Editorial — Pride Parade only a small step forward

SATURDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — The TRU Students Union held the city’s third annual Pride Parade on Friday. When the first event was held three years ago, it was cause for much public discussion. Now, thankfully, it comes and goes without much clamour.

That does not mean we’ve advanced very far in acceptance of the LGBT community, as it’s commonly called now. Gays can marry and raise families but they’re still subject to an unacceptable level of intolerance and ridicule.

This week, a man named Daniel Mark Ogloff has been in the news. He is a man who apparently thinks it’s OK to make gays the subject of jokes. He wrote “I’m gay” on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on a student’s back.

Then he pointed it out to others who had a good laugh.

Ogloff is a teacher. The incident occurred at Aldergrove Community secondary school near Langley but he is now working in Alberta.

The case of Ogloff is discouraging. When gays can march through downtown Kamloops on Pride Day instead of just through the campus of a university, and when the Daniel Ogloffs of the world understand why their attitude is so wrong, we’ll have made the right kind of progress.