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Kelowna City Councillor Loyal Wooldridge failed to convince his council colleagues to break with city policy and raise a Pride flag this week, and he witnessed a lot of intolerant commentary in the days that followed, but he heads into the Pride March weekend with an upbeat attitude.
On Monday, Wooldridge put forward a request from the Pride Society to raise the flag. Council rejected the idea, preferring to stick to a seven-year-old policy and not to open the door to debating which flags can fly at City Hall and which cannot. Instead, council agreed to open up some new lines of dialogue with marginalized groups.
Wooldridge admits the Pride Society might have had a better chance of success with the flag if they hadn't come forward so late.
"Government doesn't move very quickly as we know," said Wooldridge. "So having a bit more time may have been advantageous."
KelownaNow's reporting on the issue revealed some thoughts on the topic, but it may be the comments posted beneath the story on Facebook that reveal more.
"There are some intolerant attitudes," he said. But he's glad the negative sentiments are laid bare for us all to see.
"If we don't bring light to it, and we don't shine our light bright we don't see the underlying current that's underneath all of it."
Wooldridge points out homosexuality was a criminal offence in Canada until 1969, and it wasn't until 1996 that it became protected in the Charter of Rights. "So this hasn't been going on for very long," he said. "So to think that we've done enough and everyone should just carry on with their merry lives, just isn't true." Instead, Wooldridge sees it as a call to action.
"There's still advocacy to be done and there' still voices to represent, and there's still people who don't feel comfortable to be who they are," he said.
All that aside, Loyal Wooldridge is not one to brood about the negatives. And he's eagerly looking forward to the weekend pride march.
"It's about celebrating how far we've come over the past 50 years and where we need to go from here."
For more on his thoughts about Pride, check out the latest entry on his Blog, Pride and Reconciliation.
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