I thought I would take a few minutes to explain
why I am offended at the suggestion that queers who request that uniformed
police officers not march in the Ottawa Pride Parade are engaging in legally
cognizable discrimination comparable to that which members of LGBTTIPQQ2S communities
experience(d), allegedly primarily in the past.
Let me begin by expressing my utmost respect
for the vocation of law enforcement. Anyone who risks his life in the service
of others deserves our gratitude. I would submit, however, that it is because
of my respect for this calling, and my sincere belief that duty ought always to
supersede our personal inclinations, especially when one has the privilege of
holding power flowing from public office, that I believe any officer with a
sense of duty and the public interest would refrain from marching in capital
pride while in uniform. This, as I hope to demonstrate, is in keeping with the
ethics that ought to inform the contextual execution of his responsibilities.
It is important to begin with an
acknowledgement that Canada has always recognized that no right is absolute.
Though police officers’ right to freedom of expression is engaged by the
decision (not to) march in a parade, these are highly limited by the nature of
their office and the context in which their uniforms are worn. No one has an
abstract right to wear an official police uniform. Indeed, impersonating an
officer is a crime under the criminal code. Wearing a uniform is a privilege
that persons acquire while they hold a public office, by virtue of which they
are vested with the power to exercise the state’s (il)legitimate monopoly over
violence. In this sense, when Jane Smith is in a uniform she crosses a boundary
and surrenders part of her private identity. She becomes constable Smith,
vested with the power to kill under certain circumstances. While acknowledging
the services that police officers render, and the protection, however faulty,
the offer queer communities, their uniforms are designed to embody state
repression and coercion. It is simply ludicrous to protest otherwise. Because
of the connection between an officer’s uniform and his powers of authority,
having uniformed officers present while they are not on duty, confuses the
roles of participant and monitor and, even if this is against the best of
intentions, gives the impression that Capital Pride supports the coercive power
of the state.
While
acknowledging the progress that has been made, the coercive power of the state
continues to use force to disproportionately discipline queer communities,
particularly its most vulnerable members, such as trans-women, sex-workers,
those in conflict with the law, and/or persons with HIV-AIDS. The Ottawa Police
Department has never issued a formal apology, and the RCMP has never apologized
for its shameful treatment of queers, much of which the force conducted on its
own initiative, despite several federal reports urging it to desist. An apology
would be a concrete step in the process of healing, and so to would be queer-police
dialogue that goes beyond the boundaries of homonormative upper-middle-class
whiteness. We could easily have lesbian and/or trans spectators of and/or
participant in the parade who are triggered by memories of police heterosexism and
indifference, at best, and sexual and physical assault, at worst. It was a past
time for police officers to sexually and physically assault lesbian women until
as late as 1970.
As a
sexual assault survivor myself, I would find it more comforting if such a
masculinist and authoritarian presence were not at an event, which originally
represented freedom from and opposition to heterosexist policing, in both the
actual and metaphorical sense.
Furthermore, Ottawa’s queer communities are
only beginning to recognize the struggle and the exclusion experienced by
members who are black, Indigenous, and/or racialized in some other fashion. We
also have a disproportionate number of members who are homeless. How can we \
condone police conduct towards them. This is not the path to queer liberation, Indigenous
reconciliation, and/or racial justice. This is nothing more than the resurgence
of male chauvinism and an erroneous sense of wounded pride without concrete
actions of charitable contrition.
No one has a right to wear the vestments of a
public official. In addition, when one becomes a public official one of the
costs of the privileges that are born of an assumed office is an increased
susceptibility to criticism for collective wrongs. I find the reaction of the
Ottawa Police Chief to be a discredit to is office. If his true mission were to
serve and protect all communities in Ottawa, he ought to quietly put the
process of healing and reconciliation above his own comically wounded straight
and masculinist ego. Forgive me if I hurt his feelings, but words, especially
true ones, do far less damage than bullets, and he is the one with the gun.
It wasn’t so long ago that police officers were
actively trying to stop pride celebrations. Of course, only an ungrateful idiot
would downplay the fact that that is no longer happening. But now I fear a more
sinister enemy is facing queer communities today. A man of the state who offers
us liberal heterosexism with a rainbow makeover but who is not himself
radically changed by the encounter. Police officers are not the victims here;
we are. They have plenty of other fabulous pomp and circumstance specifically
dedicated to them. Yet they, along with corporate and governmental interests,
are constantly trying to co-opt the energy generated from erstwhile grassroots
social activism for morally dubious purposes. This does not bode well for the
constant but vital task of holding the state accountable for its past, present,
and future violence.
However penitent the police may appear, their
actions and the actions of their supporters, (at least in this particular
scenario) betray less desire to enforce inclusion and equality and more of the
bullying tactics many of us not in a position of power were used to seeing on
the schoolyard, and which have, alas, carried through to the banality of
violence that characterizes our everyday lives of pride and shame.
Police officers should show their pride like
everyone else. They have no business doing so in uniforms specially designed to
signify state violence. To claim discrimination based on a polite and
well-founded request makes a mockery of Canada’s Constitution and the vocation of
police officer itself