It's not just organizations like Capital Pride here in Ottawa that are struggling, it's major Pride parades and Gay Villages in cities like Seattle and New Orleans that are redefining themselves and what it means to be gay in urban centres. Just look at the evidence.
In a widely published Associated Press story earlier this year headlined "Gay Villages disappearing," NYC author Don Reuter, researching a book on the rise and fall of a dozen U.S. gay neighbourhoods, rhetorically asks, "What makes these neighbourhoods gay? Not much."
Reuter predicts that outside New York, San Francisco and a handful of other gay meccas like Montreal, neighbourhoods with a significant gay presence will not survive - including, Reuter contends, gay communities in New Orleans, Philadelphia and Seattle.
While North American gay communities have managed to save several iconic gay bars from closing in the last couple of years - like NYC's Stonewall Inn, originally slated to close last August, 38 years after it became an international landmark following the 1969 Stonewall Riots - others like the famed Boom Boom Room in Laguna Beach are closing, while New York's famed Roxy has already closed.
The reason? Entire cities have finally become our playgrounds. But that new reality is also breeding an apathetic post-gay attitude.
Even Montreal's gay community
Last December, Divers/Cité spun off their expensive non-profit Pride parade and community day into a new, separate organization called Célébrations LGBTA Montréal because a 2004 CROP survey reported 76 per cent of festival-goers didn't attend the parade and 25 per cent of parade-goers didn't attend the rest of their weeklong festival.
As Paris-based Têtu magazine asks in its current July-August issue, "Is Gay Pride still necessary?"
It's a legit question in countries like Canada and France, and clearly Divers/Cité sees the writing on the wall.
"Pride organizations must redefine themselves or become obsolete," says Suzanne Girard, executive director and co-founder of Divers/Cité and past-president of InterPride, the International Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Pride Coordinators.
In other words, since the first-ever Pride parade was held in NYC in June 1970 to commemorate the Stonewall Riots, Pride organizations - and increasingly the gay communities they serve - have become victims of the gay liberation movement's success.
How else to explain that Capital Pride is a whopping $130,000 in debt and still most gays and lesbians in Ottawa don't give a shit? How else can one explain local apathy?
So, it bears repeating, despite the growing commercialism and congestion of the Pride circuit, Pride remains a crucial stepping-stone in the coming-out process. Even Pride veterans need to know Pride still exists, even if they don't attend the parade themselves. Because, at the end of the day, our Pride parades and "gaybourhoods" remain fragile, precious and essential. They are still the only places gays and lesbians feel safely part of a majority in a world that for the most part still hates them.
Yes, it's true Ottawans live in a gay-positive city. But always remember, tolerance is not acceptance - it is hypocrisy.
So when you attend Capital Pride's parade this weekend, donate generously.
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