Posted on 06/20/2014 6:49:23 PM PDT by rickmichaels
TORONTO - For a party this big, you need a giant flag.
Patrick Markle, 46, sporting a large homemade rainbow flag, was among thousands at Nathan Phillips Square Friday evening to celebrate the kickoff to WorldPride, a 10-day celebration of the LGBTQ community.
“My friends invited me last-minute to the flag-raising (earlier in the day at City Hall) and I’ll never be one to go without a little bit of spirit,” Markle said. “I couldn’t make a dress out of it and still look halfway decent, so I figured flag would be the best thing.”
Markle, who has seen Pride transform from a political march against gay bathhouse raids to a party scene over the years, said the grassroots meaning of the peaceful and diverse event still speaks to him.
“This was about community and it still kind of is,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like we have to stand up and be noticed anymore because we’ve been so well accepted.”
Some of the performers at Friday night’s concert included singers Deborah Cox, Steve Grand and headliner Melissa Etheridge.
Two women from Moncton came to WorldPride to celebrate their first Toronto Pride event together.
“It’s really nice timing that our first Pride is WorldPride,” said Alex Pipes, 22, accompanied by her girlfriend Maggie Taylor. “It’s really nice to see other people around the world here.”
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam said onstage the city’s acceptance of Pride — despite some lingering opposition — should be an example for everyone and she wants to see such Pride events spread worldwide.
“Our task is to live our lives honestly and claim our liberties,” Wong-Tam said. “We must continue to grow Pride. Toronto is more than one man.”
As the sun set, the jammed city square joined in on a chorus of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Waving a black and yellow Ugandan flag above the signature rainbow one representing the gay community, Stefonknee Wolscht said it was to honour trans-man Victor Mukasa, the Toronto Pride parade marshal in 2009 who twice has been set on fire in his home country because of his gender identity discrimination.
“When people in Uganda see it, try cry because thy can’t carry their flag, it’s too dangerous,” Wolscht said. “They have the death penalty there for being LGBT. We have a lot of parades but we still need a lot of marches.”
Celebrate mental illness.
The guy’s t-shirt
Homopobia
Insecurity of being heretosexual
.....
Nope. It has nothing to do with insecurity. Its being aware that homos want to molest children or put their penis where it doesn’t belong and hating them because of it.
Nice pics - and they want us to believe that they’re normal? There’s nothing abnormal about them? Come on, folks. How stupid are we?
Silly faggot. I’m 100% hetero and very secure about it.
No lesbo bone in my body.
Friendly city, but if you did not have a job you were really up the proverbial creek. I saw the down side of Toronto up close. My bet is that most of them do not hold down a steady job. I stand corrected though if not the case.
I suspect they are gainfully employed. In general, they seem to be everywhere you turn. On the tv, on the radio, in the restaurants, and goodness knows, the hair salons. They are a protected group. People hire them because they’re afraid not to, and they don’t get fired for the same reason.
I suspect the largest employer is the government, and the public school system in particular.
They are just like normal people. /s
“Homo-phobia” literally means fearing those who are the same as oneself.
I’m not afraid of conservative gun-owning heterosexuals, so I guess that term doesn’t apply.
I do think the reason that faggies are so in-your-face to the 98% majority is because there’s something muy el sicko about the way they base their entire universe upon their disgusting unnatural sex proclivities.
If faggies want to call me “homophobic”, fine.
BTW, I’m an “Islamophobe”, too. Can’t please everybody.
An earlier (city council planning) meeting about the parade had homofascists decrying attempts to make it "family friendly" by enforcing the ban on public nudity. The homofacsists said this was where they let their freak flag fly and don't WANT it to be family friendly. Sounds like they are antibreeder.
Homos hire homos. There is the job security. A friend of mine tells me he cannot get hired at a restaurant a friend of his works at because the gay floor manager only hires women and gay men (he knows a girl there from a previous job).
And at another employer, the bar manager is a lesbian who beds her staff and will fire them over such disputes.
So much for equal opportunity employer laws.
I thought the title mentioned the word “Pride”, but after seeing the pictures, there’s no way any of them could have an ounce of pride.
In the meantime a battery of publicity on Canadian Television, including cries about persecution. A mans voice rasped about the "Neo-Nazis" in Sweden. A figure was given about these pride persons numbering two and a half million being abused in the world. For one second, I thought the voice claimed in billions- could not be though.
Thank heavens this all has a shelf life. Toronto and it's subservience to the safe and politically correct,can get on with the delights of summer. I simply wonder why in the name of heaven, do these pride persons just get on with what they are now allowed to do?
Something radically wrong with the militants, I fear.
I wonder why in the name of heaven, do these pride persons not just get on with what they are now allowed to do?
and they want us to consider them “normal”?
They probably all work as school teachers, child counselors, youth sports coaches, state CPS systems, non-profits and Boy Scout leaders
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