The Attack of the Killer Panhandlers

As if we didn't have have enough things to worry about...like the Harperite Conspiracy or the war in Afghanistan...or all that Made in China stuff that baby likes to chew on...or the fact that the CNE begins on Friday..... and you know what that means?

Now we're quaking in our boots or shooting off our mouths about the Attack of the Killer Panhandlers.

Even though three of the four suspects are Americans.

And most of OUR panhandlers are harmless. The pussies of the panhandling world...or just typically Canadian...

The roar of the frightened mob has been deafening.

It's a disgrace. Something bad is going to happen in this neighbourhood if we don't start thinking about our rights as free-moving and safe citizens rather than the rights of the homeless...

Ban them, fine them, throw them in jail. Do ANYTHING just drive them off the streets. It all seems a bit crazy to me. Why can't they just pretend they can't see them or hear them?

Like they usually do.....
















(click to enlarge)

But of course it's more complicated than that.

Many formerly homeless people find that landing permanent shelter doesn't mean they can give up a street life, German said.

"Welfare doesn't pay enough to cover both rent and food, so they are forced to panhandle to eat."

The frightened mob can scream for blood all it wants, but until we deal with the root causes of the problem it will only get worse.

And if you pretend that you can't SEE the problem or just WISH it would go away. And you don't build enough cheap housing, or rely on a rotten shelter system, and you don't have aggressive and smart ways to deal with things like poverty, drug addiction, or mental illness, and you do nothing while our big cities become jungles with poor and desperate people everywhere...

Then WTF are you so surprised about when something jumps up and bites you? Or stabs you in the ribs.

I'm just surprised it doesn't happen more often. I can't understand why poor Canadians are so passive...why they don't demand more from Canadians than just quarters.

Why they don't understand that unless you organize and fight for your rights nothing ever happens...especially when others don't see you or hear you...















But when you're poor, and hungry, and thirsty, or drug addicted or mentally ill...and you have to worry about where they'll allow you to take a shit, or where you're going to sleep tonight...I guess just surviving is exhausting enough.

Which means that if we are really Canadians we should be thinking of new ways to HELP them instead of punishing them.

And reminds me....I'm going to take a few days off to try to think of new ways to help Alvaro Orozco.

Who is hiding somewhere in this city.












Because it's the same thing with him as it is with the homeless .

Whether you are discriminated against because you're poor, or whether you are discriminated against because you are gay.

Unless you fight back...and others help those who can't help themselves... nothing ever changes...

Which is a great excuse to run this song...by my favourite Canadian band...again. To get me in the mood....


Works for me.

Please do what you can to help Alvaro. Tell those who would further victimize the poor to go stuff themselves.

Or ask them how THEY would live on $300 a month.

See you all soon...

Stephen Harper's Stinky Barnyard Shuffle

I was having a little nap at work this afternoon when suddenly I was awoken by some horrible pig sounds. I snapped to attention thinking it was my bosses. But it was only the TV across the room blaring out live coverage of Great Fat Leader's stinky barnyard shuffle.

Naturally I soon drifted back to sleep....zzzzzzzzz....only to be tormented in my dreams by some disturbing questions:

Like who is going to run Canada while all these OLD pigs go back to skool to try to learn NEW tricks....and doesn't everybody know that's IMPOSSIBLE?

Will Gordon O'Connor do as great a job as Revenue Minister as he did as Defence Minister? And if so should we surrender...I mean declare bankruptcy..... now or later? Or at least switch to the Mexican peso. And after he's fucked up there what's next? Running a sardine factory?

Or a scrapyard for all that useless military junk he bought....which will only get to Afghanistan.....AFTER the troops have left.

Will Bev Oda receive as much support from international development agencies as she received from private broadcasters before she became Heritage Minister? Does that mean she'll be spending a LOT of time abroad? Excellent. And will her new limo bills be smaller or even BIGGER? If that's possible....

Will Chuck Strahl our new Indian Affairs Minister remember to say First Nations instead of just "injuns"?

And of course the MOST disturbing question of all: How did an idiot like Peter Dumbo MacKay ever become Defence Minister?

Do our troops in Aghanistan KNOW what that means? Will they be tempted to take their chances and surrender to the Taliban rather than follow him.....to CERTAIN disaster?

Will Condi love him even more.....now he's a dum jock in uniform? And make Dumbo happy...no matter what happens to our poor troops. Or will he have to borrow a dog and sulk after every tragic and bloody mistake? To try to make Canadians love him again. Good luck.

And of course there's that extra special question: Does Dumbo even realize that Stephen Harper just placed him in the deep end of the pool .......with an anchor around his neck?

Glug. Glug. Glug. God help our troops. God help Canada.

Does mediocrity breed mediocrity? Or is it just its own reward?

Canada's NEW/NOUVEAU New Government. How exciting.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ......

Omar Khadr: When will Canada Act Like a Country?

I was glad to see that some people still think that Canada should act like a real country and bring Omar Khadr home.

The Canadian Bar Association is urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to demand the United States release terror suspect Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay and return him to Canada to face a fair system of justice.

And that judging from his lawyer,U.S. Lieutenant-Commander William Kuebler, there is still hope for the United States.

....Lt.-Com. Kuebler said it is inexplicable that Canada has stood by silently while a citizen whose alleged crime was committed while he was still "a child" is being systematically railroaded by a lawless regime.

But what does it say about Canada when an American officer has to tell OUR government that it should have the guts to take on HIS government to protect OUR kid?

I've written about Omar Khadr The Guantanamo Kid before.... and what a national disgrace his continued imprisonment in that monstrous gulag is...so I won't repeat myself.

But let's just sum up the facts...

He's dragged off to terrorist training camps when he was just a boy by his crazy terrorist father. His father is killed, one brother is crippled, another one was locked up. His mother is a crazy religious fanatic.

At the age of fifteen he gets involved in a firefight with a group of American special forces. He is wounded when planes strafe and bomb the compound. But when the Americans approach the smoking ruins he still manages to toss a grenade that kills a fighting soldier.... who doubles as a medic.

He is shot three times by other soldiers. When they approach him he begs them to kill him. But he survives only to be locked up for years and tortured in Guantanamo Bay. His body is still scarred...he is full of shrapnel and blind in one eye.... and now his mind is going.

The last time his lawyer visited him all he asked for was a colouring book and some crayons.

















He should be brought back to Canada IMMEDIATELY and detained and treated until he is well enough...and safe enough to be released. No matter what anybody thinks about him ....or his Al Qaeda family....it's the only DECENT and Canadian thing to do.

Britain and other countries have demanded the release of their Guantanamo detainees.

But still we do NOTHING because we don't want to upset the lawless and criminal Bush administration.

Even though Omar Khadr is a CANADIAN KID.

What stinking hypocrites it makes us look like. We make such a fuss about the plight of child soldiers in Africa and elsewhere. But we forgot about our own. We forgot about Omar.

Even though when he killed that American soldier HE was just a child, with crazy parents who led him to where a Canadian teenager never should have been, instead of protecting him.

So why aren't more Canadians outraged? Why aren't more Canadians demanding that their government stand up to the Bush war criminals ?

I mean really....what kind of country of yankee flunkies are we becoming? Is a country that can't even protect its young people even a real country?

How HOLLOWED OUT are we?

Sometimes I really wonder....

Gay Stereotypes: Open Letter to Dr Dawg

The following started as a response to the comments about this post.

But since it got rather long.....and it's summer....and I'm lazy....I turned it into this:

Dear Dr Dawg

First of all I want to say that I’m not accusing you of being a homophobe. I know you are a decent person and I’m not questioning your motives either. So put down that gun ….or raise that gin tonic.

What I did say was that your post was STUPID and BAD. And quite frankly it was. I hate to grade a professor....and satire IS difficult ..... but I'm going to have to give you a D.... for DISASTER.

First of all it seemed to me a bit bizarre that you didn’t mention Alvaro Orozco at all in your post, when a link to the story or his website, really would have helped .....coming from a big poobah in the blogosphere like yourself. But whatever....

What was worse was that you managed to turn the whole thing into a JOKE…..on the day we get the news that he is going to be deported. The contrast with the other post couldn’t be more jarring. As a gay man who feels in his heart the suffering of my brother I was shocked. As in WTF??? Or as in how would you EXPECT me to feel?

But never mind that..... what really offended me was your use of gay stereotypes, The “flaming”, the forced pedicures, the painted toe nails, the fashion industry. Puhleaze Dr Dawggy. That’s the kind of shit I read all the time on the Blogging Tories or the Free Dominion site.

Don't you know that kind of nonsense is not only not true...and offensive. And that although some stereotypes may reflect some characteristics of a group of people... when applied to all.... or used to put an oppressed group down ....can actually be dangerous.

But, of course, stereotypes can lead to ridicule and to violence. People have long mocked gay people, even attacked them, for being different. While there may be some differences between gays and straights, there are lots of similarities.

And then there’s that absurd canard that we make more than straight people do. Which is not only only NOT true but also dangerous. As in the Jews control the world. Or why should we give a damn for a bunch of rich faggots?

Have you any idea how many gay people struggle with service jobs because they couldn’t stay in their hellhole schools long enough to graduate? Are you not aware of the glass ceiling in corporate Canada that keeps openly gay people down? Don’t you know how many gay people end up desperately poor...struggling on a CPP pension....because they didn't get any benefits at work? I mean I might be from Venus ....but what planet are YOU from?

But before you accuse me of going overboard ....or of suffering from a bad case of PCitis....O merciful Ju Ju god please not THAT....let me explain something to you. You say I leaped before I looked. But I say you wrote before you KNEW what you were talking about.

Take for example the stereotype of the drunken Irishman. Nowadays it’s just a joke….but once it wasn’t. Once it was used to demean and put down Irish immigrants and keep them in their place. And justify signs like no Irishmen or Dogs allowed. Now it’s just a Saint Patrick’s day gag or something you put on a t-shirt.














But the stereotypes you used in your post are still being used like weapons against gay people…to mock us, demean us, reduce our masculinity or our humanity. In schools they are used like clubs that can drive bullied kids to suicide.

They frag self worth …and the resultant self loathing exacts a terrible hidden toll in the gay community. Older gays like gayred I’m sure could tell you some really sad stories. But so can I.

The only difference is that many older gays are just grateful for the progress that has been made since those bad times. They don't want to rock the boat or make a fuss. They're just happy to be tolerated at last. But I’m NOT.

I don’t know how bad it used to be all I know is that judging from the hate and violence directed at us we obviously haven’t made ENOUGH progress and I have ZERO tolerance for any kind of stereotypes or any kind of anti-gay shite.

And so do others from the New Gay generation.

Now I’m sure you’ve never had an uppity faggot talk to you like this Professor… but get used to it because you’re going to hear a lot more of it.

Having said that however.... I should make it clear that 95 per cent of the anger in that post was directed at the idiot left in general and NOT at you. As I said before I know you are a good person....and to be fair the stereotypes you used were pretty harmless. You were just the detonator for my pentup anger.

Because sometimes the left makes me want to SCREAM. I'm a dyed in the Scottish wool lefty but I've never felt at home in any lefty organization. The left marginalizes us, doesn’t properly support our struggle for equality. and the right to be free from the outrageous and criminal amount of hate and violence directed at us.

It doesn't take us seriously. Too many lefties think of us as flighty, sex obsessed, well off, or just "gay."The schoolyard term for boring and bad. They really do kill us with condescension.

I experienced it at university, at the university paper, as well as at work. And I see it in the blogosphere too. The right may be our enemies but the truth is that if the left had been more supportive over the years we’d have made far more progress.

But never mind about that either. As I said in my post if we have to fight by ourselves we will. All I ask of the left is that it respect us and shove those stereotypes, broke back parodies, and all that other anti-gay shite where the sun never shines. Or just fuck off and get out of our way.

And that’s it. I hope I don't sound too aggressive Dr Dawg, I certainly don’t mean that in any personal sense. And if you were hurt by the tone of my post I’m genuinely sorry.

But I’m afraid I can’t see myself changing my style anytime soon. Somehow being sanded by bullying and oppression just made me more ABRASIVE. And unfortunately for me and my brothers and sisters struggle IS life. And nothing or nobody is going to stand between me and my dream of a world where we are not mocked, teased, bullied, insulted, assaulted or killed.Just for who we are.

I don’t think you have to walk a mile in our high heels to understand that.

Although I wish you could....in my battered old sneakers.

The good news in all of this is that when an uppity faggot speaks his mind....and says what others only dare to think....it may shock some....like a loud fart in a church....but over time it can make some people think about what they haven't thought about before.

And that can only lead to better understanding. Even when words sting...and the truth hurts.

And when we understand each other we can all get back together in the trenches... fight the COMMON right-wing enemy.... and kick their fucking asses from here to hell and back.

Which is of course what I LIVE for...

Yours Sincerely

Simon



P.S. Thank you for going to Alvaro's website and sending an e-mail to the Immigration Minister Diane Finley. I have too....but since I've let that wretched SoCon know what I think of her several times before....I fear it may backfire.....














But the rest of you do it anyway. Because when all is said and done.

Right now saving Alvaro is all that counts...

Flying Objects, Gays, and the Kiss of Death

When I stumbled into my backyard this morning and looked up at the sky I thought the worst was about to happen.

Or the best....as in I was about to become a millionaire for being at the right place at the right time.

But appearances can be deceiving.

If you don't believe me check out this political ad....


When I first saw it I thought it had been made by one of Giuliani's Republican opponents.... who know that when gays support a candidate...it's usually the kiss of death.

"Quinnipiac University polls of voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania -- the big three Electoral College swing states -- found voters by large margins more likely to see the endorsement of a gay rights group as a reason to vote against, rather than for, a candidate. "

Surprise. Surprise.

But it turns out it was just a bunch of idiot fags.

Can you believe THAT?

First of all it makes absolutely no fucking sense. Why would we go after the most gay-positive of the Republican gang? Instead of waiting to see if he gets the nomination and then using something similar during the election campaign...to keep the Republican base sitting on their hands.

And secondly can you believe the stereotypes? When will ANYONE start representing gays as they really are...just like anyone else...instead of like a bunch of Bojangles in a melon patch?

OMFG. What a week. I start off fighting with the evil right-wing bigots, move on to blasting the idiot left for killing us with indifference and condescension, and end up taking shots at my own kind.

Oh boy it's lonely at the bottom. No wonder only Sébastien loves me. But what can I do? If I didn't say it like I see it wouldn't be me. When I use the old chestnut "Speaking Truth to Power" I MEAN it. And I am PISSED!!!

But enough of that.... I've got more important things to worry about right now. Never mind the large flying objects....


















These beautiful little ones are humping. And you know what that means?

Summer is getting critical. It's time to drop everything and just enjoy it while it lasts.

And before these other flying objects....apparently photographed buzzing Hawaii the other day...find me and take me away.



I've got to belong SOMEWHERE don't I?

But don't those fucking idiots know the difference between Canada and Hawaii.? Oh boy I can't WAIT to giveTHEM a piece of my mind.

Helloooooo Venus? Duh?

Have a great rest of summer everyone! See you when I see you.

Unless they find me first....

Alvaro Orozco, Gay Rights, and the Idiot Left

I was scrolling through Progressive Bloggers today when I came across two posts. They were only separated by a few inches on the same page. They were both more or less about the same subject. But they might as well have been a universe apart. One was great but the other really sucked.

But you be the judge. Which one is good but sad....and which one is stupid and bad?

This one?


Or


that one?

Yup. It's a no-brainer. Don't you love the juxtaposition? Don't you love the flaming stereotypes? Would people feel the same way if it was about a Bojangles character, with a pimp suit, a crack pipe, and a water melon?

But it gets better. Guess which post got MORE votes than any other on PB? Yeah THAT one.

Don't you HATE the idiot left?

The good but naive ones who would go to the mat to defend the bigots from Free Dominion.

The ones in the United States who don't know that equality means equality.

The historic Visible Vote 2008 Presidential Forum.... left unanswered one nagging question: Who among the three major Democratic candidates—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama—is going to step up to the plate and show some real leadership on LGBT issues?

The ones who mock our struggle.... and the refugee process... and don't understand or care that for Alvaro.... and so many other gay people....it's a matter of life and death.

I know the immigration apparatchiks are as anti-gay as they come. And racist pigs too. But what the fuck is the left these days? A wanker debating society.... a Facebook Fogey's club..... a collection of closet bigots.... or all of the above?

In Canada they can't get it together to defeat Stephen Harper. In the United States they can't stop the War in Iraq. And when it comes to gay issues they're absolutely fucking USELESS.

I think it's time we let the leftards of the Bongo and Quesadilla Brigade know exactly how we feel about them. Really give it to them. Let them know that with "friends" and "progressives" like that who need fucking enemies?

Let them know too that if gay people have to fight alone we will. It will take longer. But we WILL win. One way or the other.

Or in the words of another of those phony lefties....before he sold out... with or WITHOUT you...



In the meantime if there are any decent lefties out there....gay or straight...please help Alvaro.











Because no matter what the leftards say.

This gay kid's struggle isn't a joke.

It's a matter of life and death....

Afghanistan:When Killing Civilians is NOT an Accident

I am glad to see that British commanders in Afghanistan have had the guts to say what our yankee poodle generals have not. That the Pentagon's insane out of control air war is slaughtering Afghan civilians .....and losing hearts and minds.

A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.

As well as making a mockery out of reconstruction efforts...

“First they kill me, and then they rebuild my house?” he said. “What is the point when I am dead and my son is dead? This is not of any worth to us.”

It's all so predictable of course. When you don't have enough soldiers to do the job you are forced to rely on airpower to keep your own casualties down. And when you do civilians are bound to be killed.

But what makes it really obscene is that many of those civilian deaths are not accidents of war. They are carefully calculated and deliberate.

....the U.S. military still has rules in place that permit the killing of civilians in airstrikes. In fact, the number of anticipated civilian deaths is carefully appraised beforehand in a calculation known as the collateral damage estimate, which is then reviewed by commanders and military attorneys who must decide if the benefits of the strike outweigh the cost in innocent civilian lives.

But what these rules mean is that killing civilians is legal -- as long as the deaths are the result of a strike at a legitimate military target. And it also means that some unknown percentage of civilian deaths from airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan are not accidents.

The bad news for us is that although NATO commanders ARE more careful....we're still up to our elbows in the bloody muck....because we regularly rely on close air support from the Americans.

Just like the British do....



And the Americans kill EVERYTHING.

I wonder how many civilians were factored in to that B-1 air strike?

Who can blame ordinary Afghans for feeling betrayed?

“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person....So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone.”

So much for our glorious crusade to help the Afghan people. I knew this crazy mission was doomed from the start. That's bad enough.

But I think the time has come for Canadians who love this country and its values to start worrying about something even worse.

Like when does a military disaster become a moral catastrophe?

Because sooner or later our troops will be out of Afghanistan.

But THAT question could haunt us forever....

Bigots, Clowns and the Killer Rapper

Wow. Ever feel like lying down and never getting up? Summer is too hot. Life is too crazy. What a mad world.

Your version of hate Simon is so twisted that I suspect that you are not gay but are a hetro who hates gays. It's you spewing filth and hatred towards gays Simon not Free Dominion Members.

Six pages of anti-gay hatred aimed at me. And I'm a hetero who hates gays? Who knew.

But then who knew I was a clown?

I may be wrong...it wouldn't be the first time. But not a clown. Never.

Just a lonely voice speaking out against free speech absolutism.

And then there was this story.

A free concert organized to lift the spirits of the shaken Virginia Tech community is instead angering some parents of the victims, who say the decision to feature a New York rapper known for his violent lyrics shows a blatant lack of respect for the people killed in the April 16 shooting rampage.

A Killer Rapper who writes lyrics like these....

One 44, two 45's, 3 loaded clips,
4 niggas roll, one nigga drives 500 Benz,
6 reasons why This kid should die ,
We shootin every motherfucker outside
Pulled on his block, jumped out the car,
guns in our hand
At the same time everybody ran ,
There that nigga go, hiding in the crowd
Let the trigger blow, 7 shots now he lying on the ground
Blood on the floor , Then we shot some more
Niggas he was with , 2 niggas hit, one nigga fell...

Kill kill kill.....murder murder murder

He would have liked that song...













But what about his victims? Oh yeah.They're dead. They can't speak out against the hate that killed them.

Just like we can't speak out against the hate that's killing us. Without being attacked by our enemies ....or called clowns by our friends.

What a mad world...

Iggy's Mea Culpa and the Sad Fate of Dion

Uh oh. It looks as if the power struggle between the two wacky professors Dion and Ignatieff is starting to resemble a high school production of Julius Caesar. You know the kind where even as they're skewering Caesar ....you can't stop laughing.

I mean Ignatieff may be positioning himself for Dion's fall. Which is at least a political tragedy. Sob.Sob.

But you have to admit the first act was hilarious.

Where the lugubrious Count Iggy spends about two seconds blaming his noble emotions for supporting the Bush administration's criminal attack on Iraq.

The lesson I draw for the future is to be less influenced by the passions of people I admire — Iraqi exiles, for example — and to be less swayed by my emotions.

Another two seconds admitting he didn't know what he was doing because he lived in an academic cuckoo hatch.

As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners.

And the rest of the article blabbing on about his leadership qualities....and why he's just the kind of loser leader we need. Because being wrong is.....um......GOOD.

Democratic peoples should always be looking for something more than prudence in a leader: daring, vision and — what goes with both — a willingness to risk failure. Daring leaders can be trusted as long as they give some inkling of knowing what it is to fail.

Blah blah blah. What a load of self serving tripe. Talk about glorifying failure. We need a yankee loving neocon wonk who didn't even know that Iraq was a ticking sectarian time bomb.....

.....like we need a hole in the head....or Stephen Harper...or a bus driver running this country.

But it gets worse. His phony mea culpa also includes an attack on those who were smarter than him....and an argument for staying the course in Iraq. As this blogger points out.

Ignatieff here is repeating the Bush-Cheney lie; the mantra that "we all got it wrong," therefore "we" are all blameless. It is just a device to deflect accountability for the disaster. A person with Ignatieff's intellectual gifts knows he is deliberately making a bogus argument to shield himself from responsibility. That doesn't sound like a mea culpa to me.

Nope. Just what we need....another guy like Stephen Harper...who can never REALLY admit he's wrong. On the other hand neither can Stephane Dion. And if I was him I'd be really concerned about this Ignatieff quote:

I’ve learned that good judgment in politics looks different from good judgment in intellectual life. Among intellectuals, judgment is about generalizing and interpreting particular facts as instances of some big idea. In politics, everything is what it is and not another thing.

Because Dion suffers from the same condition. The same mix of arrogance and stupidity.




















And if politics is theatre...then he's a BUST. In Ontario a lot of Liberals aren't exactly falling over themselves to flip hamburgers with him. They're running for cover. And in Quebec it's even worse.

In French Quebec, the most recent polls show the Liberals to be mired firmly in third place, and the native son Dion to be the least popular party leader in Parliament.

"When the Liberal leader trails an Albertan Tory, a Toronto NDPer and a separatist on the best-PM measure," SES Research pollster Nik Nanos recently wrote for Sun Media, "it has to be pretty grim."

Very grim. And it's not going to get any better either. In Quebec they hate him for being a centralizing English stooge. A ridiculous wonky academic who lives in a cloud cuckoo land just like Ignatieff. The son of Leon Dion the well known nationalist professor....who came up with the expression "putting a knife to the throat of English Canada."

The son who has spent his political life overcompensating for daddy.....and treating Quebecers like children. The kind of guy who would muse about the meaning of nation on the day of Quebec's Fete Nationale. In short an idiot.

Meanwhile in English Canada they hate him for being too French. You can't get more fucked than that.

The poor Liberals can cling to their delusions....but sooner or later the knives WILL come out. Which means the rest of us should worry about this Ignatieff quote:

To bring the new into being, a politician needs a sense of timing, of when to leap and when to remain still. Bismarck famously remarked that political judgment was the ability to hear, before anyone else, the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history.

Hmmm.....if Dion is Caesar waiting for the first knife in the back?

Who do you think ......despite all the evidence to the contrary...fancies himself as our Bismarck?

Can't you smell the horseshit already?

Is this a crazy world or what?

Gay Pride and the Idiot Bigots of Truro

So let's see....in Amsterdam more people than ever before turned out for the city's Gay Pride parade.

And for the first time ever there was a Gay Teenager's Boat.









The initiator of the teenage gay boat, 14-year-old Danny Hoekzema, said the participation of teenage gays was necessary to ask attention for the position of young gays.

Isn't that awesome? Go kids go!!

And how about the Hetero Boat that carried the political message of the day: Amsterdam says no to anti-gay violence.

'We are participating in the gay parade as heterosexuals because we are proud to live in a country which accepts homosexuality,' one of the sailors said.

Isn't THAT great?

Meanwhile in Vancouver..... a record crowd of gays and straights turned out for that city's Gay Pride Day.

Rainbows, water balloons and gay rights were front and centre Sunday at the 29th annual Vancouver Pride Parade as an estimated 385,000 people watched the spectacle dance down streets in the city's densely populated West End.

Isn't that terrific? Way to go Vancouver!!!! You're not just pretty...you're BEAUTIFUL.

And then......on the other end of the scale....at the shitty end of the stick....impaled in a darker time... there's the redneck dump of Truro, Nova Scotia. Where we can't even fly our flag at City Hall. Because the wingnut mayor says God wouldn't approve.

"God says I'm not in favour of that and I have to look at it and say, I guess I'm not either...if I have a group of people that says pedophiles should have rights, do we raise their flag too?"

Isn't THIS depressing?

















When I saw the story my Scotian temper flared up....but my heart sank. What a way to test my new resolve to keep to the high road. I thought I'd have to spend a whole bunch of time on a beautiful day trying to explain what gay pride and gay flags are all about....to an ignorant bigot.

As well as explaining the difference between gay people and criminals...

Which probably would have annoyed me so much I would have fallen off the wagon...and suggested that the moron stick his Monkey God where the sun never shines. You know me.

But luckily....for all of us.... I didn't have to. Because this blogging brother said it better than I ever could:

My take is simple: Pride flags exists because pride is the opposite of shame, which is precisely how people like Mills would have us gays feel. The “lifestyle” I’m supposedly flaunting is, in reality, no different from anyone else’s, but there’s a lot I’ve had to put up with. Pride is a fitting symbol: I am proud of having overcome the misinformation I was fed over the years about gay people; I’m proud of overcoming the personal struggle to accept who I am; and I’m especially proud of how I continue to overcome ignorant policy-makers, lobbyists, journalists, individuals, and churches who don’t hesitate to attack me at every opportunity.

Raising the Pride flag is not an “endorsement” of any particular lifestyle..... Rather, it’s a gesture of dignity and recognition of a minority’s struggle that, if refused in this manner, re-enforces the purpose of why that symbol exists

Mayor Mills may not care to see the Pride flag one week a year, but I have to put up with discriminatory nonsense all the time.

Isn't that the TRUTH? Good for you Mark. NOBODY could say it better than that.

And thanks for saving me all that trouble and time ....so I was able to enjoy the afternoon....dance to the steel drum music of Caribana....and even go shopping.

For a pair of these gay-friendly jeans....


BTW....of course...there's a straight version of this ad.

It's just that the people at Levi's aren't stupid...unlike the Council cretins of Truro and their bigot mayor.

Smart people know that everything is better for ALL of us....when this world is for EVERYONE.

The day that happens EVERYWHERE we won't need a Gay Pride parade. We won't have to wave our beautiful rainbow flag of freedom all the time...as we fight off our many enemies. To let them know we're NEVER giving up.

Until then we do.

And the best thing is...... I don't have waste any more time explaining that to anyone anymore. All I've got to do is quote Mayor Moron.

Thanks idiot!

And thanks Mark for telling him like it is....and saving me all that work.

Now I'm putting on my new jeans and my dancing shoes.

And getting back to the Caribana Party...

(click to enlarge)

It's like Black Pride Week.

And it's beautiful too...