OP-ED: Radical activists have hijacked Pride with woke, performative excess

Sue-Ann Levy writes, "The organizers of Pride have lost the plot. They’ve turned a celebration of gay rights into a three-ring circus of competing ideologies, mixed messages and false pride."

Source: Facebook

So begins another Pride season in Canada.

In Toronto and its environs, it used to be Pride weekend. Then it became Pride Month.

And now it is Pride season as if the gaiety will never end.

But I’m no longer proud of the annual festival — in the slightest.

For one thing, the hypocrisy of its biggest supporters is beyond all reason.

While Mayor Olivia Chow and her Hamas caucus on council have done nothing to stop the ever-escalating anti-Semitism in Toronto, it seems to escape their comprehension that the very terrorist sympathizers they enable hate gays and lesbians.

But never mind. Since she was elected Chow has used Pride as an excuse to party and recapture her youth in various costumes.

On Tuesday, the flag-raising at City Hall was moved from noon to 5 p.m., I believe, so she could party.

She pranced on the scene dressed in a canary yellow jumpsuit with a yellow boa and promptly danced with a drag queen — an embarrassing excuse for a mayor.

Aside from the fact that most of Canada — and I mean people of all ages — is very accepting of same-sex marriage and my wife and I don’t think twice when we attend events or do all the things a married couple would do, the activists, corporations and businesses keep trying to ram their gay-positivity down our throats.

It’s a far cry from how I felt when I was growing up and had to hide in the closet for 20 years for fear coming out would be career-limiting and I’d be cut off by my family.

We know why corporations like Air Canada, our major banks and retail outlets virtue-signal from the time the clock strikes midnight on June 1.

DINKs (Double Income No Kids) LGBT couples are very lucrative for them, even though many are having families now.

They want our business.

But the activists have a whole different agenda.

Recognizing that they can't get much traction from gay rights anymore, they have transitioned to advocating for trans people and those with any other weird sexual proclivities such as polyamory and two-spirited types. They even advocate for those who claim to be asexuals (the A below)

Thus the new series of alphabets: 2SLGBTQIA+. Or whatever. I refuse to go beyond LGBT.

We have also seen the activists push their Pride progress flag with its special colours for trans, black and Indigenous gay people.

It’s supposed to be more inclusive than the traditional rainbow flag but in reality, suggests some diversity groups are far gayer than others.

Still what really has become a complete turn-off is how mainstream gays, especially those who fought for gay rights in Canada, are now treated with contempt by queer activists.

I hate the word queer, by the way.

Pride Toronto, in fact, has turned into a woke mess run by what appear to be DEI hires/the pronoun set who push their money-losing ideologies and have no clue how to actually run an organization propped up mostly by government funding and sponsorships.

They are the epitome of the expression: Go woke, go broke.

Pride’s audited statement from last year shows that they ended up with a $984,689 deficit despite getting $5.1-million in sponsorships and more than $1-million in government funding.

Perhaps having 20 staff and paying $ 1.5 million in wages and benefits (which works out to $75,000 per staffer on average) contributed to their fiscal problems.

That same statement shows they owe $154,481 on a bank loan and $405,504 on a government loan.

They also signed a long-term lease in a fancy new building on Sterling Ave. that is costing them upwards of $245,000 a year.

You might say they’re living beyond their means.

This year is no exception considering two major sponsors just pulled out — Home Depot and Google.

The parade’s CEO Kojo Modeste — who came from the highly dysfunctional Toronto Community Housing Corporation and appears to be a diversity hire — has complained that could cost them $700,000.

If they’re already in fiscal trouble, I can only imagine what will happen this year. You can only move so many shells around.

But Chow — like the true socialist she is — promised them a $350,000 bailout at the Pride flag raising Monday.

That’s what you do when people can’t manage their money—give them more to squander.

For as I’ve found, fiscal issues over the years have not stopped them from pandering to every crazy ideology, no matter how ill-thought-out.

In 2017, after BLM hijacked the parade they agreed to ban police from marching.

That took its toll on parade attendance and I’m not sure they’ve ever recovered.

Last year a group of 20 dykes — who called themselves the “Coalition Against Pinkwashing” — stopped the parade to protest so-called apartheid Israel (the only democracy with same-sex rights in the Middle East).

Instead of tossing them off the streets, the organizers cancelled the rest of the parade.

Little wonder that some of the major sponsors have pulled out.

I’ve always argued that Pride’s mission is to advocate for gays who have won their freedoms and those who have not.

It’s not supposed to advocate for those equity-seeking groups they believe have been oppressed.

They mouth the words, inclusion, respect, equity, integrity but Pride Toronto and those who associate with the gay agenda have become the very definition of the intolerance shown towards the LGBT community as a whole in the 1970s and 1980s.

Woke politicians like Chow and the radical left purple-haired queers may prop them up. But the vast majority of mainstream gays have walked away.

We don’t need a parade or Drag Queens or beads or other corporate giveaways with the Pride logo on them to feel good about who we are.

There’s no doubt the organizers of Pride have lost the plot.

They’ve turned a celebration of gay rights into a three-ring circus of competing ideologies, mixed messages and false pride.