Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Worst case scenario

About the Toronto Gay Pride Parade tourism grant brouhaha, Hedy Fry is asking Harper for an explanation:
“At best, this is another Conservative MP making rogue, homophobic comments while attacking a cabinet colleague – actions which are grounds for caucus dismissal,” said Vancouver Liberal MP Hedy Fry. “At worst, Mr. Trost is the only MP willing to admit his government’s discriminatory new tourism policy on record. Only Prime Minister Harper can clarify how far this intolerance extends within his government – and he needs to do so now.”
The explanation is that the Conservative Party is populated by a bunch of homophobes.
Apparently the PMO staff got all in a snit when Minister Ablonczy had her photo taken with drag queens following the grant announcement in June. Oohhh, queens, so icky!

Can anyone today imagine Stephen Harper or any member of his cabinet or his caucus agreeing to act as grand marshal of a gay pride parade, the way Joe Clark did for the Calgary parade in 2001?

Of course, Gay Pride has some standards when it comes to asking people to be grand marshals of its parades. These days neither Harper nor his caucus members would be asked, so I guess there's no problem.
Here's some of the photos from the Macleans' website of this year's pride parade in Toronto. The Ontario Progressive Conservatives were there:


as was Iggy and company:


According to the LifeSiteNews.com news story in which Brad Trost revealed the Conservative party's homophobic reaction to the federal tourism grant, the Toronto Gay Pride Parade is "notorious"for "full frontal nudity and public sex acts by homosexuals", but I couldn't find any of these photos on the Macleans website.
Darn it.

UPDATE: A commenter on the Macleans site says: "I can see why the Cons regretted supporting this event. It looks like everyone had fun."

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