Rob Ford did not attend the rally at City Hall’s rotunda Monday, but if he was anywhere near the building, he would hear a very loud and very clear message: don’t cut funding to Pride Toronto.
The non-profit group that stages Pride Week every year receives about a quarter of its operation budget from the city.
The very real possibility that Ford and his allies will cut funding the organization at a May 24 Council meeting has sent a chill through the network of groups that provide support services to the city’s queer community. The fear is that if a high profile and lucrative event like Pride is not spared the chopping block, then nothing Toronto’s queer community holds dear is untouchable for this administration.
“Let me be very clear about this,” Pride Toronto co-chair Francisco Alvarez told the hundreds of supporters gathered at City Hall. “If the city does not provide support this year, it’s almost certain that Toronto will lose the opportunity to host World Pride in 2014, and it is certain that Pride Toronto will become insolvent and shut its doors forever.”
To Doug Elliot, a lawyer and queer activist who grew up in Toronto 40 years ago when homosexuality could easily land you behind bars, gutting funding for Pride would be an unconscionable return to the dark ages of intolerance. “This attempt to cut funding Pride is nothing but a deliberate attempt to destroy Pride Toronto,” he said in an impassioned speech. “Well, I have news for our enemies. You cannot destroy Pride, we won’t let you.”
For two hours speaker after speaker took to the podium to declare that Pride was much more than just a parade, it’s a symbol. A flashy, campy, often half-naked beacon declaring to queer youth across the country that they have a home.
Videographer and activist Lali Mohamed said that discovering Pride when he was growing up in isolation in Etobicoke showed him there was a place where he could be himself. A group of students who are struggling against the Toronto Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board to create a Gay-Straight Alliance at St. Joseph’s High School walked on stage to a standing ovation, and said that marching in the parade this year was vital to their cause.
“Pride offers us visibility like no other opportunity,” said Irene Miller of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). “Huge numbers of people come to our booth during Pride Week to talk and ask questions, or take our contact information for ‘someone they know’ who might need to contact us.”
“Bullying still happens, coming out is still hard,” she said. “LGBTQ youth need to see role models. Parents of LGBTQ youth also need to see role models.”
Toronto’s queer advocates are so concerned that funding will be cut for programs like the Hassle Free Clinic, the 519 Community Centre, and HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives that they’ve launched Proud of Toronto, a campaign that’s hoping to head the Ford administration off at the pass by holding rallies like this one.
“There are public consultations going on across the city, and they’re going to look at what is [a core service] and what the city should be funding,” said Doug Kerr of Proud of Toronto. “We’re really concerned that LGBTQ services and HIV/AIDS groups, they’re not going to consider them core services. That’s why we have to do this now.”
Kerr said he had no idea why the city would consider cutting funding to an event that brings in $100 million of tourist revenue every year.
Judging by the faces in the crowd, it’s tough to determine how city councillors will vote on May 24. There were notable absences from the rally held a stone’s drop from councillors’ offices, including the mayor and his brother Doug Ford. Pro-Pride councillors like Kristin Wong-Tam, Gord Perks, Mike Layton, and Adam Vaughan were in attendance, as was Ana Bailao, who has at times allied herself with Ford.
The motion that will go before council next week ostensibly hinges on whether or not Pride will sufficiently conform to the city’s anti-discrimination policies. Last year’s inclusion of a group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid led Pride’s opponents to claim that the parade was promoting hate speech against Jews, but that argument has largely been rendered moot by a city staff report that found the term “Israeli apartheid” does not violate anti-discrimination policies, and a promise from QAIA not to march this year. Still, that might not be enough to dissuade Ford from filing Pride under “gravy” and effectively shutting down the event next year.
Today at noon the rainbow flag will be raised over City Hall to mark the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. Toronto’s LGBTQ groups will be hoping it’s more than just an empty gesture.
