Happy Pride, Vancouver!
I’m proud to live in a city where sexual and racial diversity are so widely celebrated. Despite some recent controversy around whether the Vancouver Pride Parade and Festival is vulgar, I think it’s important to realize that GLBTQ groups have been marginalized for a long, long time, and that Pride represents the celebration of that fight, of the achievements that queers have attained. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declared that homosexuality was not a disease, and yet we still see anti-gay bigotry, we still bear witnesses to gay bashings and gay youth suicides. This should not be happening in 2011.
Let’s celebrate being lucky to live in a city and a country that embraces sexual diversity. Because as Pierre Elliott Trudeau said, government has no place in the bedrooms of Canadians. Happy Pride 2011, Vancouver.
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Just after I moved to L.A. my dance troupe in Denver was set to perform a burlesque set at the gay pride event. I was so disappointed I wasn’t able to stay long enough to be part of it.
Sorry you missed it, Brooke!