We had an interesting discussion the other day on the patio at the golf course. Our golf group is an older bunch of guys, ranging from the early 60’s to mid 80’s in age, so we might be just a tad set in our ways. We were arguably conditioned by the prevailing mores of the late 50’s and early ‘60’s. We may have been the generation that kicked off Woodstock and flower power, but psychologists will tell you that your gut reactions to things are conditioned by your environment when you were a child and are largely locked in by the time you’re six years old. So, as a group we probably, statistically, have some fairly conservative gut instincts.

         The discussion swung around to the number of companies that have dropped their sponsorship of the Toronto Pride Parade. For those who haven’t followed that story, Donald Trump’s executive orders against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are prompting a number of major corporations to drop their support for various DEI initiatives. My initial response was “but that’s the US. That shouldn’t matter here in Canada”. But it does, and for two reasons. The first is just social climate – MAGA ascendency means it now politically acceptable to ignore or actively oppose DEI initiatives. The second is more concrete. Trump’s Executive Orders in his first week in office took actions to eliminate DEI from within government services, but they also required corporations to confirm that they have eliminated DEI programs in order to qualify for government contracts. I suspect that some of them were supporters only because they thought it was the politically correct thing to do and are happy to give it up now that it’s no longer politically correct. Regardless of whether they want to or not, however, as a purely business policy, if they want to be in business with the US government, they cannot be seen to be in support of the LGBTQ community.

         Someone in our discussion group said something like “It’s OK to support the gay communities right to be different, but why do we need a parade? Why do we need a whole Pride Month? Why do they have to put it in our face like that?” I paraphrase, but that was the sense of it. “I have no problem with LGBTQ, but I don’t see why they have to flaunt their sexual leaning like that. Why do I need to know?”

         The answer is simple. In the absence of some force for change, we are stuck with the status quo. The gay pride parade is a chance for sexually divergent people to say “I’m a person. I may be gay or queer or any of the other labels that are used, but I’m just a person and I just want to be accepted. Is that OK?” It’s also a chance for “normal, heterosexual” people to say “I can accept you”, and hope that by their supportive actions the people with more rigid attitudes might be brought to acceptance.

         Many people are uncomfortable around people who are sexually different, and the more flamboyant and expressive they are, the more uncomfortable we are. The problem is that it is not a binary world. There is no biological rule that says people are either male or female and there are no other possibilities. The orange idiot and other proponents of anti-woke dogma insist that there are only two genders and that your gender is determined only by whether you had a penis or a vagina when you were born. The scientific literature says “nay, brother, thou know not what thou sayest.”

 Dillon King, a toxicology researcher (reference 1) says “Currently, there are at least 40 known variations that fall into intersex classifications. Notably, complex biologic variations can occur in everyone, and sex may best be viewed as a spectrum comprised of many traits.” Reference 2 tells us that “The etiology of gender dysphoria is unknown, yet the reported prevalence has been increasing, with most estimates suggesting that as many as 521 in 100,000 males and 265 in 100,000 females experience gender dysphoria.” That tells us that approximately 0.4% of the population doesn’t fit into a neat male/female classification. We are not scientifically, physically, biologically, a gender-binary species.

         There is a statistical distribution of chromosome, gene, and hormonal variations that produces a broad spectrum of physical and personality characteristics. Those who were lucky enough to be somewhere near the middle of the statistical distribution ought to give thanks because we are not so readily identified as “different”. Because, let’s face it, “different” is often a bad thing. Chimpanzees, wolves, wild dogs, chickens, pigeons and even those oh so lovable dolphins are known to harass and even kill species members which display physical or behavioral anomalies. 

         Both religious and civil laws have supported this ostracism of people who are sexually different. Wikipedia, on the subject of homosexuality and religions says that “Among the religious denominations which generally reject these orientations, there are many different types of opposition, ranging from quietly discouraging homosexual activity, explicitly forbidding same-sex sexual practices among their adherents and actively opposing social acceptance of homosexuality, supporting criminal sanctions up to capital punishment, and even to condoning extrajudicial killings.” 

         That broad range of attitudes is found in both Islam and Christian organizations. It would be nice to think that the world is becoming more accepting of people who are different, but the sad truth is that there is still a long way to go. 

I think it is fair to say that the more “fundamental” the sect is, the more oppressive their attitudes are. God’s law has then often become the professed basis for the adoption of severe punishments in civil law. “Homosexual intercourse became a capital offense in Iran’s Islamic Penal Code in 1991. Though the grounds for execution in Iran are difficult to track, there is evidence that several people were hanged for homosexual behavior in 2005–2006 and in 2016, mostly in cases of dubious charges of rape….The Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021 after the previous government collapsed. Under their rule, LGBT recognition is against Islamic (sharīʿa) law and homosexuals are to be punished by death.”

Well, you may say, Iran and Afghanistan are hardly shining examples of liberal thought. But the problem is that the world as a whole, and especially the US, is taking a sharp turn towards illiberal thought, and in the US the core of the MAGA conservative movement is the deeply fundamental Christian movement. “Anti-woke” messaging is central to the Trump administration. Whatever tolerance has been built up over the last century for those who are different, is rapidly being eroded. Because of that, I believe that it is useful and necessary to regularly reaffirm that LGBTQ people are just people and we should try to accept them being different. The Pride parade is that affirmation, and however uncomfortable you might be with flamboyantly different lifestyles, if you support individual freedom of choice you should value that parade.

That’s all well and good. But do we need a whole month of Pride messaging? We have a single day on which we remember the fallen dead who defended the liberal democracy which sanctions and protects the LGBTQ community. We have a single day on which we celebrate our unity as a nation. Quite honestly, a whole month of Pride messaging gets tiresome and annoying.

In December of 2023, I wrote an article opposing the notion of a “Christian Heritage Month”. That article includes this passage “The Government of Canada website has a page for “important and Commemorative Days” of which there are 63.  63!! Of those 63, 5 provide for Heritage Months based upon religion – Sikhs, Mennonites, Islam, Hindus, and Jews are all designated, although the poor Mennonites only get a week. In addition, we have heritage month declarations for Tamils, Black History, Asian heritage, Dutch, Italian, Filipino, Portuguese, Germans and Latin Americans. And that’s just the government of Canada. The government of Ontario mimics or supports many of the Federally designated months and then adds in Bangladesh. The City of Brampton has already passed, in 2019, its own Christian Heritage Month declaration. 

All of the above, and Pride Month included, are examples of over-emphasis. We’re just going overboard. There are only 365 days in a year. If you assign 30 of them to any particular concept, then we can only emphasize and support about 12 concepts a year. Otherwise we wind up with Portuguese Hindu Gay Pride overlap. It’s silly, is what it is. We don’t need to be immersed in any of those topics for a month in order to allow some worthy spokesman to make a case for acceptance of their constituency, whatever it is. A day should do it. We should cut back all of those “declarations” to a single day and we should be reluctant to add any more. Our legislators have better things to do than to debate the relevance of Swahili Day or the Psychics Parade. (I knew you were gonna say that!)

Let me know what you think.

   *********************   

References:

1) 

Front Toxicol

. 2022 Jul 22;4:929219. doi: 10.3389/ftox.2022.929219

The Inclusion of Sex and Gender Beyond the Binary in Toxicology

Dillon E King ^1,2,*

2)

Genetic Link Between Gender Dysphoria and Sex Hormone Signaling

Madeleine Foreman ,  Lauren Hare ,  Kate York ,  Kara Balakrishnan ,  Francisco J Sánchez , Fintan Harte ,  Jaco Erasmus ,  Eric Vilain ,  Vincent R Harley

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 104, Issue 2, February 2019, Pages 390–396, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2018-01105

Published:

21 September 2018