From the AIDS Committee of Durham Region Facebook page here.
Mark Hammann, our Manager of Education, was asked to speak at Queerstock Festival last night. Here's his speech:
I asked that we remember the history of Pride. I shared my concerns that we should hold corporations that sponsor our Pride events around the world accountable and to uphold the true spirit and meaning behind Pride. With particular focus on Toronto pride sponsor, Trojan Condoms.
Here it is:
Today I say to you Happy Pride, but I do so with a lot of concern about the future of prides everywhere. I encourage each of you to remember why we have pride festivals. Pride began as a protest, an act of defiance by our community to the oppression, discrimination and stigma that LGBTQ people had and were suffering. We had had enough and we were not going to be quiet anymore. We choose instead to stand and march together, and in defiance to all this oppression and hate we shouted out in the streets that we were proud of who we were and who we loved. We had Pride. No more being silent, no more hiding – We had Pride in being ourselves.
We marched without any businesses or corporations with us or sponsoring our pride, because of homophobia they feared association with us would kill their profits and business.
Well things for us have improved. Today Pride has become a big party, many heterosexuals join with us as allies; businesses and corporations now seek our support by marketing to us and sponsoring our prides. None of this is necessarily a bad thing, but we must as LGBTQ people stay alert and speak up when some partners/supporters take us for granted and see us as being more dollar signs than people who have been oppressed for centuries.
With World Pride coming, I have become very concerned that corporate sponsorship has lost focus on what pride is and worse have forgotten about the health and well-being of LGBTQ people.
This year Trojan condoms is an official sponsor of World Pride. Now I assure you that I like the Trojan man, I think Trojan makes a good product and I am glad they support pride. However, as a sponsor of World Pride they will not allow any condoms other than Trojans to be distributed during Pride, including the parade.
All condoms provide protection, not just a certain brand. We should be providing and promoting condoms of any and every brand to protect our community. It’s about our health, well-being and our very lives.
We know that gay men continue to make up the majority of new HIV infections every year. We heard just this past week from Toronto Public Health that 60 people each year die from AIDS still in Toronto. Many of them are gay men.
So I have serious concerns and questions about this corporation not allowing other condoms at pride. My concern is their wanting to make a huge profit off of our community encouraging us to buy their product, while not giving our health and well-being any concern. My question is do they really care that gay men are still becoming infected with HIV in high numbers and still too many dying from AIDS? It certainly doesn’t sound like it to me or my co-workers at ACDR.
While we like the support of businesses and corporations, we as a community need to make certain that these corporations aren’t just looking at how they can make a profit off of us or use us to make themselves look good while screwing us from behind!
I ask you on this Pride day to please spread the word through your social media contacts about Trojan. Let’s hold them or any other corporations that profiteer off our community accountable for what they are doing.
Let’s remember the history of pride, be aware of how corporations are really treating us as LGBTQ people and then and only then will we guarantee a truly happy Pride for all.
All photographs by Bob Leahy