MORGAN: Will the radical left kill Pride events forever in Edmonton?

Extremists within the LGBTQ community shut down the Pride Parade in Edmonton for seven years, and they are determined to kill the latest attempt to hold one. Unless the moderate majority within the LGBTQ community steps up and sidelines the fringe activists in their community, Pride events, which have accomplished so much over the decades, will fade away. Activist groups, Pride Corner on Whyte, RaricaNow, pflag Edmonton, and others have publicly cut ties with the festival because organizers are allowing an Edmonton Police Service presence for public safety. Police will not march in the parade itself. They will help with the basic requirements of any large downtown gathering: road closures, hazard sweeps, and crowd protection. That is apparently enough to trigger boycotts.What the hell do they expect organizers to do? Hire private security?Only police officers can manage road closures for parades, and only police officers can effectively protect event participants from wingnuts who may want to disrupt things or harm people. Rest assured, if somebody assaulted participants at one of the events and police weren’t there to stop it, the activists would scream bloody murder due to the lack of protection. Edmonton police conducted a notorious 1981 raid on the Pisces bathhouse, part of a broader era of enforcement against gay men that occurred across Canada. Those events were real and wrong. The Edmonton Police Service has since apologized, created liaison committees, run anti-bashing campaigns, and worked for decades to rebuild trust. Alberta police forces have not been systematically oppressive of LGBTQ people for generations. Attitudes, laws, and institutional practices changed long ago. Pretending otherwise freezes the community in a 1980s grievance and ignores the officers who are themselves LGBTQ, the families who attend Pride, and the practical reality of modern policing..In 2018, a group of extremists in Edmonton blocked the route and halted the parade until organizers agreed to ban police, RCMP, and military members from marching. This flummoxed organizers, who were dominated by the woke and the weak. Rather than telling the extremists to get stuffed, they tried to indulge them by including them in the event planning. That act of brilliance led to the event being cancelled altogether in 2019.Do they think that indulging the nutcases within their movement will lead to a positive outcome this time?The boycotts reveal a deeper problem inside parts of the Pride movement. What began as a fight for equal rights and visibility has, in some circles, hardened into purity tests, identity hierarchies, and a permanent state of grievance. When the price of disagreement is the cancellation of the entire event, the movement stops serving the people it claims to represent.The original Pride organizers were figures of courage. They stood up to hostile city councils that tried to hinder or cancel their events, oppressive police forces, and intimidation from counterprotesters. Through the bravery of participants in Pride parades and festivals, they countered the hate and opened the door for people in the LGBTQ community to live their lives openly as they are, and to express themselves without fear. Now, Pride organizers don’t even have the backbone to stand up to the radicals within their own movement.Pride should be a broad, open celebration of freedom and belonging. It cannot survive if a determined fringe is allowed to veto every practical decision in the name of an ever-expanding list of demands. Organizers are right to prioritize safety over ideological litmus tests. The groups walking away are free to hold their own events. What they should not be allowed to do is keep killing the main parade for everyone else. Edmonton already lost seven years to that approach. It should not lose any more.This year will be the turning point for Edmonton's Pride organizers. Will Pride be a sustained movement and annual celebration? Or will they let themselves be bullied out of existence by the extremists within their ranks?

MORGAN: Will the radical left kill Pride events forever in Edmonton?

Related Stories

Dominion Society director resigns after online resurfacing of past 'LGBTQ+' content

Canadian doctors advocate for 'death by organ donation' for MAiD donors

WAGNER: Pride replaced Christianity as the West’s public religion

WATCH: German military promotes LGBTQ+ recruitment at Pride event