They canceled the annual Pride Festival in Fredericton, New Brunswick yesterday. That saddened me.

I am not a supporter of the societal manupulatons of the gender alphabet. Leaving aside theological considerations, they don’t make scientific sense.

However, the festival was canceled not because because the organizers realized the silliness of their cause, but because they were supposedly harassed and felt threatened. They felt it was unsafe to continue.

That is just wrong. If you disagree with another person, you shouldn’t be trying to impose your will by violence or the threat of it. It is wrong when countries do it, and just as wrong when individuals do it.

What struck me though in the news story about the cancelation of the festival was the organizers’ choice as grand marshal of the Pride Parade: a group named Palestine Solidarity.

Leaving aside the humanitarian considerations of the current conflict in the Middle East, this strikes me as a curious choice. Why do members of the 2LGTBQI+ community want to express support for a government (and more than that, a society) that criminalizes homosexuality?

There are no Pride Parades in Palestine. Being openly gay is hazardous to your health, and the authorities won’t support you.

In other parts of Canada this year, Pride Parades have been disrupted by pro-Palestinian protestors. Making a pro-Palestinian group the grand marshals of a Pride Parade seems to me like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Maybe they thought they wouldn’t be shut down by Palestinian protestors. (Come to think of it, before he war, were any protest marches allowed in Gaza? I think not.)

All of which shows that the conflict over Gaza has managed to create some very strange bedfellows, at east in Canada. There doesn’t seem to be much logic in play in Fredericton, or so it seems to me.