So declaring a particular month “Pride” month is now mandatory, and refusal is a human rights violation? Really?

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has found the township of Emo will have to pay damages after refusing to proclaim Pride Month back in 2020.

I do love it that the township is Emo. No YOU are.

Borderland Pride requested Emo to declare June as Pride Month and display a rainbow flag for one week but the township refused, resulting in a years-long process in which the tribunal ruled against the township. The tribunal ruled Borderland Pride will be awarded $15,000, with $10,000 coming from the township itself and the other $5,000 coming from Emo mayor Harold McQuaker.

Another apt name. Could they find anyone named McHedonist to balance things out?

But anyway. I’m not seeing it. Emo should support and defend LGB rights by all means, but should it be required by the government to declare a “Pride Month” for one small segment of the population? There’s no “Pride Month” for women you know. Should governments be requiring Pride Month for Catholics, Mormon, Baptists? Buddhists, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses? You can see where this is going: there aren’t enough months. More broadly, it’s just not obvious or clear that naming months after something to promote it or defend it or celebrate it should be mandatory for reasons to do with human rights. It’s not clear at all, in fact it’s quite foggy.

Doug Judson is a lawyer in Fort Frances and one of the directors on the board of Borderland Pride, and said they’re elated to have finally brought it to a close and is a significant victory for the organization.

“We didn’t pursue this because of the money. We pursued this because we were treated in a discriminatory fashion by a municipal government, and municipalities have obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code not to discriminate in the provision of a service,” said Judson.

But discriminatory how? Does Emo have a Straight Month? If it does then I might agree with Judson, but I’m pretty confident it doesn’t, on account of how 1. that’s not a thing and 2. it would be asking for trouble. Assuming there is no Straight Month, how exactly is it discriminatory to turn down the opportunity to have a Pride one? It may be churlish, but discriminatory? I call that language-creep.

“The tribunal’s decision affirms that. That is the important thing we were seeking here was validation that as 2SLGBTQA plus people, we’re entitled to treatment without discrimination when we try to seek services from our local government.”

But naming a month isn’t a service. It isn’t among the services local governments provide. It’s also not discrimination not to provide it; see above. Naming a month is something else – a display of solidarity or a display of virtue or a bit of both.

Judson said one of the messages it sends to other townships and municipalities is that Pride needs to be in the smallest and most remote communities just as it is in larger cities, and in some of the places “where it can be really hard to help people understand why it’s so important”

“I hope that it emboldens and strengthens people in communities like Emo and other places like that across Ontario to know that they have entitlements from their government,” said Judson.

But this is all symbols. It’s just wrapping paper. It’s a display of CorrectThink. It’s advertising, it’s public relations. There’s a place for that kind of thing, certainly, but that doesn’t make it an “entitlement from their government.” Pride months and weeks and days and years are very old news at this point, and kind of stale. We have more urgent things to quarrel over.