On Feb.17, about 150 people turned out at Toronto’s 519 Community Centre, in the heart of the city’s Gay Village, to hear a report on the future of its troubled annual Pride Parade. Authored by a Community Advisory Panel (CAP) chaired by the Reverend Brent Hawkes, the report made 133 recommendations to salvage the financially- strapped event. Pride Toronto’s co-chair, Francisco Alvarez, apologized to those present for the “wrongs” the parade organizers had committed over the past year. Despite the putative goodwill, however, a giant elephant continued to lumber through the room: Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA).

QuAIA is an organization dedicated to one goal: fomenting hatred against Israel. It does not advance gay rights; instead, it seeks to demonize and isolate the Jewish state. In recent years, QUAIA members have marched in the Pride parade, effectively hijacking it to advance their hateful agenda.

Not surprisingly, QuAIA’s participation has alienated a raft of parade sponsors. As a result, Pride’s financial situation deteriorated from a substantial surplus to a $400,000 deficit in 2010. The federal government steered clear of the event, and municipal funds — including costs earmarked for security and cleanup — likely will be pulled in 2011 if QuAIA marches again. (In July 2010, City Council voted to withhold Pride’s funding until after this year’s parade, to avoid a repeat of the previous go-around, when Pride banned QUAIA, took city money, and then allowed the group to march anyway.) Currently, Pride’s sole life support appears to be the overdrawn line of credit supplied by the event’s lead sponsor, TD Bank Financial Group.

While the CAP report devotes over a dozen of its 232 pages to the issue of QUAIA, it does not pronounce itself on whether the group should remain part of the parade. It states that “it is not appropriate” to “simply decide” whether QUAIA should be in or out.

This represents a complete moral abdication. At a minimum, the report should have distanced Pride from QuAIA and unequivocally stated that the group does not share the key values of Pride: inclusion and respect. The CAP could have found ample support for this conclusion: The Ontario Legislature, by all-party resolution, has deemed the term “Israeli Apartheid” to be “odious and hateful.” Every major candidate in Toronto’s 2010 mayoral race stated that QuAIA does not belong in Pride. Every major city newspaper agreed, regardless of political leanings.

Instead, the CAP board recommended the creation of a Dispute Resolution Panel to hear complaints related to Pride. This would allow persons opposed to QuAIA, or any other hateful group (Queer Nazis? Queers Against Islamic Aggression? Queers Against Palestinian Apartheid?) to have their complaint adjudicated.

But to challenge the right of any such group — real or hypothetical — to participate in Pride, one would have to challenge their beliefs as well. In QUAIA’s case, that would literally mean putting the state of Israel on trial. A complaint about the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” would necessitate “proving” to the panel that Israel is not an apartheid state. This would paradoxically give QUAIA and its supporters an even bigger bully pulpit to spread their hateful message, much as Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel had at his trial for dissemination of hate speech in 1985.

The problem with QUAIA was never one of process, but of content: hateful content that made thousands of citizens feel not only unwelcome but unsafe at a public event. The report grants QUAIA legitimacy, and chides those who oppose it for not seeking a ruling at the Ontario Human Rights Commission. By its silence on whether QUAIA should be allowed to march in the parade, it gives the organization an unspoken green light to spread hatred.

Tragically, gays know only too well that silence is hatred’s best friend. Pride is supposed to break that silence, affirming the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities’ right not only to exist, but to flourish openly and honestly, in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect. The silence of the CAP Report does not do the LGBT community proud. It brings it shame and disgrace, and puts the continued existence of its most important Canadian celebration in jeopardy. (© 2011 National Post Inc. 03/03/11)