This is officially too many instances for us to write this off as some sort of coincidence which runs off the end of the bell curve. Can anyone explain exactly what the beef is between Black Lives Matter and the LGBT community? It seems as if there can’t be any sort of gay pride or solidarity event these days without BLM showing up to shut down their activities and try to make the event all about race. The latest instance was during the Toronto LGBT Pride parade, where BLM advocates once again stopped the show and made it all about them. (CBC)


The parade didn’t re-start until after Pride Toronto executive director Mathieu Chantelois signed a document agreeing to the group’s demands.


Alexandra Williams, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, told CBC’s Natasha Fatah that they held the sit-in because they wanted to hold Pride Toronto accountable for what she called “anti-blackness.”

Williams was quick to insist that they “weren’t taking space away from anybody,” but rather just wanted to make sure that race was part of the conversation even though the pride event was entirely about LGBT issues for people of all races. (Or something.) But that wasn’t their only demand. They also didn’t care for some of the floats.

Some of the other demands Chantelois agreed to are that the parade will no longer have police floats, and the organization will hold a public town hall with groups such as Black Lives Matter Toronto within six months.

Pride Toronto, in response to the sit-in, said it welcomes the opportunity to “continue the conversation” with Black Lives Matter Toronto.

Yep. The Pride parade will no longer allow police floats. In the wake of Orlando, where the cops risked their lives to kill the terrorist who was murdering everyone in the club, Toronto’s gay community will now bar the police. That’s just wonderful. Relations between inner city black communities and the police are, admittedly, at an all time low these days, but the gay community seems to have very nearly come full circle from the bad old days of Stonewall and been working hand in hand with law enforcement. Do you really want to drive a wedge in there? And if so, who exactly does that serve?

Here’s the local CBC coverage of the parade and an interview with one of the leading instigators.

It’s hard to ignore the friction which seems to exist between these two groups. While impossible to quantify, it’s been long discussed that being gay as a black male (in particular) is particularly difficult in American society because there are additional stigmas involved in the black community on that score. Michael C. LaSala, the author of “African American Gay Youth and Their Families: Redefining Masculinity, Coping with Racism and Homophobia,” once described the situation saying, the Black gay male experience a unique and difficult one.

Is that part of the problem here? Are the people ostensibly fighting racism stumbling over a problem of being intolerant of gays? Other than that it’s hard to imagine a reason why they would keep interrupting gay pride events, but it’s certainly not helping either of their causes.