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Pacific Spirit: People of faith take Pride in Canada

Two decades after vilifying homosexuality, religious groups change dramatically
pride parade
Parade-goers enjoy the annual Pride Parade in Vancouver. Two decades ago, many religious people might have shown up to the event with protest signs. Now they cheer. Photo Kevin Hill

On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Vancouverites will descend on the streets of the West End for what is probably the city’s most extravagant celebration. For nearly four decades, the annual Pride Parade has celebrated the city’s gays and lesbians (and, later, bisexuals, transgender, “queer,” questioning, two-spirited and other variations of gender nonconformity). Much has changed in the world and in Vancouver since the first tiny parade 36 years ago.

Maybe the most dramatic of these changes has been personified by people of faith. A couple of decades ago, some religious people stood on the sidelines of the parade with protest signs. Now many are marching in the parade with rainbow flags.

The speed with which homosexuality has gained acceptance in general society — but especially within communities of faith — may be beyond anything history has seen before.

Two years ago, this country’s largest Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada, elected as its spiritual and administrative head a gay Vancouver minister, the Right Rev. Gary Paterson. This came barely two decades after the church first accepted the idea that gay men and lesbians deserve to be ordained. (Coincidentally or not, the first out gay minister ordained by the church, in 1992, was the Rev. Tim Stevenson, Paterson’s spouse and now a Vancouver city councillor. If lists of “power couples” were still a thing, these two would certainly be on it in a couple of categories.)

Infinitely more stunning was the comment by Pope Francis after his election as head of the global Roman Catholic Church. Asked about homosexuality, the new pontiff replied “Who am I to judge?”

These are seismic events. Despite the fact that Jesus is reported to have said nothing on the topic of homosexuality, for a decade or two there were religious figures who behaved as though he had spoken of nothing else.

Now, evangelical and other Christian figures who demonized homosexuality in the 1970s and ’80s are apologizing for the harm they caused to individuals and society. Religious leaders who just two decades ago were condemning homosexuals as “inverts” are now aggressively courting them into their congregations — a change of heart I like to dub preaching to the inverted.

Some conservative Christians have not wholly abandoned their positions, instead adopting a sort of middle ground, acknowledging an imbalance in the dialogue between hot button social issues and, well, everything else. Part of this realignment is purely pragmatic, a response to demographic reality. Evangelical and conservative churches in North America have been growing, while “mainline” liberal churches struggle to survive. But young people of faith, even those who identify as conservatives, will not put up with a theology that vilifies their gay friends.

Even churches that steadfastly cling to an anti-gay theology have largely adopted a “love the sinner, ignore the sin” approach. Gay people and their allies who view this as insufficient and patronizing fail to appreciate the progress it actually represents.

Given what seems to be a gay triumph, it is easy to be complacent. As the exuberant celebration of pride in Vancouver this weekend will show, we are confident in our place in society and joined by the support of our families, and our country’s political, religious and thought leaders. There are still anti-gay incidents in Canada, but gay people are legally equal and protected here.

Not so in places like Russia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, India or Iran. Taking nothing away from the danger and misery facing GLBTQ people in those places, remember that it was the beginning of the gay rights movement that spawned Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant. The first demands for equality tend to be met with opposition. In North America and Western Europe, legal equality came after bitter anti-gay counter-movements.

By example, the United States Congress adopted the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, a time when the only people who imagined that gay marriage was realistically on the horizon were its opponents. They, it turns out, were the prescient ones.

The fact that anti-gay laws, rhetoric and violence are rampant in much of the world may indicate, counterintuitively, that the struggle toward human equality has begun in earnest, with the first round going to the haters, but with many rounds left to go. That’s the silver lining interpretation anyway.

Meanwhile, back at home, expect to hear dredged up the old saw: “When do we get to celebrate straight pride day?” The succinct shutdown to that line of inquiry is “Every day is straight pride day.”

But the way times have changed, even that adage may be turned on its head. In the Canada we have built, it may now be safe to say that every day is gay pride day. And that is something we should be proud of as gay people, as straight people, as everything in between. But, perhaps most of all, it should make us proud as Canadians.

pacificspiritpj@gmail.com