Pride 2019 Part 2 – Under Attack

Last week I wrote a blog post about titled Pride 2019 about the pressures on LGBTQ Pride celebrations this year and the context in which they occur. Near the end of that post I stated “So here we are, partway though Pride 2019. We’re here, we’re queer, we’re commodified and divided and we’re under attack by religious bigots, the alt-right and literal fucking Nazis… and we’re supposed to rely on the same police who have repeatedly broken the trust of our community to protect us.”

Yeah, I really hate being right. Four days after I wrote that, Hamilton Ontario’s Pride celebration was attacked. On the morning of Saturday June 15th 2019 a group of extreme-right wing religious protesters met up with a group of the neo-fascist Yellow Vests and the neo-Nazi Canadian Nationalist Party members who have been congregating at Hamilton Ontario’s City Hall every Saturday and then marched on the Pride celebration at Gage Park with the clear intent of violently disrupting the proceedings.

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Pride 2019

As anyone who’s bothered to read the About The Author section of this blog knows, I’m an LGBTQ person. Specifically, I’m a bisexual man, albeit a married and monogamous one (the frustrating and insulting issue of bi erasure is going to be the subject of a future post) so June is always an interesting time for me — because it’s Pride Month.

Now, way back when I was a baby queer, I remember Pride as being a single long weekend. Lots of music and dancing on Church Street in Toronto, a big long march down Yonge Street, drinking back at the Village and so forth. The parade floats were shabby, most people walked (well, danced), the rainbow banners and whatnot were all homemade or self-funded or put up by businesses, not the city. It was generally regarded as a counter-culture event and there was an intoxicating sense of defiance in the air: Pride wasn’t just about being proud, it was about having the audacity not to be ashamed.

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