Gay rights – locally and nationally – reached two important milestones this week.
In Thunder Bay, the LGBT community and its supporters are celebrating Pride Week. The weeklong celebration is not new to this city. The Pride Parade set for June 15, however, is. The inaugural Thunder Bay Pride Parade will start in Waverly Park and head toward the waterfront. It will be a short but important distance that illustrates how this community has matured.
On the national stage, Canada celebrates the 10th anniversary of same-sex marriage. As each anniversary arrives, the idea that same-sex marriage was once illegal becomes more and more strange. What is even more odd is how many other countries around the world seem so far away from taking the same step toward equality as we did a decade ago.
But it would be absurd to believe the struggles of the LGBT community are over in Canada and Thunder Bay.
Homophobia is far from extinct. LGBT slurs are still casually used as insults, and open discrimination against a person’s sexuality is just as typical.
It’s OK to be proud of the progress we’ve made, but we need to be honest with ourselves as a community that there’s still more to be done.
Whether it be LGBT rights, gender equality or racism, neither Thunder Bay nor Canada has reached eutopia.
We are getting there though, even if it is one important milestone at a time.
