In 2020, Borderland Pride asked the township of Emo, Ont. (pop. 1,300) to proclaim Pride Month and fly the Pride flag. In a 3-2 vote, the council declined. It was a petty decision; Pride proclamations are generally considered pro forma, and Emo’s refusal was a bad look for a township seeking to attract business and newcomers.
In fairness, Emo only had four such requests that year, two of them from Borderland Pride. This was a far cry from the 1990s, when Hamilton and London discriminated against Pride by excluding it from similar resolutions passed for everyone else.
If Borderlands Pride had been smart, it would simply have gone ahead with its celebration, demonstrated support within the community, shamed the council and worked to turf the mayor and unsympathetic councillors at the next municipal election. Instead, it took Emo to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
As Borderlands Pride underlined in an open letter sent to the council in April, this action cost Emo’s taxpayers “tens of thousands of dollars” in legal fees at a time when Emo was “soliciting public donations to keep the lights on at its public library, (and) accepting handouts from the local food bank.” It told Emo that it would agree to a settlement if the township published an apology; gave Borderlands compensation (a lesser amount than what was asked at the tribunal); ordered diversity and inclusion training for its members and agreed to “adopt Pride proclamations in the future without stripping out their 2SLGBTQIA+-affirming language.” Emo declined and went through the full tribunal process instead.
I am a gay man who has fought for LGB and T civil rights since the 1970s; Borderland Pride’s action angers and appalls me. Is there a better way to destroy the public goodwill we worked so long to achieve and feed the populist backlash building from a decade of activist overreach?
Apparently, yes. The tribunal’s adjudicator, Karen Dawson, ruled on Nov. 20 that by voting not to proclaim Pride Month, the township of Emo and its mayor, Harold McQuaker, discriminated against Borderland Pride. She ordered the township to pay the organization $10,000. Further, the mayor was ordered to pay Borderland Pride $5,000 and, along with the township’s chief administrative officer, to take the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s “Human Rights 101” course.
The tribunal’s reasoning for its decision was just as confounding. Back when the township was voting on whether to make a Pride proclamation, the mayor told council, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin … there’s no flags being flown for the straight people.” The tribunal found that this factually accurate statement was discriminatory because it “demonstrated a lack of understanding” of the Pride flag’s importance and was “demeaning and disparaging of the LGBTQ2 community of which Borderland Pride is a member….”
The mayor’s argument that heterosexuals don’t have special recognition is common. In the 70s, our response was, “That’s because it’s Straight Pride Day 365 days a year.” But today, we’re regularly celebrated in every field from politics to finance and the arts, and the Alphabet calendar has more niche days than anyone can remember.
Our inclusion under human rights legislation was especially important in the 20th century. We were fired, denied housing and purged from the civil service and military. We were beaten without impunity, unable to seek protection from police, who mocked and outed us — and even beat us themselves. Those were the kinds of important discrimination cases we brought to newly created federal and provincial human rights commissions.
Similarly, that’s why Toronto’s first proclamation of Pride Day in 1991, and the other civic proclamations that followed, was so important. Conservative politicians and religious leaders of the day fanned hatred against us. They accused us of pedophilia, scapegoated us for the AIDS pandemic and mocked our deaths. Pride proclamations signalled that we were considered valuable community members worthy of equal treatment and respect.
But today, such symbolic support has metastasized into absurdity. Pride has morphed from a day to a season and our claims before human rights commissions are often jawdropping and vexatious. Worse, even in the most outlandish cases, the process is the punishment: Complainants’ costs are paid for regardless of the merit of their case, whereas the accused must foot their own legal bills. The message is clear: Even if innocent, capitulate on accusation or suffer financial pain.
More troubling, tribunals now often use their unelected, unaccountable and quasi-judicial power to impose Orwellian judgements. In this case, a factually accurate comment questioning special treatment for a specific group has resulted in severe financial penalties against a struggling, rural township, and a fine and forced re-education for its mayor and chief administrative officer.
Ultimately, this is about the unilateral power of an unelected, unaccountable government agency to compel speech. Public officials must not be allowed to discriminate against us, but neither should they be forced to proactively support us. In the 21st century, we have full civil rights, including equal marriage and the ability to adopt. It is demeaning to our pride to run to the state when an idiot chooses to be an ass.
In my view, Borderland Pride shamed LGB and T communities by trivializing our historic struggles for equality. It also fed the growing, and understandable, backlash against us. By finding in its favour, the Ontario Human Rights Commission lost sight of its mission, broke public confidence in its legitimacy and provided a counter-productive example of left-wing authoritarianism.
National Post