Ford turns back on gay community by shunning Pride

We thought that someone would have been able to convince Mayor Rob Ford that when a significant Toronto community stages an annual festival known around the world, the mayor's schedule is adjusted — no, designed — to accommodate it.

We thought someone would have reminded Mayor Ford that despite his own personal or religious views, despite his unease around gay people, despite his natural or cultivated antipathy towards such Torontonians, he had to do the mayor thing — the grip and grin, the bringing of greetings on behalf of the people of Toronto.

We thought wrong. Ford proves again he's a different breed of cat.

The mayor said Wednesday he will not attend the Pride Parade, a week Sunday; neither will he grace the other Pride Week events with his presence. Instead he will be with his family at the cottage.

One of the problems of a black-and-white existence is the absence of grey, the inability to countenance a blurring of issues, and a stoic rejection of compromise in the face of compelling and competing arguments.

To many in Ford Nation, the hard-core conservative traditionalists who form Mayor Ford's base support, this is an attractive attribute.

It's an attribute the mayor possesses in spades.

It's also a trait that creates dissonance for a mayor, elected last October to serve Toronto's more than 2.5 million people — all of them — with their rainbow of issues, outlooks, religions, race, orientation, politics, philosophies and ethnicity.

Toronto, in all its glorious diversity, is a challenge to someone with a rigid outlook on life. Every weekend features another strand of city life. Runners take over the streets one weekend, cyclists the next, race cars the following week. Carnival-crazed Caribbeans run ahead of bobbing Bollywood boosters and grub-grazing Greeks on the Danforth ...

Toronto's festivals feature every conceivable ethnic group and race. If you are allergic to the mad cacophony of an integrated city then you don't run for mayor; you opt for a more monochromatic municipality off the beaten track.

Without doubt, Toronto's mayor must accept, no, embrace, everyone that's legally part of the community. Mayor Ford, instead, has turned his back on the city's gay and lesbian community. Not directly, mind you. Not yet. But symbolically, for sure.

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Source: Toronto Star