Ohhhhhh BROTHER…

If you happen to be gay and living in Toronto, there have certainly been some hot button issues come up in and around this past calendar week…

Numero Uno: The above video. “Viral” promotion for Toronto Pride. Oh dear. My heart aches for you, Shawn “Brody” Ayers, and Jesus Christ on a cracker I hope you got paid… Donnarama’s presence in it suggests that you did. At any rate - I can just picture the 50-something heterosexual man that owns a small media production company operating out of Richmond Hill who was childhood friends with someone in charge of publicity for Toronto Pride that needed to urban dictionary the term ‘viral video’ when coming up with the premise for this video, constantly repeating “and there’s gonna be a bunch of sex entendres heh heh heh”… because, this might be a tad, how shall we say, out of touch. Honestly, Toronto Pride - could you not have just taken what’s left of your funding and spent it on DVD Rentals and unrefrigerated Mexican food? That would have been more cost-effective. Whoa.

Numero Two-no: A fantastic comic and lovely person I’ve known since I started in comedy, Dawn Whitwell, was barred from coming to speak to a Catholic High School because some hen-pecking, rosary-clutching, frigid bitch googled her and found out she was gay-married. Okay… it’s one thing if you book a comic to come speak to a high school and videos of them saying “this guy has permission to sit, full weight, on my face” followed by making a Hannibal Lecter sound on national television and pictures like this surface of them on the internet… FINE. But Dawn has absolutely nothing on her record other than the fact that she exercised a right that everyone has in this country. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and mean in: Catholic Educators are worse than Jihadists.

Thirdly: A cover-story article for a free weekly publication called The Grid came out this week entitled “Beyond Gay” written by some sniveling fuckface named Paul Aguirre-Livingston from the comfort of up his own ass. In it, he essentially sneers down at every last drop of blood that has been spent by every gay person ever in the name of homophobia, essentially. A sample:

“The Village has all but become a dirty word in circles of the nouveau gay. We just let it die. And when the gays do converge at Church and Wells now for Pride, it’s only to show how hard they worked on their bodies at the gym, not about any sort of political statement. How many “Lose 10 pounds by Pride” features do we need to read?”

He talks about how much of a non-event it was for him to come out, so much so that he didn’t even need to! Oh, how rich! And he exalts various characteristics that are just downright antithetical to the stereotypical gay lifestyle! GROUNDBREAKING! He makes an angsty rejection of Toronto’s Church & Wellesley village A-K-A Fagsville USA! Gabba Gabba Hey!

There are more things fundamentally wrong with this article than I can count (fab’s Matt Thomas did a magnificent job of it, though), so I’ll just examine my main gripe. In it, he speaks a lot to the point that he was born into a well-to-do urban experience, and as such, his sexual orientation was a non-issue. In a horizon-sized broad stroke, he paints all gays of his generation as these totally acclimated, undefinable, hyper-evolved gifts that have too much substance for you to handle so don’t even try. They. Are. OVER. It.

K… firstly, he’s talking the same fucking mess that everyone talks when they’re in their early 20’s before their personality dust settles and they’re on a crusade to assert what they are and what they aren’t - we’ve all been there. However, his mess got published in a cover story and will live in perpetuity online for the rest of time. Trust me: you will NOT stand by these words in a matter of even two years. How embarrassing.

What’s more embarrassing: as thrilled as I am that Mr. Aguirre-Livingston (if the content of your article didn’t convince me that gurrrrl-you fancy, your hyphenated last name put things over the top) was born into such comfortable surroundings, I was not. Nor were or ARE tens of millions of gays living somewhere that homosexuality is still both explicitly and implicitly illegal. You are in a blessed minority, darling.

Imagine Princess Bea penning an article about how women’s shelters just aren’t relevant any more because in her GENERATION (of young royalty), women just aren’t facing things like rape, poverty and tediously practical hats anymore. You might say that would be a very white whine, wouldn’t you? You might also say that it would be despicable.

So, my point: The entire mishegoss was one giant fucking First World Moan and bitch needs to spend less time getting ‘over’ the village and more time getting over her damn self.

For those of you NOT over the village, a friendly reminder that tickets are flying off the wicket for BITCH SALAD GIVES BACK (benefiting the Toronto AIDS Committee… an organization that the writer of that article must HATE…) so BUY YOURS NOW.

—- Aj