As has been widely reported, on February 19 the Greater Essex County District School Board voted to require all of its elementary schools to the fly the rainbow flag throughout gay Pride Week. No doubt the little blighters from kindergarten to grade 6 will be expected to salute the flag from the steps each time they enter and leave the school building, and from the playground whenever they take a break from bullying their gay and transgendered classmates at recess. Let’s hope that some brave young ideological non-conformist takes a knee, and see if the liberal media fetes him in the way they heroized Colin Kaepernick.
Saluting the flag thrice daily won’t be enough for the gay patriots, of course. According to Campaign Life Coalition, “further indoctrination often takes place, wherein the school requires the entire student body to come outside and gather around the gay pride flag, to celebrate homosexuality, transgenderism, and other sexual identities pushed by the LGBT lobby.” Apparently the progressive movement’s noble desiderata of “inclusion”, “respect”, and “safety” don’t extend to the Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, and Christian students–or merely the secular remnant of the normal–, who will undoubtedly be chastised and ridiculed for their retrograde views by their progressive teachers and classmates during such obligatory pro-gay pep rallies. (Assuming, that is, that they haven’t already made the prudential calculation that, to be really safe, they need to remain in the closet.)
The Greater Essex County School Board is a little late to the Sodomite bandwagon, in any case. In the hebdomadal lead-up to this past summer’s Toronto Pride Day festivities–let’s call it homosexual Holy Week–, it was impossible not to notice that every government building, hospital, public school, university, major bank, multinational corporation, and retail chain advertised its capitulation to progressive orthodoxy by flying the rainbow banner of cultural surrender. A visitor from a foreign country, as yet unacquainted with Canada’s national flag, would surely have mistaken the rainbow banner for it, and inferred from its ubiquity that Canadians are the most jingoistic people on earth.
Pride Day has become the most sacred day, and the Pride Parade the most sacred rite, of the rolling year for liberals. In the liturgical calendar of the Church of Progress, it combines the Saturnalian self-abandonment of Fat Tuesday with the spiritual solemnity of Easter. Ironically, while the so-called religious neutrality of the modern State forbids the display of Christian symbols on Easter and every other day of the year, the anti-Christian banner of gay pride flies uncontroversially over all the departments and offices of Canada’s national, provincial, and municipal governments. This in itself demonstrates clearly enough that, in purging Christian symbols and moral traditions from its legislatures and courtrooms in the name of democratic pluralism, the Canadian State has hardly absolved itself of the Establishment of Religion; it has merely established an official anti-Christian dogma in its place, which it proselytizes with the same religious zeal, and whose heretics it punishes with the same fanatical ferocity, as any inquisitor or divinely anointed monarch in medieval Christendom.
Is there anyone alive who is old enough to remember when homosexuality was genuinely dangerous, or even faintly bohemian? The revered leftist homosexual artists and intellectuals of the past—Wilde, Gide, Genet, et al.–might not be entirely sanguine about the fact that homosexual chic today is neither radical nor even counter-cultural. Indeed, homosexual pride is the culture, as a cursory glance through the 96-page-long “Pride Guide” for 2018 reveals.
The Guide’s first few pages are filled with uplifting messages of welcome and solidarity from: the Prime Minister (“beautiful celebration of differences and diversity”… “in the face of powerful hatred and intolerance”… “better future”… “continue to fight against bigotry and discrimination”… “love and respect they deserve”); the Premier of Ontario (“deep respect for and value of diversity”… “challenging discrimination”… “civil rights and equalities” [sic]… “expanding inclusivity”… “full mosaic of genders”… “equality and empowerment”… “confront hatred and intolerance”… “express their diversity and joyful love”); and Mayor of Toronto (“diversity of Toronto’s LGBTTIQQ2SA community”… “regardless of faith, nationality, skin colour, or sexual orientation”… “most diverse city in the world”… ”most inclusive”… “everyone is accepted, valued, and celebrated”). Surely there is a dedicated Muse, unknown to Hesiod, whose vocation it is to inspire politicians to such Heliconian heights of cant and cliche.
Then come official messages of welcome and solidarity (… diversity… difference… equality… respect… inclusion… love… hatred… intolerance… bigotry… discrimination) from Pride Toronto’s governmental, union, and corporate sponsors. The list is, shall we say, inclusive: OLG, Toronto Arts Council, the ROM, AGO, TSO, CBC, GO Transit, Via Rail, CTV, Chum FM, CP 24, Astral Media, TD Bank, Air Canada, Loblaws, Schneider’s, Eska Spring Water, Pinnacle Vodka, Winners, New Balance Footwear, Lyft, Mercedes-Benz, Crest Toothpaste, Pepsi, Bud Light, Calvin Klein, Home Depot, Fido, Google, Microsoft, Linkedin, and Facebook.
It ought to be difficult to maintain with a straight face (forgive the pun) that you are “oppressed”, “marginalized”, “excluded”, and “discriminated against”, when your alternative lifestyle is officially endorsed and celebrated by the Forbes Top 100 (especially when Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and the rest wouldn’t be caught dead sponsoring a Christian or socially conservative event). So much for the intersectional fable according to which gays are the victims of a heterosexual corporatist power structure, from whose discriminatory depredations they need civil rights protections.
At least you can’t say that Pride Toronto didn’t live up the progressive ideal of diversity, as promised. Every racial, cultural, and ideological hue and tincture (within the gay rainbow spectrum, that is) was represented: Indigenous Pride, Disabled Pride, Latino Lesbians, Gay Black Lives Matter, the gay chapters of Antifa and Occupy Wall Street, Queers against Global Warming, Gays for Gaia (one of whose signs reads, “Pipelines are Hetero Phallic Symbols”), Trans Against GMOs (notwithstanding the fact that both—the trans and the food—are genetically modified). And look how well they all got along—disabled gays with able-bodied gays, gays with lesbians, lesbians and gays with bi’s, lesbians, gays, and bi’s with trans, binary trans with non-binary trans, two-spirited with one-spirited, questioning Sodomites with dogmatic Sodomites–, an example of tolerance and mutual respect for us all! Diversity? “Here”, as Dryden remarked of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, “is God’s plenty.”
Of course, one looks in vain for such organizations as Transgendered Against Illegal Immigration, Dykes for Border Walls, Questioners of Big Government and High Taxes, or Queers for Religious Liberty. Remember, this is “diversity” as progressives define it: every shade and permutation of progressive group-think.
They have their certified victim status, so it does not matter that they are now the mainstream. Some people are more equal than others.