This is not your day

At the cottage this weekend I ended up in a contentious discussion about the police and queer people.  We got onto the subject of the Pride parade in Toronto and how the police are currently banned from marching in the parade.  Individual officers can march if they like, but the police aren't getting a float and they aren't allowed to be in uniform.

This is a good thing.

In an ideal world it would be great for the police to show their support for Pride and queer people in general.  But in an ideal world we wouldn't need a Pride parade in the first place, and in this non ideal world we inhabit the point of Pride isn't to give the cops a voice - it is for the queer people.

The tricky part about this conversation was that the people I was talking with are very pro police.  They have never had any trouble with the cops and they think of cops as defenders of the innocent.

It is easy to not have trouble with the cops when you are straight, white, cis, able bodied, neurotypical, and wealthy.  Not so much for people who aren't all those things.

These conversations don't seem likely to go anywhere useful, but I won't back down from them.  This is especially true because Pinkie Pie and friend were there listening and I will not allow them to think that the police are correct in demanding a place - at least not without hearing a proper counterpoint.

I talked about how the infamous Toronto gay bathhouse raids were only a few decades ago, and many people marching in that Pride parade were treated abominably (and illegally) by the police in those raids.  How can you ask that someone make space for their abuser like this?

Then they brought up that homosexuality was still illegal back then.  I wasn't at all sure it was the case, but I hate to argue with false information or guesses.  So I looked it up, and as I had thought the bathhouse raids took place in 1981 and decriminalization happened in 1969.

Armed with my new certainty I brought it up again at the next meal and made it clear that the bathhouse raids back then were not law enforcement - they were state sanctioned violence, enacted because of hatred and bigotry.

I am never quite sure how hard to push this stuff.  I made my point, there was a long, sustained silence, then the topic got changed.  No one argued with me further, which is a good thing, but nobody apologized or said that they had been mistaken either.  I know that these conversation are unlikely to convince someone with boatloads of privilege and decades of submersion in pro police culture.  It will probably be written off as a few bad cops, nothing to worry about now.  I also don't know if Pinkie Pie was even paying attention.  Does she get the message I am sending?  Is she just thinking about Minecraft and wondering why all the adults are being tense?

No way to know.  I know I won't sweep it under the rug, and I know there is no point yelling for hours.  Where I should land between those two points though, I can't quite suss out.