Toronto school trustees threaten to back out of Pride unless city enforces nudity laws
TORONTO, March 5, 2014 – A group of Toronto school trustees are seeking assurance from the city that laws against public nudity will be enforced at this year's gay pride parade. The Toronto District School Board is known for its promotion of homosexual activism in the schools and puts a float in the parade every year.
Trustees Sam Sotiropoulos, Irene Atkinson and John Hastings put forward a motion requesting that the school board agree to ask Mayor Rob Ford and city councillors to clarify its position on upholding the law.
The Toronto District School Board organizes a float at Toronto Pride every year.
The trustees’ initiative has won praise from a pro-family who is urging ratepayers to support the motion. (Contact TDSB trustees here.)
Sotiropoulos told the Toronto Star that the board supports the event because it is touted as being "family friendly," but he objects to the lack of police enforcement of a law that is in place to protect the public, and especially children, from lewd behavior.
“I have no problem participating with Pride — it’s such a wonderful event that’s also part of our board’s social justice piece — but I cannot sign off to participating and promoting an event where the laws against public nudity are being flouted," said Sotiropoulos.
“This is not Hanlan’s Point (the nude beach on Toronto Island) which has clear signs saying ‘Clothing Optional,’ ” he added. “We don’t have a disclaimer at the parade and this is supposed to be a family-friendly event.”
The motion the trustees brought to the board states that nudity at the pride parade "raises legal concerns and implications" for "TDSB students and their families.”
"This is a municipal matter and it has to do with the policing and the enforcing of the laws of Canada in the streets of Toronto," Sotiropoulos told CBC News. "If you were to do this in any other ward throughout the city at any other time of day during that same period, you'd likely be arrested."
Sotiropoulos was recently slammed by homosexual activists for questioning the legality of nudity at the raunchy pride parades.
After he tweeted the Toronto Police Service asking if it would enforce Canadian law against public nudity, he was accused on Twitter of insulting and hating gays and was labeled “homophobic.”
“Interesting to remark how readily those who don't want to be labelled cast labels and slander at others,” Sotiropoulos responded. “To think, these are the folks who are ‘inclusive’?! I'd say, ‘Shame on you,’ but there's no suggestion they'd understand what it is.”
Sotiropoulos is also concerned that students at the parade see Canadian law openly “flouted.”
Students, he said on the Tarek Fatah radio show, are “seeing the breaking of the laws of Canada,” adding that he does not understand “how being naked [in public] is part of being gay. I get stuck on that question. Why is that a necessary element to parade naked in the streets of Toronto to express what? I’m not sure, except for the flouting of the laws of this country.”
Homosexual activists defend the nudity at pride parades as a way to express their sexuality, the purpose of the event.
Last month, the managing editor at the homosexual news agency DailyXtra wrote a column responding to the controversy entitled “Let’s get naked this Pride.”
“It’s what we do with our naked bodies that kept us gays down for so long,” wrote Danny Glenwright.
Those who have a problem with nakedness at the parade can “stay home” with their children and watch on TV “more palatable aspects of our world” such as “priests raping children,” he suggested.
“I prefer to leave that all behind for a few hours on Pride and head downtown to celebrate gay rights and gay sex — and to protest those who hate us gays and the ways we seek pleasure.”
Jack Fonseca, project manager at Campaign Life Coalition, said the motion was long overdue.
"Well, it's about time some trustee took action to protect children from the lewd and pornographic elements of the pride parade. I can't understand why it took this long when the board has been sending children to pride all these years!" he said.
"The trustees need to apply some logical consistency in how they vote on this motion," he continued. "Would any of them approve of a teacher handing out porn magazines, which feature full frontal nudity and suggestive sex acts, to their grade 1 class?"
Photos of previous pride parades documented by CLC show naked men, in full frontal nudity, along with other displays of mock sex acts, bondage and sadomasochism. (Warning: Explicit images.)
"This is not unlike what you see in porn mags," said Fonseca. "Trustees must be consistent in their moral reasoning, lest they be accused of lacking any."
The CLC spokesman pointed out that the motion by the three trustees is so important that all eligible Toronto District School Board ratepayers and parents are urged to make it a municipal election issue.
"October 27, 2014 will be election day in Ontario. Parents and ratepayers should make it their electoral mission to toss out every trustee who votes against this common sense motion to protect children from the harmful effects of viewing live pornography," Fonseca said.
"I would also urge parents to apply as delegates to the next board meeting, to speak in favour of Sotiropoulos' important child-protection motion. This would also be a show of support to the three trustees who've taken this courageous step."
"Thank God for Trustees Sotiropolous, Atkinson and Hastings," Fonseca concluded.
