Some questions for Queers Against Israeli Apartheid???

Lorne Opler has some good questions...

If QuAIA rightly believes the parade is a legitimate forum to protest oppression towards LGBT men and women, why is it then not using it to condemn all global atrocities towards LGBT individuals?

Uganda is proposing an anti-homosexual bill that will impose the death penalty on gays. Why isn’t QuAIA protesting?

Jamaica is rife with documented beatings and murders of gays. What does QuAIA say about that?

Iran has a history of state- sanctioned executions against gays going back to the start of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. QuAIA is curiously silent about this too.

Most ironically, one must ask why is QuAIA not protesting the treatment of Palestinian gays by their compatriots?

Referring to gay rights, Mahmoud al-Zahar, co-founder of Hamas, was quoted in The Times of London and Europe’s Gay News Service, “Pink News,” in 2005 as saying, “Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?”

Five years later, one can safely bet that attitude has not changed. I do not see QuAIA demanding any policy changes from Hamas.

Dissent is the proud hallmark and history of the gay community — it’s what led Canada to dismantle its discriminatory laws and practices against LGBT people — but deception is not.

Deceiving people into believing that only Israel among all nations of the world deserves such an attack not only validates those who harbour anti-Semitic proclivities, but equally it undermines the LGBT community’s sense of integrity, fairness and most of all … pride.

And after all, isn’t that what we are all supposed to be celebrating this week?