Playwright Brad Fraser was in town last week to catch a preview show of his adaptation of Richard II at the Stratford Festival. 

Afterwards he noted people had walked out during a male-male kiss.

If you know anything about Brad, you’ll understand that he took it as a badge of honour.

Then he noted: “Thirty-four years ago when two women kissed halfway through the first act of "Unidentified Human Remains" people walked out. Last night, part way through act one of "Richard ll", when two men kissed, people walked out. And we like to tell ourselves things have changed.”

Indeed, local stories recounted from this past weekend’s beginning of PRIDE Month (June) demonstrate it’s no different here, although I like to think we’re a bit more civilized here than in other nearby places given the international artistic influence on Stratford – something I happen to believe. 

But for every drag storytime at the Stratford Public Library Saturday morning, produced along with my organization, Stratford Pride Community Centre, and Fanfare Books, that saw an astoundingly large audience of 120 parents and children, there’s an incidence of transphobic hate in a local store so vehement that it frightened the staff of the alcohol store it took place in (remarks about the Bud Lite sponsorship of a US trans social media influencer that saw the beer company lose sales).

For every rainbow crosswalk painted outside city hall, there’s a report of homophobic graffiti at a local restaurant Sirkel.

For every Sunday Perth Pride March and festival of (my estimate) 1,000 people gathered to proclaim their pride in their lives, there’s someone hyperventilating about us mounting a theme night at a local bar that we called The Stratford Gay Bar (people, for heaven’s sake, get a grip. The title is funny. It’s an inside joke about using an incredibly obvious name. Incidentally, in Washington, DC, they have “The Little Gay Pub”).

In all these cases, it is good to see the gaping difference in numbers between the supporters and the haters, and to quote Martin Luther King that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

I’ve been gratified to see the number of Stratford businesses that have upped their Stratford Pride Guide donations from $50 last year to $75 for this Spring’s edition of our online guide to gay-friendly businesses in town; a Guide, I might add, that is a benefit to the business community as it is to queer visitors. 

Having said that, there are still businesses where epithets are flung around openly, as recently happened to an actor here for the season who was openly called a f*aggot. I’m told such verbal attacks are much more common than the virtuous citizens of Stratford would care to believe. 

And people wonder why the LGBTQ+ citizenry needs safe spaces such as our Stratford Pride Community Centre and the occasional weekend theme night in a local bar whimsically named The Stratford Gay Bar.

People easily forget that it was two straight guys in a Colorado straight bar who decided it would be fun to play murder the queer and beat the life out of Matthew Shepard, leaving him tied in the dead of winter to a ranch fence to die.

Sunday night, our opening night for The Stratford Gay Bar, I sat beside a young person from a nearby village tell me how, since coming out of the closet to live as her true self, she is afraid to go into straight bars.

Her feelings are her feelings. Don’t try to dismiss them as an over reaction. Unless you’re queer, you don’t know how close to the surface stories like Matthew’s are for us, no matter how many years pass. It happens again, somewhere, everyday. You can’t comprehend that each of us knows someone who’s been beaten just for being gay, if we ourselves haven’t been. Telling me queers don’t need safe spaces where they know that everyone inside that door is just like them, is touching a third rail. 

To quote Brad again:

“History proves that when times are tough in periods of economic and social flux the majority will inevitably turn on minorities, rather than the corrupt governments and deceptive leaders who are the true architects of our misery, in order to place blame on someone they can persecute and punish. 

“This is happening on a worldwide level right now and no target is larger or easier to attack than the queer community. 

“Whether it's the criminalization of homosexuality in backward countries, bashing and attacks on individuals in western countries, banning drag queens, criminalizing gay behaviour, or certain institutions refusing to display PRIDE flags, make no mistake, we are under attack and will have to defend ourselves.

“I find it hard to believe this is happening after decades of progress and enlightenment, but so much of what's taking place right now has our governments, corporations and religious institutions happily pointing at us rather than owning up to their own terrible exploitation of hatred and prejudice. 

“We are in an extremely vulnerable position and we can only protect ourselves by banding together, whatever our differences might be. When minorities stop fighting and arguing with one another we cease to be minorities and become an army.

“Let's dedicate this PRIDE month to positive dialogue and becoming the army that protects one another from the very real dangers of the majority.

“Our lives depend on it.”

Brad Fraser will read from his memoir, All the Rage, sign copies and take questions, at The Stratford Gay Bar, Rockwell Lounge, June 19, at 8 p.m.

-- Bruce Duncan Skeaff is President of the Stratford Pride Community Centre.