally been the case in Canada. And, the entire issue of anti-Israel groups participating in Pride parades is a matter of the most basic rights of free expression, as we’ve expressed in these pages numerous times, as recently as last week. There is no need to protect the right for people to express ideas with which everyone agrees. We need to protect the right for the most intellectually cutting-edge thinkers with ideas that may run contrary to the mainstream but are well worth contemplating, as well as the right for those thinkers with the most stupid, ideologically blinded, self-defeating ideas out there.

We do not need to go over again the hypocritical insanity of gay or lesbian people devoting themselves to attacking Israel, a country surrounded by places where coming out can be a death sentence carried out by the victim’s family or by the victim’s government. But, even though we don’t follow QuAIA’s logic, and we definitely don’t agree with its message, the suggestion that Pride parades should be free from politics, which is what Mammoliti argued this week, is ludicrous.

The proper response to the presence of ridiculous ideas is the louder expression of reasonable ideas. Last year, when they heard that QuAIA would be participating in Vancouver’s Pride Parade, Hillel students joined in, bringing along many people, including rabbis and representatives of many Jewish communal agencies, with messages that were gay-positive, in keeping with the purpose of the event – and they received huge ovations all along the parade route. This year, they will do it again. Whether any anti-Israel groups will participate this July 31 remains to be seen. But you can bet that any politician with any ambition will be there.

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