A representative for a group in northern Ontario says he hasn’t seen this much hatred in over 20 years
During this year’s Pride celebrations in the northern Ontario city of North Bay, there won’t be a parade. Instead, there will be a protest.
North Bay Pride’s director of communications, Jason Maclennan, said that the change is needed to show the need for change.
“People celebrate who they are at a Pride parade,” he said. “A march is a group of people asking for change, which is what we need right now.”
Instead of being a party, the Sept. 16 event will be about asking for more fairness and inclusion.
Maclennan said that people in the community are facing more hate, such as mean comments online, death threats, and the normalization of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ speech in public.
“People need to stop spreading hate and false information about the community.”
He said that hate groups are usually small, but they are well organized.
“They’ll use buzzwords like “grooming,” and instead of doing their own research, people believe what they say.
“It’s an emotional response,” he explained. “Then they share it, and it grows and grows and grows,” he said.
He also said that this kind of talk hurts the 2SLGBTQ+ community in North Bay.
He said, “It makes people go back into the closet and lie about who they are.”
“It makes young people more likely to kill themselves and makes it hard for parents to understand their children when they come out.”
Maclennan said the group has had trouble getting together with local elected officials to talk about their problems.
He said, “It’s so important for political leaders to stand up against hate, and if they don’t, they shouldn’t be in politics.”
Anthony Rota, the MP for the riding, was not available to talk about this before this story came out, and MPP Vic Fideli did not respond to CBC’s request for a comment.
Hate crimes against LGBTQ people are going up in other places
Chair of Fierté Sudbury Pride Laur O’Gorman said that the group also wanted to plan a march instead of a parade for their July events.
They said, “This year, with all the pushback, we really felt like we had to do a march, something stronger and more political.”
However, There was a disagreement with the city over how the police should handle the event.Caused Fierté Sudbury Pride to decide not to have the march at all this year.
In an email to CBC News at the time, the Greater Sudbury Police Service (GSPS) said that it respected Sudbury Pride’s decision to cancel the parade and would “continue to work toward repairing and building relationships based on mutual respect and understanding.”
Still, O’Gorman thinks that something needs to be done to slow down anti-LGBTQ+ hatred.
“There are often things about me on the Internet,” they said. “There are posts that say I have pedophile friends and that there are pedophiles on the Pride board. Not at all true.”
O’Gorman said that they have also gotten threats, one of which was caught on video.
“That person said, ‘I know where you live, I know when you’re home, I know when you’re away, and I’m going to do something that will make Sudbury famous.'”
In another case, they were followed down the street and insults were thrown at them.
O’Gorman said that they took proof of these threats to the police, but that nothing was done because the authorities don’t see them as “direct threats.”
When CBC News asked Sudbury police to respond to O’Gorman’s comment, they said in an email Tuesday, “We would be happy to look into the matter if we knew more about what happened.”
O’Gorman thinks it’s a good idea for North Bay Pride to hold a protest.
“We wish we could have marched because it’s so important. We had to do it without the police showing us the way, though.”