LGBTQ Issues – Page 3 – The Hungover Pundit

Police and Trust

It’s been a disheartening couple of days in progressive Hamilton politics. First, Hamilton Police Chief Eric Girt went on CHML’s Bill Kelly Show and gave an absolutely appalling interview which featured the chief, when asked about the HPS’ relationship with the LGBTQ+ community, promoting and supporting the worst sort of homophobic stereotypes of queer people. It’s just… wow. If you care to listen — and I admit that I couldn’t get through the whole segment — the relevant portion of the interview starts about 22:45 if you click the link above, but his comments referenced public sex, pedophilia and the rather asinine complaint that police are actually quite tolerant because they even protect demonstrators that have signs “that say Eff The Police.”

The response from the LGBTQ+ community was immediate, loud, and justifiably upset. Chief Girt has since issued a patently insincere “apology” which notably failed to include any substantive commitment to doing better, just the usual — and it has become routine by now — increasingly hollow claim that the HPS is committed to repairing the relationship with the LGBTQ+ community.

I’m going to repeat myself here but I think it bears repeating: Any attempt to repair that relationship is going to require a genuine action. To start: dropping all charges against the Pride defenders. Arrests of the actual violent hate group members which attacked Hamilton’s Pride. A genuine and sincere apology to the LGBTQ+ community for deliberately withholding police protection from Pride. And, it’s become clear, the resignation of Police Chief Eric Girt who has not only failed in his professional duty to an absurd degree but who clearly holds homophobic and transphobic prejudices that have no place in a modern police force.

We cannot move forward when it’s obvious that the police chief lacks the slightest amount of respect for or understanding of the LGBTQ+ community.

Working In Solidarity

It was another chaotic weekend in Hamilton as hate groups once again took over the forecourt at Hamilton City Hall. This time it wasn’t the Yellow Vests, whose dwindling numbers have scattered around the city in increasingly ill-attended and ineffective demonstrations, but instead the Soldiers of Odin & their co-nouns the Wolves of Odin.

At around eleven on Saturday morning word came out over various social media platforms that a large group of Nouns of Odin had showed up in their branded leather BDSM bottoming-vests, and were acting aggressively toward the small number of No Hate in the Hammer counter-protesters, including women and children. Officers from Hamilton Police Service were present, of course, but multiple reports state they concentrated more on herding the No Hate crowd into a corner than actually policing aggressive and violent neo-Nazis, who were allowed to freely move among the anti-hate counter-protesters, to the detriment of order and safety.

The social media callout included an urgent request for more counter-protesters to make their way to City Hall and the community began to turn out almost immediately, including, and very much to her credit, Ward 1 councillor Maureen Wilson, who left a family event on Locke Street in order to attend at the forecourt. (My spouse and I considered driving into the city, but it’s an almost hour-long trip each way and we assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that we’d not have been able to make it in time to contribute.)

ACAB

It’s been a very busy Labour Day weekend in Ontario, especially on the anti-hate activism front. The ARC collective has put together an excellent summary, so I’ll just link to it here rather than re-cap it, but there is one thing that isn’t listed in that summary because the news just came out this morning: Hamilton is permitting infamous white nationalist and Holocaust-denier Paul Fromm to address city council on the issue of “free speech.”

Fromm, you may remember, has been repeatedly banned from Parliament Hill in order to — and this is a direct quote — “to preserve the dignity and integrity of the House.” And yet, Hamilton City Council sees fit to grant this literal Nazi the privilege of addressing council complaining that racists and homophobes might be denied their free speech.

That’s Fromm on the right, in the White Pride World Wide t-shirt. Charming.

That’s right. A neo-Nazi gets to address council to complain that a plan to prevent violent hate groups from using city space is a “Free Speech issue.” Hell, it’s not even a plan yet, city council has been dragging it’s damn feet on the whole issue all summer while the Yellow Vests and the Whichever-Nouns-of-Odin have been demonstrating, threatening and occasionally assaulting counter-protesters… often with the apparent support and assistance of the Hamilton Police Service.

Christianity and Hate

Another week, another counter-protest in Hamilton, complete with Yellow Vest fascist fuckery on a variety of levels, including a yellow-vester attacking three anti-fascist protesters, police inaction, my being called “faggot” and “cocksucker” by one of the so-called “christian” contingent and — interestingly — Yellow Vest leader Justin Long making a speech denouncing racism and homophobia and singling out noted homophobic demonstrator Lily, in the same vein as his rambling wall of text announcement on Facebook last Friday.

Basically, being called a racist and homophobic fascist hurts his feelings and contributes to a media climate where the Yellow Vesters are viewed as fascists, so Long claims they won’t be racist anymore and everyone needs to stop being mean because that makes you the real fascists. And he can’t be a racist because he has a Jamaican girlfriend. And also American History X fits in there somewhere as well.

Insert derisive noise here.

I’m not going to bother to analyze Justin Long’s statements, because I genuinely doubt he’s sincere. And even if he is sincere, words are cheap; I’ll cling to my skepticism until I see some real action on the part of the Yellow Vests to reform their membership. And I won’t be holding my breath, even because the most cursory glance at the public pages of Yellow Vests Canada shows that nothing has changed: Their public pages are still full of racist, Islamophobic and homophobic comments, along with the usual torrent of abuse directed at the Prime Minister. God knows what the private pages are saying.

No Hate In the Hammer Reportback, Part I

Alright, it’s been three days since the No Hate In the Hammer counter-rally (and the Tower’s legal-support tattoo fundraiser) and frankly, it’s taken me this long to process the day. Or rather, to begin to process, because goddamn. This has also turned out to be a super-long post, so I’m going to split it into two parts for this week. Today’s post will be my account of the day, warts and all. The analysis of events will come later.

As I wrote last Friday, I’d intended to go down to Hamilton and participate in The Tower‘s tattoo fundraiser: I had an idea on what new ink I wanted and it was for a cause I supported; fundraising for the Pride Defenders who’ve been arrested by the Hamilton cops who’d rather go after anarchists and anti-fascists than their hate-group buddies. We arrived about fifteen minutes before the door was scheduled to open (and about thirty minutes before it actually did) and the lineup literally stretched around the corner. Before I even got in the door one of the artists was booked solid for the day. I was fortunate enough to get a 14:30 appointment time with Kevin from Community Ink Tattoos, who’d made the long trip up from London in order to help with the charity event. Shortly after I made my appointment, the other two artists were booked solid and the organizers started putting people on the wait-list. (Note to The Tower: Do more of these. Inexpensive, high-quality ink from amazing artists? It’ll take an awful lot of these events to saturate the activist market.)

With a few hours to kill, my spouse and I realized we’d be able to attend the No Hate In The Hammer counter-rally against the Yellow Vest hate group after all.