I really love how people who don't support blm

[Saviolo]

15. History time!

The gay civil rights movement was really birthed in the Stonewall riots in New York city in 1969. The police were constantly and repeatedly raiding gay clubs and bars and putting the photographs of the people in them in the newspapers, effectively ruining their lives. In many ways, being gay was still illegal back then. You could lose your job you could lose your housing. Many of these gay men didn't live openly, and had tried to start "normal" lives with marriages and kids. So on top of the stress of having to have two lives, they then had one of those lives ruined just to go and spend time in a place friendly to one of those lives.

And who were the main movers of the Stonewall riot? It wasn't a pretty white boy named Danny as the movie (Stonewall 2015) would have you believe. It was largely black drag queens and trans women who were throwing shoes and bricks, and those were certainly some of the first bricks thrown. It was also homeless queer youth (kicked out of their conservative homes and forced to live on the streets). So, in some very real ways, black voices were the first in the North American queer civil rights movement.

Fast forward to today. Can you name any prominent gay people? Are they all or mostly white? Ellen, Anderson Cooper, Lance Bass, Rosie O'Donnell? POC feel a great deal of alienation from mainstream gay culture and the mainstream queen civil rights movement today, which is overwhelmingly white.

This is the very definition of intersecionality. Toronto Pride invited BLMTO to lead off the parade last year, and they also staged a sit-in for about half an hour to protest a few things, mostly dealing with at-risk communities, trans youth of colour, as well as the presence of the Toronto Police marching in uniform and armed in the parade (citing three very recent highly publicized killings of POC by Toronto Police in which only one officer was charged and none were convicted), which is entirely valid. Of the several founders of BLMTO, one is gay and one is trans, so they are part of both communities. Black people in Toronto do not feel safe around armed police (given that they are still being carded regularly at a vastly disproportionate rate to white citizens) and demanded that police not be allowed to march armed and in uniform in the Pride Parade next year.

So, in the context of history, it's perfectly logical. The Stonewall Riots weren't about gay marriage, they were about police violence. The police have an incredibly checkered past (and present) with the gay community. I'm a gay white man, but I have to be an ally to my queer POC friends. All of my black friends in Toronto have had negative encounters with police. They are arresting and mistreating trans youth of colour. Pride isn't just a parade for queers to show how "normal" we are to straight allies to make them feel comfortable, it is a political action in the face of a political structure that still wants to keep queer people and POC down.

We're pretty lucky in Canada, by and large. But please remember that in many states it is still legal to be fired or evicted for being gay or trans. BLMTO takes a long tradition of black activism in the queer community and directs it to things that are still going on. Why should the police get a nice big free PR boost by marching with big smiles in the Pride parade if they're not going to address systemic problems within the police services regarding how they treat queer people and POC the other 364 days a year?