Mayor’s snub of Pride gives bigots cover

Marcus Gee, Opinion, The Globe and Mail:

Mayor Rob Ford’s unofficial boycott of Pride Week is having a disturbing and predictable effect. It is emboldening the city’s haters. Since he announced he would be skipping the Pride parade to go to the cottage, they have been scurrying into the open like insects from an upturned rock, cheering the mayor for staying away from the “disgusting” spectacle on Yonge Street and jeering leaders of the gay community for urging him to attend.

“I'm so glad that Toronto has a mayor who can ignore that vulgar and obscene event,” said one comment on The Globe and Mail’s online edition. “I think being gay or lesbian is a disease,” a Globe reader said in an e-mail. “The queers have to be flamboyant and in your face, just to prove they are ‘normal,’” wrote a contributor to another newspaper’s comment page. Editors were kept busy deleting many far worse remarks from their web sites.

No one is saying the mayor deliberately whipped up these ugly sentiments, much less that he shares them. But he should have foreseen the damage his snub of Pride could do. Homophobia is an ancient prejudice, still virulent despite the remarkable advances in gay rights of the past few decades. The events of the past week show how swiftly it can resurface.

By boycotting Pride, declining to attend not just the parade but all other Pride events so far, Mr. Ford is sending the opposite message. He is saying that shunning the gay community is acceptable. He is giving the bigots cover to voice their dark resentments. In effect, if not in intent, he is legitimizing hate.

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