Quote:
Originally Posted by Pointman
Showing off that you are proud to be gay is like showing off that you are proud to be white. I'm sure if whites of Canada would ask for a White People Pride parade to celebrate that they happened to be born white and they are enjoying being white, they would be denied. Same with gay parades.
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This is patently false.
There have been several occurrences of the very thing, and they have never been denied the right to march and have in fact been protected by police from hostility and physical confrontation coming from groups dubbed as "anti-racism" groups.
Why is it not only allowed, but the police actively protect the participants? Because they have the right to say what they want, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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Now, ultimately, such parades are a failure in contrast to events Gay Pride, or say Carifest (celebration of Caribbean culture) because of the low turnout and that inevitably the demonstrations tend to be less about why it is so great to be white, and more about how everyone else ought not to be proud about who they are, be it black, Indian, gay, or handicapped. They are allowed to happen, but the vast majority, if anything, simply scoffs at this message or ignores it completely.
This is the way it should be. The white pride parade participants should be free to put forth their message (so long as they don't instigate physical violence), and the rest of us can (also non-violently) judge it on its merits. Historically, this has resulted in 0.00001% of the population being convinced that their message has merit and they will join the parade the next year, another 0.001% of the population actively participates in a counter-demonstration and the rest of us simply dismiss the whole thing and carry on with our lives.
Another thing - there is no straight pride parade so far as I'm aware, but that doesn't mean there can't be, or that it would be against the law. It's just that no straight people has thought to gather a group of people and do it. That old chestnut is one of my favourite "arguments" coming from homophobes when speaking to the existence of Gay Pride events. They will say
"Why isn't there a straight pride parade?"
or
"If there isn't a straight pride parade, there shouldn't be a gay pride parade"
These arguments are trotted out all the time, just look at newspaper comments sections (if you dare) on stories covering stories related to gay pride events. I've even had those very words spoken to me by various acquaintances or co-workers over the years. It's like it's an extremely rare sentiment. The thing is, no one but themselves are stopping them from creating such an event, and why do they think that gays ever had to wait for some arbitrary other group of people to have such an event before they went ahead with theirs? Actually, to me it's very telling that, despite there existing enough people who take these arguments to heart, they haven't created a "straight pride parade," if for no other reason than to simply mock the existence of gay pride parades. Seems there's no great demand within society for one.
All of this discussion is very timely, by the way. Calgary's annual Pride parade commences in a couple hours. September 1st at noon.