On Pride and prejudice

I’m trying to comprehend how the group Black Lives Matter and the Gay Pride Parade have become involved with each other, being that they are two different concerns. BLM held the parade up last year until organizers signed papers agreeing to its terms. The group wanted assurances that there would be no police presence at future parades.

This decision is neither group’s to make. There has always been a police presence at every parade, to keep order, join in the festivities and to show solidarity with the community it serves.

We now find ourselves in different times. The free world faces threats from terrorists as well as those that display no tolerance for refugees, minorities and different religions.

A police presence is required now more than ever, especially as far as groups like these are concerned and therefore should be at the parade in full uniform to serve and protect even those that don’t want them there. Jay Paul Baldwin, Mississauga

It is sad that Pride and its supporters are utterly oblivious to the fact that, by prohibiting uniformed police officers from participating in the Pride Parade (outside the necessary security presence), they are only hurting members of their own community.

But the sad truth is that, more often than not, those who believe themselves to have been oppressed in the past prove all too ready to adopt the same ignorant prejudices of their former “oppressors” once they are in a position of any sort of power.

This should be a warning for such participants in Pride festivities as the United and Anglican churches, who by being religious organizations (and thus guilty by association with past and current oppressors of the LBGTQ community) are no doubt in the view of a few (and clearly it only takes a few) even more unworthy of participating in these festivities, than are LBGTQ members of the Toronto Police. Adam Lynde, Toronto