GAYS SHOULD BUTT OUT

THE MAYOR SHOULD IGNORE GAY MISSIONARIES

Even the "halo" effect where those being polled give the answer they think makes them look best  - which pollsters admit skews too many polls - didn't help gay activists who insist that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford must attend the gay parade.
Only 44% of those polled said he should participate in the Pride Parade or related events. Hardly the deafening roar of support for the parade that homosexual activists and trendy media commentators say exists.
Ford is going to the cottage, again, and so far won't participate in any way, a stand that 25% agree with. And then there are the 29% who says it's all up to Ford.
I suspect that deep down where your feelings really live, there are more Canadians than that who dislike gay parades and those demanding that politicians show support for a minority life style.
I have had mixed emotions about pride parades since Mary and I wandered into the famous one in Manhattan on a business trip. My belief that homosexuals should be treated the same as anyone else, not persecuted, ran smack into my dislike of seeing dangling balls and bouncing tits by the thousands, and really really queer behaviour, when all we wanted to do was to window shop and have a frosty beer.
I wrote a Sun editorial years ago that toleration should replace discrimination in dealing with homosexuality. It prompted an angry phone call from Svend Robinson, then a NDP MP and famous homosexual activist.  Turned out he hadn't actually read the editorial. So I read it to him, word by word, and asked him to tell me what exactly he objected to. He finally conceded that he really didn't have a a problem. It seemed he expected to have a problem with anything that appeared in the Sun on this issue.
I really don't care what gays do in private, providing they don't scare the pets, or anyone else, when in public. And missionary work is out. Just like we don't expect our educators to promote sexual intercourse between boys and girls, misguided lessons explaining same-sex intercourse should also be banned.
And that is why Ford and me and others dislike the Pride Parade. It is nothing more than a promotion of gay sex, a flaunting of the sexual bits in such manners that it would bring arrest on most streets on any other day.
I arrived at City Hall as a kid reporter with a bit of an in with mayors. My father had been the family doctor for Leslie Saunders and chairman of the school board on which Bill Dennison served as a trustee. For much of my 50 years in journalism, I got to see mayors in every situation including when they were drunk. In this first-name relationship, seven became good friends. For example Phil Givens was a guest at my wedding and I was a guest at one of Art Eggleton's weddings. I wrote Nathan Phillips' memoirs and speeches for Don Summerville with whom I went to every Leaf home game and most days to the Central Y. I have served on boards and committees with David Miller, David Crombie and Ford. I'm not boasting, just stating the foundation that I have a good idea of what many of our last 14 mayors really think, not just what they say. The gay issue has really only come out of the closet in the last 30 years. And the media, driven slightly nuts by the 24-hours news cycle, has become during the same period like vampires sucking the neck of a mayor on any issue from dandruff to development. There is no way that Allan Lamport or Summerville would have been bullied into parade participation. Phillips and Dennison would have used their decades of experience to deflect pressure. Givens and Crombie were too adept in debate to be trapped like Ford's beached whale incomprehensibility. Eggleton, Toronto's longest serving mayor, became famous for his refusal to have anything to do with a Lesbian and Gay Pride Week, intriguing when you know that Eggs, apparently so stodgy and careful,was actually rather horny.
Then we come to the last five mayors, who collectively don't measure up to those who ruled before. June Rowlands was a typical Grit, supporting the gay week but not marching in the parade. Barbara Hall was the first mayor to march but she and Miller are such flamboyant supporters of the left, where homosexual support is greatest, it's a wonder they didn't dye their private parts and strut.
Oh yes, there's Mel Lastman who did his damnedest to avoid anything to do with homosexuals when he was mayor of a suburb more conservative than the hot radicalism downtown.
Yet when he became mayor of the amalgamated city, he went overboard, capering along the route, shooting a squirt gun at everyone, revelling in the pictures of his performance. But then Mel, who isn't much of a reader, only "reads" his pictures in the papers. Mel never saw a parade where he didn't want to be the lead drum major. And he wasn't given to deep philosophizing about the obvious phallic symbolism of ejecting water pistols.
We should be grateful that Bad Boy kept his pants on. Thank heavens no aide told him that if he dropped them, he would be world famous, or is that infamous.
I would imagine Ford will stick to his principles, because of his able understanding of the true feelings of Ford Nation and the suburbs, and roast his weenie at the cottage, not on Yonge St.