John Robson: The progressive backlash against Capital Pride is something to behold

Of note:

When even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks your Pride event is too aggressively weird and disruptive, it’s probably time to reconsider. Instead, Ottawa’s Capital Pride doubled down on its berserk anti-Israeli views, because ideas have consequences and bad ideas have terrible ones.

The Liberal Party of Canada is just the latest outfit to pull out of the sort of event it normally can’t get enough of. Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is gone, plus the U.S. Embassy, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), Public Service Pride Network, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and more. Which isn’t exactly like having the Southern Baptists or Sons of Thor give it a pass.

Indeed, when the Toronto Sun reported that “CHEO CEO Alex Munter said they wouldn’t take part” because some hospital staff and citizens “no longer feel safe or welcome,” I had to check whether “they” was just Munter. (No, it’s CHEO generally.) And Trudeau is such a Pride enthusiast, the Liberals are organizing a counter-event “to celebrate Ottawa’s 2SLGBTQI+ communities.”

Yes, plural. All have won and all must have communities. And the OCDSB puts up so many Pride flags, there’s barely room for a times table. So what’s going on?

It’s a seismic tremor along an ominous fault line in modern progressivism. The trigger was an Aug. 6 Capital Pride statement saying:

“Part of the growing Islamophobic sentiment we are witnessing is fuelled by the pink-washing of the war in Gaza and racist notions that all Palestinians are homophobic and transphobic. By portraying itself as a protector of the rights of queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel seeks to draw attention away from its abhorrent human rights abuses against Palestinians. We refuse to be complicit in this violence.”

It’s provocatively, transgressively false. Israel is “portraying” itself as a haven through the devious scheme, typical of the Elders of Zion, of being one. And this “growing Islamophobic sentiment” has nothing to do with Israel respecting human rights and much to do with Hamas and its supporters here and abroad backing genocidal brutality.

The “pink-washing” indictment is hysterically and mendaciously anti-Israel. Capital Pride offers a perfunctory condemnation of Hamas atrocities before going full Henry Ford about Israel’s slaughter, dehumanization, “flagrant violation of international law” and “plausible risk of genocide.” But such demented one-sidedness is driven by a deeper, odious hostility to the people whose historic homeland includes Jerusalem.

The Jewish Federation of Ottawa, after kowtowing to “safe and inclusive,” frankly denounced Capital Pride’s “recent antisemitic statement.” And there’s the nub.

The urge to subvert, to transvalue values, cannot stop with odd hairstyles and lifestyles. It must reach into the depths of morality, and I mean the depths. Thus Capital Pride ranted, “We wish to reaffirm our commitment to solidarity as the core principle guiding our work.” But solidarity with whom? Evidently the whole dang decolonizing family, even the Muslim Brotherhood. How can you not?

Following such dangerous logic part way, the boycotters also babble about inclusion. The Ottawa Hospital said that, “Inclusivity and supporting all communities we serve is very important to us,” while Munter objected that some people “no longer feel safe or welcome.” But surely some shouldn’t feel welcome. The Klan, say. Or Hamas. Such touchy-feely inclusionism promotes unilateral mental disarmament.

Or worse. After the Sun asked Capital Pride about a sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was pointedly constructed where Islamists deny the Temple of Solomon ever stood, calling homosexuality an “abomination,” demanding a Schwulenrein Palestine including Jerusalem and objecting to men and women attending college together, it issued a new statement, “We reject any attempts to marginalize religious and cultural minority groups from the broader Pride movement.” Even death-to-Jews ones, consistently if ominously.

Wokeness may start as a trendy virtue-signalling wrapping you expect to don and doff like the rebellious calf’s leather jacket in that “Far Side” cartoon. But as Queen’s history Professor Don Akenson said, people have small ideas but “big ideas have people.” And if you’re committed to “subversion,” transvaluing all values and making others uncomfortable, you start with blue hair and a rainbow and end with a burqa and inverted red triangle.

The chickens-for-KFC paradox of queer militants supporting Hamas militants is part of the thrill. And this slippery slope is especially vertiginous if officialdom is sliding, too. If every government email lists pronouns, art galleries duct-tape bananas, the Olympics turn the Last Supper into the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and politicians trample free speech to fight “hate,” how do you shock the bourgeoisie sufficiently that politicians recoil instead of leaning in for a selfie?

Well, respectable progressives still draw the line at blatant antisemitism. But sufficiently radical immigration policy and generalized postmodernism may erase even that boundary.

So I applaud those boycotting this transgressively transgressive event. But please check your assumptions because they’re not safe or inclusive.

Source: John Robson: The progressive backlash against Capital Pride is something to behold