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Jerusalem’s Pride parade every June. So why should we ban and censor the words “Israeli Apartheid”, repugnant as they are? Yes, I would prefer the QuAIA picket the parade rather than take part in it. But as my friend and Toronto playwright Brad Fraser – affiliated with Toronto’s Pride Coalition for Free Speech and (like me) no stranger to being censored or banned – told me before Toronto’s parade, “The QuAIA are a queer group so they are ALLOWED to take part. This controversy breaks my heart because I have a lot of Jewish friends. But at the end of the day this is a free speech issue.” presciently asked in a cover story, “Is Gay Pride still necessary?” – I knew they were ahead of the curve. “Pride organizations must redefine themselves or become obsolete,” Divers/Cité co-founder Suzanne Girard told me at the time. All this to say that Israel is the only nation – not to mention the only functioning democracy – in the Middle East that supports gay civil rights. As porn entrepreneur and Advocate columnist Michael Lucas pointed out when Israel – following its fatal attack on the Gaza flotilla – was banned from Madrid’s July 3 Gay Pride celebrations, “We must not forget the desperate attempts of LGBT Palestinians to secure residence in Israel, legally or illegally, to escape family and community violence against them in the territories. So let’s look a little closer at the situation of LGBT people in Gaza: They are widely and institutionally discriminated against; they are incarcerated, stoned, and beheaded. End of the list. It’s a short and sad list.” In an added bit of irony, notice that Israel also does NOT ban or censor the ultraconservative rabbis, priests and imams of Jerusalem – who rarely ever agree or unite over anything – when they lobby to cancel
On the eve of Toronto’s July 4 parade, Pride Toronto finally agreed and allowed the QuAIA contingent to participate in their parade. Meanwhile, Vancouver’s August 1 and Montreal’s August 15 Pride parades are not censoring the QuAIA. As David Ben-Gurion, one of the founding fathers of Israel and that nation’s first prime minister, once said, “The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.” Happy Pride. Divers/Cité runs July 26 to August 1. Surf to www.diverscite.org. Montreal’s Gay Pride celebrations run August 12-15. Surf to www.fiertemontrealpride.com. Richard Burnett is Editor-at-Large of Montreal’s Hour magazine where he writes his national queer-issues column Three Dollar Bill, which you can also read online at www.hour.ca.