Art, science and love.

I missed the Center for Inquiry Leadership Conference this year… My sister was in town and it was pride weekend. But…I did not actually end up going to a lot of pride this year, just a bit. Friday night my sister, a few of her friends, John, Allen and me all went to Fly. It was packed, hot and sweaty. We wouldn’t have gotten in (HUGE line) but by dumb luck we ended up asking the right person directions on how to get there ending up in the VIP line. Inside there were super buff half naked gay men all over - which I would usually love. However it was so freaking busy you literally couldn’t, breath in most areas, go pee without someone watching or move an inch on the dance floor without getting elbowed all over your body. It was like a Streetlight Manifesto concert, only with more sequence. We mostly stayed in the basement and danced the night away to BritBrit and Gaga then made a visit to McDonalds - an inevitable event when with the two Kish sisters.

I skipped out on the pride festivities on Saturday night and saw a movie - but today I went to the Center for Inquiry to meet up with Emily and a few others to join in on the big event - the gay pride parade. I didn’t actually make it through to the parade (I started feeling *really* sick…mono?…ugh), but I did stand around waiting in the parade line for it to start for over an hour. During that hour I saw what anyone would expect to see… Transvestites that looked like a Fruit of the Loom commercial, a naked rendition of Elvis, at least 8 Michael Jacksons and a few naked 60+ year old men with cock rings of various colors and shapes.

Since I was feeling sick I wasn’t really all up in the whole screaming and dancing and smiling thing, so instead I just stood, watched and observed. My observations can be summed up in these four points:

1. Some people are damned hypocritical. We were all wearing t-shirts that said “Atheist Pride” with a big rainbow flag behind the words. In addition we had a big banner that said “Atheist Pride”…banner:

Thanks to Roy for doing the banner, despite the fact it sort of looks like their doing a “Heil Hitler”…………

Anywho…We ended up getting put between Kijiji and some homosexual version of alcoholics anonymous (who, for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to as “the gay sober guys” despite the amount of nicotine and caffeine they were all sucking back). The gay sober guys saw our shirts and automatically started to laugh. Soon after they finished laughing their gay and sober leader announced that they had a new chant… “We don’t need a whiskey sour, because we’ve got a higher power!” and then laughed and laughed and laughed. This became their new favorite chant to scream out. Every time someone new joined their group to do the parade, we would see them get a whisper in the ear, us get a pointed finger and then BAM the whiskey sour chant. So, there we were… Atheists coming out to support and be apart of the pride festivities. We were there to show our appreciation for the emancipation of the homosexual lifestyle and these gay sober guys decide it would be fun to mock and make fun of us. It’s interesting how quickly people forget how crappy it feels to be made fun of and feel like the odd man out. Preeeeetty lame, gay sober guys, preeeeetty lame.

2. It is one big. freckin’. party. When the pride festivities began they were part of an overall attempt at activism and acceptance for the gay community. Now that the gay community is accepted (in Toronto) - it’s just one big party. I’m not really all up in that. Pride would be better if it were not totally devoid of any sort of intellectual stimuli or activity. There could be education seminars on HIV/AIDs, same sex unions, safe sex talks, lectures on different gay issues around the world… any number of things. But instead it has become an excuse to drink from Friday at 5 pm until Monday at 3 am while being naked, loud or sparkly (or any combination of the three). It’s really great to celebrate the fact that they’ve been liberalized, but there could be activities that didn’t involve Jack Daniel and meeting everyone’s Prince Albert.

3. It perpetuates a lot of stereotypes. I’m not gay, but I have a lot of gay friends. At least 3 of these friends do not attend pride. They want nothing to do with pride. And more than anything they get fuming mad when their lifestyle is associated with what happens at pride. On top of this I know countless numbers of people who only have the view of gay people as they are seen on Church and Wellesley on the last weekend of June. This is not a good thing. Gay men and women are not all sparkly, partying, crazy, naked, inebriated people. I really think this ties in with my last point. The gay community is given this stereotype by a lot of people as being super fun - but if there were other activities it might tone down this stereotype (might, but probably not). I don’t know how to fix it. I just know that it is a problem that my uncle thinks my best friend is irresponsible, promiscuous and immature because of what he has seen at pride.

4. Holy commercialization batman. Toronto makes SO MUCH MONEY from pride. …And after buying a spot in the parade line, I now know why. It costs hundreds of dollars for corporate companies to even just walk in the parade. It costs thousands to get a float. To get a really BIG logo in the parade (without getting kicked out of it) it’s more thousands of dollars. The bars get crowded, cramped and stay open later than they are supposed to, pulling in more money. There are street vendors, sold out hotels, packed restaurants… even H&M was sold out of all male, size small, t-shirts. When we asked about the issue the sales associates answer was “We always sell out of smalls during pride”. Money Money Money. No wonder Toronto plays their pride up so much. It’s one of the biggest simulators of the economy here - and really… it takes so little effort to put on. Bizarre.

Anyway - it was fun. Everyone had fun. I wasn’t there for long, but for the time I was there it was fun. Next year we’ll keep a few things in mind:

- bring the “There’s probably no God” banner so people will recognize us
- bring WAY more people and advertise a lot more
- remind Transnational NOT to hold the Student Leadership Conference on the same weekend!!!!
- bring candy and condoms to hand out
- wear more sparkly clothes
- music.music.music

It was a good learning experience, and thanks to Em for putting it all on. Happy Pride!