oh toronto pride, so not.. proud.

a storm is brewing over toronto pride that is threatening to rain on *some* people's parade.

pride toronto released its terms and conditions for the 2010 pride events/parade and it includes groups participating in the pride parade and dyke march having their signs approved by pride toronto.

in their press release co-chair jim cullen wrote that all messages of participating groups must "support the theme of the 2010 festival: celebrating 30 years of pride in toronto."

apparently this new policy is aimed at curbing hate speech at pride.

according to tracey sandilands, the executive director of pride toronto:

"the real purpose of this is to ensure that if someone turns up with real hate messaging - which has happened before in the history of pride toronto - that the mechanisms are in place to remove them and we don't all stand helplessly by. its not about preventing freedom of speech at any time. it's about being proactive to ensure the measures are in place to protect everyone that takes part and everyone that comes to watch."

when i first read that i was like, bitch please. you think someone is going to show up at PRIDE and spew hate, and the millions of participants are going to stand "helplessly by"? of course the pride committee needs to be mindful of hate speech filtering through their process, but don't they remember how hate speech is a crime and how they are not police?

and the terms and condition already have a section dealing with hate.

7) Messaging in the Parade : a) The Applicant will not present any messages - verbal, written, in imagery or otherwise - that promotes or condones violence or the incitement of hatred as defined in the Criminal Code of Canada.

so, if someone is presenting a message of hatred then all of the billion volunteers, security, and police officers can kick them out. so if i show up with a sign that says "god hates fags" then i'm guessing some intrepid volunteer will ask me to leave.

so what's the point of this new policy when there's an already existing no tolerance policy for hate speech/signage/messages?

a lot of people, and i happen to be one of them, are pretty sure it has everything to with pride 2009 and queers against israeli apartheid(quaia). --which you can read more about here--

last year reports went out stating that pride might try to prevent quaia from marching in the parade--afterwards pride backpedaled and said they only wanted quaia to register before marching(let's try to ignore for a moment how problematic it is to have to register for this parade...).

quaia's involvement in pride has drawn a lot of heat from zionist groups, however, and i'd guess with the majority that a big reason for the new policy as well as the bullying of quaia was/is to protect corporate sponsors who are affiliated or who ARE zionist groups.

in the xtra article that first discussed the new policy, gary kinsman(one of the founders of the original pride day in toronto as well as a former active member of the simon nkodi anti-apartheid committee) stated:

"i'm really quite disturbed about this...that [pride has] new types of criteria that can be used to bar people — rather than welcoming people into our movements to express their political views, as long as they're not expressing hatred or bigotry, it's a bit frightening."

in response to the new policy a facebook group was started by jeffrey andrus and rick telfer called "don't sanitize pride: free expression must prevail" and it already has 931 members.

i asked rick how he would respond to people who want to know what's wrong with trying to prevent hate speech at pride and he said that he agrees that there's nothing wrong with it, "so long as hate is clearly defined in keeping with canadian law." he pointed to hate crime law
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/hatecrimes/) , noting that "the process is simple, and there's no room for misuse or abuse."

so what's going on here?? is this an attempt by pride toronto to "sanitize" pride events? to de-politicize pride? to keep corporate sponsors happy?

it'll be interesting to see if the pressure on pride results in them retracting the policy or not. there is no "one" approved message for pride but over the years the queer community has seen pride parades in toronto become less and less diverse, less representative of the muli-facetted nature of the community, and more corporate driven than is comfortable. apparently we're only allowed to celebrate our pride if we're naked and we have a corporate sponsorship painted on our bodies.

(photo by emily mcdonald)

(we contacted tracey sandilands but have received no comment from her.)

the funniest protest sign of 2009? yeah it is!

so whoever compiled the top viral videos of 2009 on the huff post is kind of an idiot for including soulja boy, but whoever is moderating the funniest protest signs of 2009 is a genius.

we submitted a photo from the LOL/JK protest(which you can read about, all over again, HERE) and it was accepted!

that means that you can go to the slideshow and vote on the picture, making it the funniest protest sign of 2009.

why is this important? because 2009 was the year of rolling back gay rights in canada and the U.S.

unconfronted homophobia, however, isn't what 2009 was all about and it's important to showcase how creative and awesome the queer community is.

way better than the homophobes, that's for sure. and also way hotter than the homophobes.

so go vote, because pointing out how stupid anti-gay "activists" are is probably the most important thing you'll do on a saturday anyways.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/the-funniest-protest-sign_n_292342.html?slidenumber=VqO%2BckU%2FTmk%3D

we will out LOL you...

here at pamphleteers we love a lot of things. we also think that most things are the best idea ever. sometimes you see something that is a culmination of all of the things you love most and that's what we saw last night.

these are pictures from london(ontario) pride which, like many pride festivities across the country and world, have annual homophobe protesters who want to rain on the parade-literally.

apparently these protesters, whose signs are totally boring, arrive at pride every year and pronounce their hatred of all things homosexual. jesus, apparently, is not fond of the gays and basically we're all going to hell.

it's usually common practise to ignore these kinds of protesters especially consider they aren't really protesters at all, they're just hateful freaks who think that hatred is a political issue, it's hard to engage with them because they hate you and only want to yell at you about burning flesh and all that.

that's why this counter-protest is completely genius:

the "LOL" and "J/K" signs were made up by activists jeffrey andrus, rick telfer, and andrew brett right before the pride parade.

according to jeffrey andrus, one of the activists involved: "the reaction to the signs was totally positive in the crowd. we wanted to take a negative situation and turn it around in a non-violent, non aggressive way and i think that we were very effective at doing that."

agreed. not only are their signs hilarious but their effectiveness comes from the fact that they completely cancel out the message of the homophobic signs by making them a silly internet meme.

apparently before they realized that these men were actually protesting their hate signs one of the older men in the background complimented the signs and told them "good for you guys" because they thought they were there to support them. after they realized that the signs weren't there in support and were actually overtaking their own protest this man went up and allegedly kicked one of the young men holding an "lol"/"jk" sign.

that's right, he kicked him! these homophobic protesters should be kicking themselves because instead of making some kind of anti-gay conversion impact they're just going to be remembered as an Lolcat.

a complaint was made to the police but the kicker just said that the signs made him so angry that he couldn't help himself and so the police apparently gave the pride participants with the "lol"/"jk" signs shit for... wait for it... ENTICING the homophobes.

we all know that it doesn't take a lot to "entice" a "straight" homophobe, a few foot taps under the bathroom stall door and they're yours , but honestly london police? this is a legitimate complaint about physical assault during a completely peaceful protest.

why not ask the homophobic protesters to clear out since they obviously can't control their limbs? why support their violence?

it is the opinion of this pamphleteer that all too often homophobic protesters get away with their bullshit, which often includes acts of physical violence. why? because they're often older people? they're usually white people? upper/middle class people? if pride participants walked up to these homophobes and kicked them because they were so angered by their signs they surely would have been arrested.

the beauty of this protest is that these activists didn't need to use physical violence to get their message across and they didn't let these nasty homophobes get away with the usual bullshit.

we posted awhile ago about protests in front of the mormon church and included a video of michael moore's segment on protesting sodomy laws

this protest is in the same vein. using creative and peaceful means these activists threw a wrench in the homophobe's plans by just being present. by making it more difficult for homophobes to just stand there with disgusting signs, maybe protests like these will start to make them reconsider such tactics and realize that if they want to do things like stand on street corners, picket funerals, try to take away rights, or just condemn a lifestyle then they're going to have to come up with a new strategy because we're on to them and in the long run our collective awesomeness will prevail over their dull and tired hatred.

story covered on london fuse . ca : "pride protesters pwned"