It’s Pride Week in Greater Sudbury, and as someone who came of age in the 1990s, it’s incredible to see how the LGBTQ+ community has gone from persecuted and marginalized to embraced and normalized by the majority of mainstream society.
At Pride events, communities across Canada celebrate the strides we’ve made together as a society when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights. The progress is just amazing.
That progress was hammered home to me in a very personal way in recent years. A longtime friend of mine, someone I’ve known for more than 20 years, transitioned fairly recently.
Like everyone who transitions, Michelle (not her real name as I didn't seek her permission to mention her) is a courageous woman. She’s also smart, tough and stylish as hell.
When Michelle announced on Facebook (the great Coming Out facilitator) her transition, I read with some trepidation the flood of comments that ensued. I was nervous for her. I didn’t need to be. The comments from her friends and family were so supportive, so understanding, so positive.
It reinforced for me, in a small but meaningful way, how we’ve all changed. Michelle transitioned, and in a way, those who love her had transitioned, too ... to a new way of thinking.
The battle for LGBTQ+ rights was hard fought. There were many, many casualties along the way. But it is something worth fighting for, of that you can be sure. And it’s a fight that continues in some quarters as there are still battles to be won, but the LGBTQ+ community is no longer fighting that fight alone. Society is with you.
I know the society I’ll be handing over to my children will be one that is more tolerant and more inclusive than the one my parents handed to me, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
And this is why I’m so dismayed by the decision local Pride Week organizers took to OK police participation in Pride events, as long as they leave their uniforms at home.
With all due respect to the LGBTQ+ community, I don’t understand. To see Sudbury follow suit with cities like Ottawa and Toronto in banning police uniforms seems a step backward — here, in Toronto, in Ottawa and in every community where similar decisions are made.
It’s a decision that ignores decades of evolution in the relationship between police and the gay community. There’s no better evidence of this evolution than the fact police want to march alongside you, want to show their support.
A testament to that new and better relationship is that Police Chief Paul Pedersen approached Pride Week organizers to ask how they felt about police participation. Imagine that, if you will. Police used to be the enforcers of oppressive, bigoted, intolerant laws against homosexuality. Today, you have the police chief asking the community how it feels.
I can’t imagine how members of the Greater Sudbury Police Service who are also members of the LGBTQ+ community feel about it. Where does this decision leave them? What message does it send?
I understand how some members of the community are wary of police. I get it. I really do. Historically, the relationship has been unequal. There was a time police were tasked with persecuting LGBTQ+ people.
But those days are over. Intolerant officers are on the outs. That police want to march with the community, demonstrates that they’re with you, that they’re on your side.
Welcoming uniformed officers to Pride is an opportunity for the LGBTQ+ community to demonstrate the tolerance and acceptance that was so long denied them.
Allowing police to march in GSPS-branded apparel seems a weak compromise. It's also slightly confusing. If they can be identified as police, I'm not sure I understand the opposition to the uniform.
What better signal that a page of history has been turned then for the LGBTQ+ community and the police to march side by side — in all their finery, in uniform — as one group? To deny police the right to march as police is to meet an injustice with another injustice. You can’t fight prejudice with more prejudice.
Let police march with you in their uniforms. Let them show their support. After all, today they’re marching for you where once they marched against you.
Happy Pride.
Mark Gentili is the managing editor of Sudbury.com and Northern Life.
