Well the gay community whatever that means is not a monolith. So while some of us rage at the police, others have a different attitude. Unfortunately these online forums often become echo chambers and if you don’t have the “correct” opinion good luck to you.
As a gay person I’ll admit I’m neither here nor there about pride, but I do see locking police out of pride as unhelpful and does nothing good to foster a relationship with the police as an institution. Police has thousands of employees and to lock out some based on the actions of others is some kind collective punishment/guilt that would not not necessarily be done to other groups. Many institutions supporting pride or actively involved in it would have a checkered history, and probably stuff that still happens today. If we really zoom in at a micro level, I wouldn’t be surprised if some pride participants haven’t demonstrated homophobia themselves at some point in their lives.
The point is if the price of admission is a squeaky clean history and angelic behavior I rather suspect many would fall short of the standard and not just Police.
People say the Police are virtue signalling, which I actually can’t stand so on that level I relate. But there is some hypocrisy here, because that is probably true of all their corporate sponsors as well. Big corporates like Coles, Qantas or Optus would not be involved if it would seriously hurt their bottom line.
Like I said, multiple sponsors and organizations pink wash and virtue signal, sounds like more than just Police need to be excluded if that’s the criteria for exclusion.
I think a clear distinction needs to be drawn also. It wasn’t a policeman that murdered a gay person. They weren’t carrying out an order of the institution or acting on the institutions behalf. They are a person that (allegedly) murdered someone that just happened to be a Police.
As for locking out you know what I meant, asking someone not to show up in Police uniform is in effect asking someone to suppress part of their identity. “yeah you can come, but only if you don’t show that your a member of the Police”. Whatever faults the Police have currently, do people honestly think society would function without the Police? I just think some folks need a reality check.
The fact is the police for many is similar to being a nurse or a doctor, where it is very much a calling due to the demands and pressure of the job. And this is why so many in the Police are just absolutely sickened by this murder because it goes against their entire ethos on top of the murder itself.
The truth is the guy was a nutter. And even if he wasn’t part of Police he was probably going to go off the deep end sooner or later no matter what his profession was.
That being said, I do have some concerns about gun access control within the Police force and some questions do need to be answered there.
At the end of the day Pride is neither here or there for me, I don’t have much skin in the game. But it does annoy me somewhat that people aren’t being entirely rational and are looking for someone to blame, easy answers and someone to point the finger at. Life’s often not fair, bad things happen to good people and no, it’s not all the fault of the Police, this murder included.
There is nuance and context to everything and throwing the baby out with the bath water is in my view a misdirected overreaction.