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WHEN WAS THE FIRST GAY PRIDE PARADE IN TORONTO FULL
MORE: Conservatives use Pride parades to redefine the Absolute Bare MinimumĪ ban on men who have sex with men from donating blood continues to exist under the Trudeau government despite the Liberals promising a full end to it in both their 20 election campaigns. Despite a number of promises to end discriminatory policies, the government led by Justin Trudeau has made little progress since his election in 2015. It was a move that was emblematic of his first-term “sunny ways” approach to politics he pledged to shift the Overton window and make public shows of support for minority groups as if it were the new normal for Canadian politicians. Justin Trudeau made international headlines when he became the first sitting Canadian prime minister to march in a Pride parade in 2016. Even in a rare year where Pride parades are not taking place as a result of COVID-19, they continue to be politicized in superficial ways. What was once a middle finger to society’s rigid sexual and gender conventions has now become a sanitized opportunity for those in power to perform support for the LGBTQ2+ community while continuously failing to use that power to enact real progress. Uniformed cops, politicians and corporations have inserted themselves into Pride parades over the years, establishing themselves as false staples of the institution along the way. That’s an adage fervently shared within the queer community - one that conjures a sense of unity in the face of political oppression, a connection to a generation of elders wiped out by AIDS, and a reminder that the fight for LGBTQ2+ equality is not over.īut Pride’s riotous essence has been obscured in recent years by the presence of the very institutions that have always been the queer community’s most dedicated oppressors. Pride was, is, and will always be a riot. KC Hoard is a freelance journalist whose work has been published in the Globe and Mail, National Post, Xtra and Broadview.