David Cavey, the Conservative Party candidate for Vancouver Centre announced that he will not be marching in this year’s Pride Parade after the organizers banned the Vancouver Public Library and the University of British Columbia from attending.
“He said he made the decision after sending a private request to Pride organizers to lift the ban on both respected public institutions. He received no reply,” reads the official news release announcing the decision.
“Pride Vancouver banished them from the parade because they each hosted speakers – one a strong feminist, the other transgender, whose ideas it disagreed with.”
According to the Vancouver Pride Society, they barred both institutions from attending for giving a platform to “transphobic hate speech”.
The Society pointed to the presence of two speakers: founder of Feminist Current Meghan Murphy, and Jenn Smith, who is a transgender anti-SOGI activist, as the primary reason behind their decisions.
In Murphy’s case, the Vancouver Public Library hosted a speech by her in January on gender identity and women’s rights which was protested by a number of transgender activists. While Smith most recently gave a talk on the SOGI-123 curriculum at the University of British Columbia, where violent protests broke out.
Cavey, who is gay himself, has marched in two prior Pride Parades in the city and along with his EDA, has been a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.
In response to the Conservative candidate’s decision, the Vancouver Pride Society claims that they were never informed of the decision prior to the news release.
“Our team is focused on hosting Western Canada’s largest parade and festival. We don’t have time to be dealing with political candidates trying to score points off the back of our work,” wrote a post by the group.
However, according to Cavey he had contacted them using their contact form on their website well before the decision was announced.
When contacted by The Post Millennial, Cavey said that the “principled” decision has received support among the LGBTQ+ community.
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